In Memoriam

A note from the author: This essay is not sexual in nature. Merely personal, and maybe funny. I hope you'll read it anyway, however.

***

My dad died last Friday.

It was one of those passings that was both sudden and not. I wrote last year of finally convincing him to move from Virginia, closer to his children up north. After he got here, my dad seemed to spend more time in the hospital than out. He would fall, or develop issues from his blood condition. In his assisted living facility he’d tumble and require an emergency room visit, which would lead to him being admitted. He’d faint, or become dizzy and non responsive, or exhibit signs of another stroke. Last week he’d been admitted to the hospital after one of his breakfast fainting spells; he was fine and happily grilling the nurses on their knowledge of American history for several days—and then last Thursday he crashed and I got a call to get out there while I could.

It’s been a long time coming and something I’ve prepared for, for a year and a half. Simultaneously, those final few hours felt swift and shocking.

He had checked out long ago, though. We used to enjoy crackling banter—as I’ve recorded in these pages several times. This last year, the only topics of conversation to which he’d really warm up would be about his living center’s resident cat, and the meals served in their dining room. So I’d call, or more often visit, and hear what had been on the menu for every meal that week, and listen to his complaints about dining room baked goods, and then a rant identical to the last time I’d visited about how he’d like pancakes for breakfast sometime but they always bring him an omelette, and then I’d say well why don’t you tell them you’d like pancakes instead of an omelette and he says well I would complain but their omelette is always so good that I don’t mind eating it. Then, having exhausted everything he enjoyed talking about, we’d discuss the upcoming week’s menus, and by that time it would be lunch and he’d have to go.

He liked his new residence and had started making some friends, but it was plain that his heart wasn’t into it. His life had been so severely diminished.

***

His funeral is next week. Rather than focus any more on his death, allow me to share one story from his life—one I haven’t told before in its entirety, because it still creeps me out.

***

In the autumn of 2020, I had to live with my dad for six weeks. We were six months into the pandemic. I think as a nation we’d stopped disinfecting our groceries at that point, but restaurants were still only open for takeout. Masks were required everywhere. Schools were operating remotely, only. And my dad had prostate cancer.

He’d hidden the diagnosis for a good seven or eight months until his doctors told him his particular case was particularly aggressive. They ordered him to undergo radiation therapy five days a week for six weeks.

My father had extremely low vision. His eyesight was absolutely uncorrectable, even with the thickest lenses. He always lived in a world of blurs without edges and smears of color. He couldn’t really see faces or people’s expressions. He couldn’t read signs, even large ones. He wasn’t blind, but he could only really see clearly what he could hold an inch away from his eyes. Things like books, or an iPad, and for the former he’d still need a magnifying glass.

Because of his eyesight he couldn’t drive. During the pandemic he didn’t want to be climbing into stranger’s Ubers ten times a week to get back and forth from the cancer center.

Once I got over my irritation that he'd hidden his condition for so long, I was anxious to help.

My dad expected me to drive 375 miles both ways twice a week, heading home on the weekends, but I am not that fond of road travel. If I was going to be there for him, I was going to stay the whole time. I’d cook, I’d clean, I’d chauffeur. I packed up a bunch of clothing, my Playstation and electronics, tossed my Instant Pot in my car's back seat, and temporarily moved into my childhood house.

Away from home and loved ones, I was miserable. My quarters were uncomfortable. My dad was a hoarder, so the only place I could escape—from his stacks of magazines dating back to the early 1970s, the toppling piles of return address labels and years’ worth of canned cat food and bags of Halloween candy (some distant Halloween in the 1990s), the coffee cups jammed packed with toenail files and dried-out felt tips, the mail he never threw out and the largest collection of ketchup packets on the North American continent—was the postage-stamp sized bedroom I’d been allotted.

We got into a routine. We’d wake early and head to the cancer center. I’d drop him at the front door. Since I wasn’t allowed inside because of their Covid protocols, I’d sit in the parking lot and read until he was done with his radiation. We’d go home, we’d eat lunch. Then I’d shut myself up in the bedroom and only emerge to do some daily exercise and make a delicious dinner at which he’d turn up his nose because the name sounds funny or it has garlic?are we Italian now? or whatever happened to good solid food like Hamburger Helper? Once a week on Fridays, I’d order takeout online and bring it home. He never griped about takeout.

Everything was awful, but for the most part I bore it. Until one night at the end of the second week.

After midnight, that evening, I lay awake reading. I was finding it difficult in that place first to fall, and then to stay asleep. I was contorted in a twin bed trying to find a comfortable spot on a fifty-year-old mattress when I heard a rap on the door. “What?” I called.

My dad poked his head through the door. “Are you asleep?” he asked.

“Do you usually have conversations in your sleep?” I retorted.

“I think there’s a bird in my room.”

Now, my father at this time had the occasional memory lapse, though he refused to tell his primary physician or consult a specialist about it. I had never known him to be outright delusional, however. “A bird?”

“A bird.”

“How did a bird get into your room?”

“I don’t know. How do birds usually get into rooms?”

We weren’t getting anywhere. “Let me go look,” I sighed, heaving my aching back off the twin bed torture rack.

I already wore a t-shirt and boxer briefs. I grabbed my spectacles and put them on, because without them I was just as blind as my father. From my room we stomped across the landing to his bedroom, which ran the length of his colonial brick home. I poke my head in, expecting—what? For a pigeon to be perched on one of the curtain rods, I guess.

Nothing. There was absolutely nothing in there. “Are you sure—?” Just as I started my inquiry, however, something small and black and evil chattered and fluttered from behind a bureau to flap its foul wings in my direction. I screamed—no shame in admitting it, I screamed loud and high—grabbed my dad, and hauled him out into the hall. Once I’d slammed shut the bedroom door, I yelled at my father, “That was a bat.”

“A bat?”

“How did a bat get in your bedroom?” I demanded.

To his credit, he actually thought about the question for a little while. “The same way as the bird?”

I stomped back to my bedroom and hastily attired myself in my Bat Vanquisher costume. Apparently, I thought that consisted of an orange hoodie zipped all the way up the front with the hood string pulled so tight, I had a two-inch puckered circle as a peephole, accompanied by a pair of calf-high zip-up leather boots. Oh, and those same boxer shorts I’d been wearing earlier. For a weapon, I carried my mom’s old gut-stringed tennis racket. In this alarming and singularly ineffective ensemble, I returned to the scene of the invasion, turned the knob, and went in.

I don’t know what good I thought the hoodie was going to do. The moment the bat started flapping my way, I let out more blood-curdling screams. I am not the person anyone should turn to, when it comes to ridding the place of small mammals. Insects I’ll do. At home, though, I’ve been known to flip out when the cats find a teeny tiny mouse to play with. They won’t kill it; they’ll just bat it around to teach it a lesson or two, then transport it up to the bedroom in the middle of the night to share with me. Usually after a good fifteen minutes of shrieking bloody murder and threatening the cats with a cat orphanage, I’ll calm down, trap the mouse under a discarded salad greens container, pick it up by sliding cardboard from an Amazon box underneath, and then disposing of the horrid wriggling thing at the far end of the nearby cemetery for the neighbors there to enjoy. 

It's a process to get to that point. I have to work through my process!

But a bat? Fuck. A mouse is tiny. It can only move so fast. It moves on the ground. A bat goes everywhere. It gets in your face. It’s huge. Decades before, when a squirrel got trapped in our family's fireplace, neighbors suggested that we lay down newspaper in a path to the front door, leave the doors open, and that when we let the squirrel out, it would follow the lighter-shaded paper to the exit. None of us believed that shit and were convinced that we’d end up chasing a squirrel all over the house. But sure enough, we put down the paper, opened the fire screen, and blip blip blip, the squirrel followed the path and hippety-hopped straight out the front door.

Maybe, I thought, just maybe I could do something like that with the bat. So I had my dad go downstairs and turn on the outside porch lights. In the bedroom, certain of instant death at any moment, I opened the windows and storm windows. That was not an easy feat, as my father never, ever admitted fresh air into the house, perhaps fearing that like the treasures of an ancient Egyptian tomb exposed too quickly to an outside draft, his prehistoric collection of Virginia Quarterly Reviews and TV Guides would disintegrate to dust in mere seconds. Some of those panes hadn’t been shifted since the sixties.

Then I turned out the lights and tiptoed out of the room.

“We are going to wait for half an hour,” I said. “You may sit on the sofa downstairs. The bat should fly out the window. We’ll check back and see if it’s gone.”

He didn’t have any other options, so I sat in my bedroom with teeth chattering as I cursed my luck. A half hour passed. We reconvened outside the door. I went in again and turned on the lights.

The bat immediately began screeching my way. I screamed and ran out again.

“So was it gone?” my dad asked.

“WHAT DO YOU FUCKING THINK?” I gently replied.

“What are we going to do?”

I knew exactly what we were going to do. “We are going to collect our valuables,” I gravely announced, “And then I am going to get the lawn mower gasoline can from the basement and we are going to burn this house down, walk away, and never look back.”

“I think you’re being a little extreme.”

“I did not sign up for this!” I shrieked. My watch read well past one a.m. I was tired and I hated rodents. Particularly rodents with wings. I hated being there. I hated being the only one who could actually do anything. “I did not sign up for bats. If I had known bats were going to be involved, I would not have agreed to stay in this hellhole for six weeks with you and the bats.”

Unperturbed by my outbreak, my dad repeated, “So what are we going to do?”

I sigh. “Just wait.” Back to my bedroom in my Bat Vanquisher costume I stomped. I pulled out my phone and opened Twitter to query my timeline. Anyone have any speedy hints for getting rid of a bat in my dad’s bedroom?

Apparently I had more followers up after midnight than I anticipated, because I started getting suggestions right away. None of them were great, mind you. My friend Sam sent me a DM. It’s easy. Just bop it!

Bop it?

Yeah. Just bop it!

My thumbs stabbed out, I am going to need a little more information than ‘just bop it.’

Okay you go slow, get ready, then you creep up and…just bop it!

He made the bopping sound so easy. I could creep. I had a tennis racket. I could get a trashcan. Maybe I could handle this bop it thing after all. “Stay out here,” I told my dad as I tugged tight my hood string. “I’m going to bop it.”

Inside the bedroom, I immediately spied the bat hanging upside down from the ceiling molding in the far corner. Go slow, I told myself, following Sam’s directions. My boots made a squeaking noise across my dad’s wood floors that I immediately regretted, in case the bat mistook it for his long-lost mate. But slow I was ordered to go, so I went slow.

Get ready. I brandished my mom’s racket in my right hand. My long fingers clutched the bottom of a metal wastebasket that my dad had owned since he was a kid. It was painted in Revolutionary War soldiers, all of whom were armed and ready to assist. Past my mom’s old bed I shuffled. Past the dresser. Past the foot of my father’s bed. The bat was still motionless. Glaring at me, probably. Yes, yes, I knew that blind as a bat was a commonplace for a reason, but I wouldn’t have put glaring past this particular bat.

I was going to bop it, though. I was going to take that racket, hold up the trash can, then I was going to bop it. Bop it down into the metal bin, then cover the opening with the racket head and throw it out the window. And by it, I meant basket, racket, and bat. All I had to do was bop it. Bop it good.

The bat stayed motionless as I drew near. With one shaky arm I held up the can. I raised my racket, ready to bop. I was going to give just the littlest of bops, and…

The damned vermin lunged for me. I felt its grabby little claws on my hoodie, scrabbling at the fabric. I started screaming again despite the open windows, tried to bat it away from my head, thought better about touching a fucking bat, then just dropped to the floor and yelled a lot more. When the bat retreated, flapping ostentatiously, I ran outside again and slammed the door.

“Did you get it?” asked my dad.

“Well.” I drew myself up with as much dignity as someone wearing my particular Bat Vanquisher gear can muster. “It’s been nice knowing you.”

“Where are you going?”

“Home. North. Away from here. Good luck with your cancer thing.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’ll clear up,” he said, playing along.

“Stay put a minute,” I growled.

I went to my bedroom and shut the door. I didn’t cry, though I felt like it. I checked Twitter, where more suggestions were trickling in. Most of them were variations on Just bop it, so I shut down Twitter. I called home and unloaded my frustrations on my poor confused mate, who understood not a word of my rant and plaintively yawned, “How did a bat get in the bedroom?”

“OH I DON’T KNOW,” I thundered. “THE SAME WAY AS THE BIRD?”

But look. As much as I was freaked out by the task at hand, it was clear that close to two in the morning, I was going to have to conquer my fears and get the job done. The only alternate plan I could think of was to ask my dad to sleep in the living room overnight, then by daylight hire a professional to come care of the problem. I knew there were no guarantees to finding a bat control person that easily, though. Plus that would break our pandemic isolation, and I didn’t want to expose my dad to Covid.

It was up to me. This time I wasn’t tentative. I left the bedroom and was about to announce to my dad my plan. I was going to bop that bat good.

Only my dad wasn’t in the hall.

I called his name down the stairs.

He wasn’t downstairs.

I opened the bedroom door. “You coming in?” I heard my dad say. “Don’t let the bat out.”

I slipped inside and leaned against the wall. “I told you to stay outside.”

My dad was standing motionless at the foot of my mom’s bed. From somewhere he’d pulled out a plastic whiffle bat that had been mine when I was six. He’d assumed a classic batter stance. “I thought I’d go bat hunting.”

“You can’t see shit,” I pointed out.

“That just means the bat can’t see me,” he said with good cheer.

I was about to remind him that it doesn’t work that way when I remembered we could be attacked at any moment. “Where’d the bat go?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t see shit.”

I still don’t see the bat. “Did you hit it?”

“All I did was walk in and look around, and then you came in. I didn’t swing at anything.”

I didn’t get it. Did my dad scare the bat out the window? Did it just leave? I shuffled toward him and around the bed…and then I saw where the bat had gotten to.

“Don’t move,” I ordered.

Because beneath the foot of his left bedroom slipper was a slightly squished dead bat. I lowered my tennis racket for the first time that night and informed him of the fact. “Well, gawrsh,” he said in that tone of mild perpetual astonishment that I’ll forever associate with his delivery. “How the heck did that happen?”

And that, good folk, is how I prefer to remember my father. When I knew him at his best, he didn’t lose his cool while others ran around like a gay, screeching Chicken Little. In an emergency, he used to be the last person to lament and moan. And even in victory, he never gloated or aggrandized his achievements.

He couldn’t see the bat, that night. He didn’t know how to bop a bat any more than I did. But in a pinch, my dad got shit done. And I loved him for it.

(I did include an explicit no fucking bats clause in my agreements for overnight visits afterward, though.)

***

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Dick Dock 2024: Bear Bait

Provincetown: Bear Week 2024

In all the summers we’ve been visiting Cape Cod—annually for over a decade at this point—we’ve always heard the same thing from the locals: don’t visit during Bear Week.

Not that I dislike bears. I love bears. Maybe I'm even a bear. I’ve never self-identified as a bear or attended any bear events, but my face is certainly furry enough. Many of my best friends are bears.

Nor is it that the good people of the Cape mind the bears as a type or a population. Bears are fine people. It’s the sheer number of them, all at once, that makes the week overwhelming. Visibly bedraggled shopkeepers have told us that yes, that particular week in July is always when they move the most merchandise, but keeping up with the masses exhausts them to the bone. Restaurant owners, when we’ve shown up the week after the event to enjoy our vacation time, tell us we’re fortunate to have arrived when we did, since the Bear Week bears ate clean through their stock. From condo owners who rent out during the summers, I’ve heard nothing but horror stories of a dozen bears camping in a cozy space meant for a mere two, of furniture being disassembled and stuffed into nooks so that the bears could create sex pits, of leasing agreements being broken by content makers filming for their OnlyFans on semi-public decks and in backyards.

I like sex pits as much as the next degenerate, but restaurants running out of food? Unpardonable.

Until this year, we’d heeded the advice of the locals and avoided the event. Bear Week tends to be more expensive for rentals, anyway. The week prior or after suited just fine. Right around the turn of the new year, though, when it was time to pick a date for the season, it soon became clear that the choice was Bear Week or nothing.

So that second Saturday in July I’d hopped a train solo and journeyed all they way through Connecticut and Rhode Island to Massachusetts, walked through downtown Boston to a dock, then enjoyed an open-air ferry trip to the Cape. From the Provincetown pier, I made the final leg to my rental on the town’s west end. Every step of my trip seemed to confirm my worst fears: the town was packed. I was arriving right around dinner time and my stomach was growling, but every restaurant was already overflowing with bears. Bears in spandex and tank tops. Bears in t-shirts sporting bear logos and cartoon bears. Bears in leather, though it was ungodly warm. The Mayflower restaurant had a line out of the door and around the corner; Spiritus, where folks grab quick slices of pizza to sit on the steps and people-watch, must have had over two hundred sweat-soaked men crammed within its open doors.

I tend to be averse to large crowds, so navigating Commercial Street just as the Tea Dance was letting out felt like a nightmare. I was the lone salmon navigating upstream against a torrent of bears who’d spent the last three hours drinking at the disco. By the time I threw my sweaty carcass on the rental’s bed, I regretted coming. I spent the evening eating takeout on my deck and texting friends that Bear Week was crowded and awful.

And then, the next day, the town just kind of empties out. I never see those huge crowds again. Never have I waited at a restaurant, nor have they run out of food. The crowds aren’t intolerable. I haven’t been invited to any sex pits, much to my sorrow, but neither have I been lacking for offers of hookups. Save for that initial Saturday, Bear Week has been much like any other—only a touch busier and hornier.

It’s Thursday, toward the end of my planned stay. I’ve gorged myself on my annual platter of fried clams, and bought my yearly t-shirt and baseball cap to commemorate my stay. I’ve eaten at the restaurants I always enjoy and mourned the ones have have disappeared since my last visit. Always, there’s one or two that vanish. Like New York, Provincetown is an ever-changing landscape.

I’ve finished one excellent book and started another, and spent my lunchtimes down by the docks, sitting in the shade and eating a sandwich while watching gray seals play in the blue waters. I’ve lain in the air conditioned comfort of my rental, afternoons, to escape the oppressive heat and humidity.

And then, in the evenings, I’ve emerged for activities that are a little more social. I’ve seen a couple of shows, met a friend or two for drinks. I’ve bellowed out karaoke at the Governor Bradford, for a mixed crowd of tourists, locals, and drag queens. And I’ve indulged daily in that most social activity of all—removing my clothes with other men so we can enjoy each other’s bodies. I still bone up whenever I think of last night’s escapade, when a married couple from D.C., two worked-out military men both in need of a daddy, waited ass up and blindfolded, side by side, on their queen-sized bed at the Boatslip.

Today I’ve been waiting around on people to follow through with texts. That morning I’d had a playmate I’ve twice met on my visits here—a handsome dark-skinned Latin man who loves to kiss—promise to get in touch this evening for a repeat visit. And earlier in the week, I’d been implored to meet by an extreme sub with whom I’d connected in 2023. His situation is complicated by the fact he has an owner, though, who’s promised to issue an invitation, yet hasn’t. Though daily the sub has promised that today would be the day, I’ve still never gotten my summons. I’m starting to feel strung along.

Since it’s well after eleven, it’s safe to say neither guy is going to text me at this point. So I put my phone on the charger, change into my most lightweight shorts and tee, pull on the sneakers, and head out into the night.

It’s time to hit the Dick Dock.

I’m walking from my rental toward the waterfront when, in the patio area of a nearby cottage, a group of five or six gay boys in their early thirties are enjoying a late-night dinner. They’re shielded by tall hedges, but when I pass an opening, they call out in a chorus, “Heeeeey, daddy!”

I backtrack a couple of steps. “Hello, boys,” I carol, as I lean over the latched gate. All the boys are white, skinny gym-toned twinks with nary a facial hair among them. All shirtless and in swimsuits, all clutching mostly empty bottles of lager.

“Look. We’ve got sausage.” A plate of severely charred kielbasa or wieners sits in the middle of the table, surrounded by a bowl of chips and various condiments. The lad speaking clearly intends his declaration as a double entendre. Though they’ve been drinking—a lot—the insinuation makes them all titter as one.

“Oh yeah?” I say, looking at the burnt whatever-they-are. “What kind of sausage ya got for me?” They look to each other for an answer. I decide to help them out. “Is it Italian sausage?”

“Are you Italian?” The youngest and blondest of the group wildly flutters his lashes my way. I can feel the breeze.

“I’m Scottish,” I apologize.

The one who seems the least drunk asks the others, “Do Scot...land...ian...ish people even have sausage?” Least drunk, but still pretty intoxicated.

“They make haggis,” I supply, trying to be helpful, though the conversation is getting more and more surreal. My information is greeted with a chorus of ewwwws.

The blond one bats his lashes again. “I bet your haggis is plump and juicy.”

With a reddening face, I chuckle. “You betcha.”

Picking up one of the cold franks from the platter, the blond kid rubs it against his lips. Then he opens up and prepares to take a bite, though once he gets a mouthful of what looks like solid charcoal, he makes a quick face and changes his mind. After wiping his tongue on the back of his forearm, he says with meaning, “My sausage is Slovenian.”

In gracious, grave tones, I alliterate, “I hope someday to savor some superb Slovenian sausage.” They all erupt in wild, raucous laughter. With me, not at me. Not once have I gotten a vibe that they’re mocking me. It’s clear, though, they’re just sparring with a stranger, and not inviting me to a sex pit, so I straighten up and give them a wave. “I hope you gentlemen have a wonderful night.”

“You too!” they all cry. Over the hedges, as I continue walking down Atlantic, I hear the blond one yell, “Come back to see your Slovenian son sometime!”

I laugh aloud and shake my head. Maybe he’s serious. Maybe he’s just teasing. Minor vacation flirtations are so easy to have here. I take none of their playfulness seriously at all.

The sausage boys’ rental sits close to where Atlantic empties out on Commercial, right across the ramp to the Dock. A big grin still lingers on my face when I cross the main thoroughfare and begin the trek down to the beach. As I step on the slope between the Boatslip and the houses adjacent, I notice a handsome young man wrestling with two loads of cardboard boxes beneath his brawny arms, broken down flat but stacked high. Obviously he works there. A hot otter, this kid, with wavy hair, a dark beard, and enormous, soulful eyes that lock onto mine with the intensity of a laser beam. A pair of white jeans shorts hang low on his lean and narrow hips; his tee cuts off at the shoulders and midriff, exposing a shocking amount of thick fur. BEAR BAIT, reads the shirt in huge black capitals.

The ferocity of his stare electrifies me. I don’t break stride, but I stare him down as I continue toward the beach, my eyes fixed upon his until I disappear below street level. I know, with sibylline accuracy, that he wants me. I know that he’ll follow. And sure enough, as I reach the top of the short flight of wooden steps leading down to the Dick Dock and the beach, I hear a mighty fwoomp as armfuls of cardboard hit the concrete above. I’m at the bottom of the steps when I hear Bear Bait’s flip-flops slap the ramp, scurrying at high speed to catch up with me before I disappear into the darkness beneath the Boatslip deck.

I wait for him right near the entrance, leaning against the closest metal piling. There should be enough light that he can see me. Seconds later, he hits the sand at such speed that one of his feet flies out from under him; he has to grab onto the railing to keep himself from a face plant. Once he’s got his footing again, though, he ducks beneath the wood, blinks to adjust his eyes, and looks around. He spies me almost immediately.

For the second time this week, I experience the lung-emptying impact of a man propelling himself at me in a full-body tackle. The boy is feral. Slavering and growling, he pins me against the rusty metal, hands clawing beneath my shirt at my skin. His mouth engulfs mine as his tongue forces itself deep inside. He tastes clean and fresh. It’s clear he hasn’t been drinking on the job. He’s kissing me so furiously that it feels as if my mouth must be bruising, but it’s the sweetest possible ache.

“Fuck, sir,” he pants, pressing against me with all his weight. One of his hands braces against the wall of the Dock; the other rests close to the top of my skull. His fingers rustle through the bristles of my hair while his thumb strokes an arc across my forehead. “I saw you up there…”

“I know,” I tell him in a soft voice. We’re staring at each other with the same force as we had on the street.

“I just kinda felt we had to…”

“I know,” I repeat. Some things don’t have to be put into words. While I admire his handsome good looks, I stroke and tug at his beard. I need to spend more time in Massachusetts. Boys back home treat me nowhere near as well.

“What’s your name?”

I’m about to tell him, honest. My mouth is ajar, ready to release the lone syllable. It’s a single syllable too long for a desperate and horny youth, though. Without warning, the impatient boy huffs, widens his eyes, and lunges once more for my lips. I feel scrabbling at my chest. He’s wrenching up my tee, scraping it so tight across my face that it feels like someone has opened a fiery forge door nearby. He wrestles the flimsy cotton covering from my arms and hands and flings it onto the ground. I’m incredibly turned on in the heat of this moment, but as I watch the sand fly from the impact, part of me is still thinking, Hey! That’s my shirt!

A moment later it’s Hey! Those are my shorts! when he yanks those down, seizes my ankles, and lifts one after the other to pry them off. When he’s done, I’m standing there solely in my sneakers. It’s the nakedest I’ve ever been beneath the Dick Dock. My dick points up and at an angle. Bear Bait stares at it and breathes, “Fuck yeah.”

He’s got what he wanted. Me, in the dark, almost completely nude. I’m too breathless to say anything and part of me just wants to enjoy whatever the hell he chooses to do next. When he looks up at me, I grin, half my lip curled, teeth on display. “All yours,” I finally remark.

I get the feeling he already knew. His eyes meet mine again. He’s got a hand jammed down the front of his shorts, where it furiously works his cock. Then, without warning, he impales his throat on me. There’s no working it in—just one swift motion, the sensation of something tight popping wide open, followed by sounds of his gargling and near-choking. The kid’s not in distress, however. Hell no. He’s spiking himself on my inches like his life depends on it, puncturing his larynx with such wildness that I wonder if he’s got an extra pleasure-producing nub deep in there somewhere, like Linda Lovelace in Deep Throat.

Normally I’m wary of guys who try to take me that deep. Often they’re doing it to show off, either to me or for themselves, without a lot of regard for whether or not I’m finding it pleasurable. Bear Bait isn’t contorting my shaft to painful extremes, though. He’s not clamping down on me, vise-like, with his throat muscles. Somehow he’s made himself wide open and deep for me and I cannot get enough. I’m vaguely aware of men passing us on their way to the area deeper beneath the Dock, but all my attention is focused on that mouth, the way my cock’s head plugs and savages that wet passage, and the satisfaction of grinding my nuts against the kid’s thick beard.

Long ropes of spit and mucus hang from his lips and facial hair when at last he backs off my tool and stands. He sniffs deeply to clear his nose. “Fuck me,” he demands as if I owe him. “Come on,” he barks, this time with the attitude that I’m his to boss around. “Fuck me!”

Little shit. I’ll show him who’s boss. “Yeah?” I snarl, narrowing my eyes. “Ask nice and maybe I will.”

Chests puffed out, chins lifted, we stare each other down. There’s no real contest. I’m eight inches taller, broader, and bigger—plus I’ve got the dick he wants so badly. “Fuck me.” His voice is softer, now. Less bossy. Then he adds a meek, “Please.”

I remain impassive for a moment, but then crack a grin. I can’t help it. The kid is cute, trying to assert himself like that. I respect it. I get a quick flash of his smile before he lunges for my mouth again. “I got lube,” he whispers in my ear, before pulling out a travel bottle of Wet from his shorts. I guess it pays to be prepared, when one works at the Boatslip.

It’s the quick work of a moment for him to lube up his hole and slap a squirt or two of the gooey fluid over my angry cock. After he shoves the bottle into his back pocket, he spins around and drops his pants to the sand. I admire how he presents himself to me: back arched, butt at just the right level for plundering. I find his hole without any fumbling, and begin to push in.

He stands upright and leans back into my arms when I’ve worked myself all the way in. We kiss. With glittering eyes he regards me, happiness writ plain on his face. “Oh, shit,” he whispers, when I begin pumping in and out.

“You love it,” I declare.

He nods rapidly, one hand against the side of my face. Then he lets out a sound—how can I describe it? In my shock, it sounds as if he’s fallen asleep and begun to snore, only to rouse himself out of it immediately...several times, in rapid succession. It’s a series of whuffs and snuffles and snorts mixed with panting and ending with him rapidly moving his tongue in and out like a labrador at the water bowl. The noise isn’t off-putting, exactly. Just…surprising. He does it again when I push him down so I can probe his hole more deeply, regarding me with liquid eyes over his shoulder. For some reason, I’m convinced he's indulging in some kind of puppy play sound

Makes no difference to me. All I care about is fucking this hot, wet hole. Every thrust elicits a squelch from the mess of lube and spit and precum I’m making in his rectum. He adds to it with groans and whuffs and more of that pup noise. When I start slapping his butt, both cheeks, with a sharp overhand trajectory, he’s reduced to whimpers.

Had this been the other night, cruisers might have crowded around us or tried to join in. Bear Bait and I are obviously so much into each other, though, that no one approaches. Oh, we have an audience, all right. There are a good twenty or more men watching me plow the boy. They’re pulling down the elastic of their shorts to stroke their cocks, or they’re rubbing their bulges, or maybe hiking up the legs of their drawers to grab their knobs and pleasure themselves as they observe. But no one closes in. They stand a respectable six feet away, minimum, mostly against the cross-beams closer to the water.

Bear Bait is raising his ass as high as possible, his stance wide. His head audibly bangs the wooden wall. “Do it,” he begs. “Make it hurt.”

“Oh, you want it to hurt, huh?” I slap his ass again, harder, then jam myself in. “Squeeze.” I feel him contract his sphincter. “I said, squeeze.”

“Fuuuuuuck,” he groans, as he clamps down with every muscle in his pelvic floor.

This time, I feel it. “Good boy.”

He loves the praise. Craves it. Over and over he compresses, milking me as we both move our hips in synchronized rhythm. It honestly feels as if he has an extra hand in there, applying extra pressure. His palms planted flat on the barrier, he pushes back as hard as he can, We slam into each other with loud vigor, egging each other on

“I’m close,” I warn. Sweat’s pouring from my forehead into my eyes. There’s so much perspiration on my forearm, though, that using it to wipe my face accomplishes nothing. He’s doused, too; even in the dark I can see where his dampness has soaked the back of his cut-off shirt in the shape of a V.

“Give it to me,” he demands. He’s trying to be the boss, again. “Shoot that juice up my chute.” The kid’s not even trying to be quiet. He’s baying in his outdoor voice. “Knock me up, dad.”

“Christ,” I mutter, aroused by his insistence. Very little turns me on more than a bottom who’s aggressive and bossy in the heat of the moment.

I’m not sure whether I’m fucking him, or he’s fucking me. His hips are rabbiting up and down my meat with increasing urgency. “I want it,” he growls, making more of those puppy noises. “I want it and I’ve earned it. Shoot in me, sir.”

My vision’s already galvanic around the periphery. I’m seeing sparks, the closer I get. “Yeah?” I snarl. “You think you’ve earned it, huh?’

“Yes sir!” He looks over his shoulder and bares his teeth. “Breed your boy.”

And I do.

I’ve had some wild orgasms this week, but this one—shit. It’s like my nuts boil with lava, and I must eject it as hard and fast as possible before I spontaneously combust. The stuff keeps flowing, too. He wanted to be flooded? He’s getting it. I feel the stuff squelching from his hole and onto my balls even when there’s so, so much more to pump inside. Then, at the end, I shudder as my dick jumps and twitches, trying to expel those final, reluctant drops.

Still connected, he stands again, leans back, and cranes his neck to press his lips against mine. We kiss awkwardly until he pulls himself off, turns around, and collapses onto my naked body. This time, we make out as if we’ve only just begun. 

“Thank you for the seed in my butt, sir,” he murmurs as he nuzzles my earlobe.

“You are very welcome.”

We continue our intimacy for a moment more. “All right,” he says in normal tones, as he extricates himself from my embrace. “Gotta get back to work.” I stand back as he yanks up his shorts in one swift motion. “Thanks dad.” And with that, he’s gone, jogging across the beach back in the direction of the stairs.

I’m so wiped out from the experience that I don’t even remember I’m naked until I try leaning against the iron piling and pull away with a scaly covering of rust flakes. Where the fuck are my clothes, anyway? I find my shorts buried beneath a few handfuls of sand, no doubt kicked there during the tryst. My shirt’s a few feet in the other direction. I have to beg people’s pardon as I shake them out in the suddenly-cramped space. I really don’t want to wear the entire beach back to my rental.

“Lucky fucker,” I hear someone murmur, as I sidle by.

Lucky fucker? Maybe. Who does he mean, exactly? The Bear Bait kid? Or me? Either way, I don’t know how much luck had to do with it. This evening felt more like a monumental display of the laws of physics: two bodies exerting their gravitational attraction, perhaps, or a classic example of what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable, erect object. I use the hem of my shirt to mop up the mess on my face, as I stride back onto Commercial.

When I pass the house of the sausage boys, I peek over the gate to see if they’re still gabbing away. All of them have vanished save one—the Slovenian twink, who lies sprawled sleeping on a garden bench beneath the kitchen window. He lets out a snore and shifts position. I leave him be.

Pretty soon, after a shower, I’ll be doing the same.

***

Hey! If you've made it this far, chances are you enjoy my sexual memoir pieces. May I suggest you invest in a work of no-holds-barred sexy fiction? I've written a story called Sleazy A for an anthology entitled Dirty Dorms & Fresh Men. 

Dirty Dorms & Fresh Men is a vintage-style collection of hot, retro college-themed X-rated fiction penned by some pretty great authors of man on man erotica. And Sleazy A is based on some of my own college sexcapades. I'm very proud of it, and would be most pleased if you'd order a copy today. I'm providing the link, below!

The publishing house for this project can be found at Peterschutes.com . There are already ten vintage-style pulps on sale over there, with more to come. If you sign up for their newsletter, you’ll be eligible to receive a free eBook.

Order your copy of Dirty Dorms and Fresh Men right now!

Behind the Story: Sleazy A

I was a slut in college.

I admit it up front. There’s no shame in slutting. The undergraduate years are ripe for experimentation, and if we follow the metaphor to its logical extreme—boy, did I lean into the scientific method. Hard.

I arrived to college in 1981 with a firm sense of my sexuality, and without any shame or guilt. But I wasn’t out. Nobody was out. The adults I slept with weren’t out. Living as an openly queer person might have been an option in bigger cities, but not in the little Virginia college town where I was incarcerated for four years.

None of the students admitted they were gay. Not one. I was a theater major, for god’s sake. The department that statistically should have harbored most of the campus LGBTQ population. While most of my male classmates in the department eventually waved the rainbow flag as adults, in college they were strictly and belligerently straight. Although I ended flat on my back in the beds and upon the desks of more faculty members than I could easily count—including the entire French language faculty (it's a point of pride)—none of them self-identified as gay. Most were married, or ‘bachelors,’ or so deeply shut down that when they would admit light to creep through that closet door, it only betrayed how warped and stunted they’d become.

Despite the denial, it was so easy to get man-on-man action. A short jaunt into Colonial Williamsburg’s tourist area could net you sex with out-of-towners in the public restroom at any time of day, and the tiny park in Merchant’s Square was a hotbed of activity after dark. On campus, two floors of the student center had cruisy restrooms—one for quick pickups, often with horny tourists, another for more extended, dirtier sessions. I could visit the campus library restroom any time after lunch to find both staff and student dick. The gym showers could be cruisy. And if you had a car, the Colonial Parkway offered opportunities for off-road nooky. (And for getting murdered.)

In a quiet corner of the fine arts building was a telephone booth—for you younger folk, that’s a small, quiet room with a very large iPhone bolted to the wall—that after receiving a fresh coat of white paint, mysteriously and rapidly became a beta test for Craigslist personals. Guys looking for sex would scrawl in pencil or marker a brief description of what they wanted. Later, there might be a response with a suggestion of a date and time, and a place for an liaison. Others would counteroffer or write their own brief personal ad. Eventually, that phone booth was a network of cross-chatter assignation graffiti covering all four walls. Sure, there was always the risk of showing up and getting fag bashed, but a smart cookie might keep his wits about him and hook up with one of the weight room jocks, or a frat boy, or one of the sexy geeks with pale skin from spending all their times in the computer science basement lab, feeding punch cards into the mainframe.

We didn’t have apps or browsers or internet, but damn, if we wanted it, we sure got laid.

Last spring, when I was asked to contribute to an upcoming anthology of college-aged gay erotica, I was initially flattered, but dubious. The more details I heard, though, the more intrigued I became. The book was to be released as an actual physical paperback, styled to look like vintage pulps of a previous era. The collegiate theme itself would be retro, with stories set before 1990, at which point digital hookups became more common and then the norm. At the time the anthology was pitched to me, I was exhausted coming off a semester of teaching an unusually heavy workload. I was looking for a writing project that might be fun and completely unrelated to anything related to my workshops. So, I took a leap and said yes.

I came up with the idea for the long short story/short novel Sleazy A in the space of a couple of hours. I envisioned an inhibition-free college sophomore having a picaresque adventure in a single autumn weekend of 1981: one encounter that was nothing but unbridled lust, another with a deeply-closeted and ultimately fucked-up man, and then finally stumbling into an opportunity for a sweeter, but no less hotter, romance.

A lot of Sleazy A is rooted in autobiography. I set the action at my alma mater. The story’s hero, Wick, is perhaps a bolder physical idealization of myself at that age, but I think I remained true to the free-wheeling, sometimes naive mindset I had at the time. 

Wick’s French professor lover is based on the married French professor for whom I would kneel down anytime he looked my way, all my undergraduate years. He was a married man with two very young children; he’d brazenly bring the whole family to the ice cream shop where I worked, pretend not to know me while he bought cones for the kiddies and a sundae for the wife, then squeeze my hand with meaning when I’d give him his change. I really didn’t care about his home life. For four years he was a joyous and uncomplicated friend and provider of big dick, and I was sad never to see him again when I graduated. (I heard from a reader of the blog, once, who’d had a similar relationship with the man, after my time at the school.)

The deeply weird character of M.J., a man so paranoid about being seen with me that he’d make me duck and take cover in the parking lot of his apartment complex, is based on an economics professor whom first I dated, and then later I was stalked by. The meltdown that M.J. has in the story actually happened, and led to my first relationship break-up. Not included in Sleazy A is the back story that M.J. and my dad were college classmates, and M.J. carried a huge animus toward my dad for some mysterious reason. (My father was always a giant affable Golden Retriever of a man, so it’s impossible to conceive of anything he might have done in college to inspire that kind of long-lasting enmity. Also, when I once innocently asked my dad about M.J. and even pointed to his photo in an old college yearbook, my dad had zero recollection of him.) The one-sided feud between them gave any dad/son roleplay I did with M.J. a particularly pointed, yet not-unerotic edge.

And I did meet a sweet red-headed boy named David at M.J.’s place. Here is where memoir and fiction diverge. In Sleazy A, the characters of Wick and David meet and enjoy a sweetly romantic afternoon in a deserted amphitheater at the back of campus. The amphitheater is real. From the 1940s through the 1970s, my college affiliated itself with an outdoor summer patriotic historical pageant/extravaganza called The Common Glory. Actors like Jonathan Frakes and Goldie Hawn and Linda Lavin and Glenn Close earned paychecks from the thing before they made it big. The pageant shut down after the Bicentennial. The president of the Kappa Alpha fraternity used to take me to the abandoned dressing rooms for some very unromantic (but hot) fucking.

In real life, David indeed invited me to meet him at the amphitheater. When he asked, it was very clear he was interested in me, romantically. I waffled over going, but unlike Wick, I ultimately chose not to. I was attracted to David, yet anxious about the implications of getting involved with another student. Older men were my known quantity. I could count on them to keep their mouths shut about my sexuality and our meetings. They had bigger reputations at stake than I. My peers, though, I simply didn’t trust. I’d had other kids attempt to entrap me into admitting my queerness in high school, and my roommate at the time was sexually harassing me in the most painful ways. David felt like a too much of a risk. I chickened out.

David and I longed for each other for the rest of the year. Our paths crossed in the theater department when we were in two different one-act plays playing the same nights, one after the other. Backstage, we would smile wryly at the other from a distance and stare, while I’d ponder what might have been. In the spring, we sat near each other in a seminar on seventeenth-century British poetry. It was torture. All through the metaphysical poets, I was too distracted with longing to listen, or study. As I’ve written about before, at semester’s end, David spoke to me for the first time, after our final class. He pressed into my hand a smooth rock. For a long time it was a gift that puzzled me. One year, much later, I happened to get the rock wet. The water drew out from its surface beautiful, unseen colors and patterns. While staring at the transformation, I understood why it had been his gift. It may have been a reference to one of the poets we’d studied, that semester...I don't know. 

I still have the rock.

David was two years ahead of me, though, and graduated that semester. He moved to New York City to pursue acting. Three years later, he was dead from HIV/AIDS.

It’s been difficult, over the breadth of my life, to grapple with how much the AIDS pandemic has stolen. For so much of it, I was in denial.

I denied it was happening, until I couldn’t.

I denied it was taking people from me, then denied it could take many people from me…until I couldn’t.

I denied, in the face of what I fully expected to be certain death with no hope of a cure, that the pandemic was paralyzing me. That it was making my dreams smaller and smaller. Until, awash in ruin and afraid to hope for any future, I no longer could.

David’s wasn’t the first AIDS-related death in my life. However, his was my first loss of one of my peers, of someone close to my own age for whom I’d had feelings. His was the first death that forced me to me acknowledge that the flood in which I and my fellows were drowning was irrefutably real. No matter how pretty someone might be, or how sweet, or how young, or how beautiful their art—no matter how well educated or beloved a person could be or how far from one of the big coastal cities he lived—he was not immune from dying to a disease at which the public and government merely shrugged. I turned seventeen in 1981, when the New York Times sounded the first warning bell for the virus that would consume so many. I was barely twenty-one when I learned of David’s death.

The last, fictional chapter of Sleazy A is my idealistic attempt to imagine what might have been had I the courage to meet David when he wanted. Yet from the distant future, as an author I also wanted to wrap my protective arms around these two kids. They meet in the very last months before all hell would break loose—the final weeks before all innocence would evaporate. I wanted the fictional Wick and David to experience their love outside the shadow of what was to come. And in the story's conclusion, I wanted to shelter and preserve them in their romantic cocoon, forever suspended in time among the twinkling amphitheater lights.

In a very real, sense, though, I wanted to honor the real David, who died too soon. Nearly a half-century on, I remember and mourn him as a beautiful, red-headed boy who had so much life ahead of him. Like all victims of that ongoing pandemic, he didn’t deserve his early death. In this story, at least, parts of him—his essential sweetness, the sincerity of his gaze, his yearning for another boy—can live on.

Art’s essential triumph is wringing redemption and even joy from the stuff of tragedy. I truly hope Wick’s adventures paint a lively picture of an era vanished forever.

Sleazy A and the anthology in which it’s included, Dirty Dorms & Fresh Men, is available today. I hope you’ll take the opportunity to purchase a copy to read not only my story, but as well the horny tales of other fine pornographers.

Dick Dock 2024: The Old Man and the Sea

Provincetown: Bear Week 2024

Last winter, I hit a milestone that really messed with my head.

The only other birthday ever really to break my stride happened when I turned twenty-nine. The night before, I convinced myself I was entering the last year of my youth and that everything would be downhill from there. I actually wept. When thirty came around, I was smart enough not to mind, even though the decade that followed felt like the most invisible part of my life. Forty didn’t make me quake in my boots, and turned out to be such a great era for me that I glided into my fifties on a wave of confidence.

Sixty, though. Fuck. It hit me hard. Sixty's old. Over the hills even. Age is just a number, I used to coo to old men during my twink days. It was a tidy little aphorism to spout when I was in my teens and twenties. It sounds a little more hollow at this end.

And honestly, after the pandemic years, I haven’t felt the same self-assurance. After taking a break from hooking up during 2020-2022, I tiptoed back into the scene to find an entirely different landscape—one in which every guy seemed determined to insult or ghost me. I had to question whether the quest for release was worth it at all.

And right now, standing at the ramp leading down to the Dick Dock, in Provincetown? God damn, but I know I’m in for disappointment.

Last year, when I’d vacationed on the Cape, I’d encountered all kinds of Romper Room fuckery when I’d ventured this way for some post-midnight shenanigans. The dock was a mess. Every other cruiser had his phone out—most to check out Grindr or Scruff while ignoring the guys looking for partners in the here and now, which annoyed me. A couple used their phone’s flashlights to illuminate the ground before them. One was shining it in the faces of cruisers to see what they looked like, arousing near-violent reactions from the men he blinded.

Then there were the sexual gadabouts that were so common, last year. Weirdos who would hove up out of nowhere until they were nose to nose with me just to…stare, I guess. Puritan gay couples who would stand between the beach stairs and entryway beneath the dock to peer into the dark space while holding loud conversations: IS THIS THE DICK DOCK? I GUESS IT IS. DO YOU SEE ANYBODY? NO, DO YOU SEE ANYBODY? NO. MAYBE IT’S TOO EARLY? I HEAR IT’S MOSTLY SLUTS AND WHORES ANYWAY. DO YOU WANT TO GO LOOK? I DON’T KNOW. DO YOU WANT TO GO LOOK? And maybe worst of all, the voyeuristic young gays too timid to venture into the cruising space on their own, so they'd bring packs of women with them for a tour of the town’s seediest secret. These sad groups huddled close together and giggled loudly and with shock and horror at the sight of the figures grinding in the shadows, ruining the atmosphere for anyone actually endeavoring for a good time.

The one time last year I started to get handsy with a sexy man beneath the dock, some kid just came out of nowhere, like a shark at chum in the water, phone in hand, snapping photos with the flash on at the general vicinity of our crotches. My partner was so angry he slapped the phone out of the boy’s hand and into the sand, then stomped away. I abandoned ship as well, unwilling to invest any more time into a venue that clearly wasn’t going to yield any returns.

That year, I never went back.

But here I am, Sunday night—Monday morning, really, since it’s after midnight—horny and looking for something quick. Something uninvolved. I’d spent a few hours the night before with a local, making out and gobbling down each other’s dicks like hungry animals in the dude’s basement-level flat, cooled only by the metal blades of an old-fashioned rotary fan. Then I’d flipped his furry butt over and given him exactly what he begged for. It had been the type of passionate, no-holds-barred encounter lasting several hours that I prefer, but tonight I don’t have that kind of energy. 

All day I’ve been walking. I’ve closed the exercise ring on my watch four times over, and don’t feel like plodding any long distances for a hookup. The Boatslip sits a mere block from where I’m staying. The Dick Dock beneath it seems like the easiest solution to my horniness. But even as I stride down Atlantic to the ramp and wood steps that empty out onto the beach, I’m already thinking to myself that if there’s the slightest bit of nonsense going on, anything that tweaks my bullshit meter…I’ll be out of there.

When I take a left and duck beneath the deck’s outer edge, it takes my streetlight-dazzled eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness. The sounds, though—they hit me like a wave the moment I’m beneath the wooden planks. Grunts. Groans. The wet glissando of lips against shaft. The slap of a hand against an ass. In the distance, the gargled distress of someone who’s had his throat pushed past its limits. As my eyes adjust, I see the shapes of half-nude men around me, their skins blue-gray in the shade. Scores of them huddle in small groups across the sheltered sand, some against the foundations, others against the pilings, some pants-down and bending over the cross beams. Scores? Nah, there’s a hundred, probably even a hundred and fifty cruisers engaged in a mass bacchanal this July night.

And I think to myself, shit.

Because, you see, too many guys hunting for dick is not always the bonanza you hope for. It’s like what happens at a restaurant with too extensive a selection of entrees: you assume that with page after page of delicacies, you’ll find the perfect dish to hit the spot. Instead, they all start to look delicious. You find yourself paralyzed, unable to choose, full of fear that you’ll miss out on something tastier than what’s within reach. With so many men tonight, the Dick Dock is the motherfucking old-school twenty-four-page Cheesecake Factory of menus. I trudge through the crowd, sneakers crunching on the sand, trying to find a clear spot to orient myself.

All types are out tonight. There’s just enough light to make out certain characteristics of the men I pass—their height, certainly, a general idea of their body shape and weight. I can make out the silhouette of a full beard against the sands beyond the deck’s underside, but the gloom renders invisible lesser mustaches and stubble. Sometimes I can tell an old man by his posture, or a young man by his gait. I nod as I push past traditional bears, round and furry and squeezable. A Black man with a long ponytail of braids bumps against me in passing, his shirt open to reveal muscles that reflect deep blue in the eternal dusk here. He’s taller than I, and apologizes by a squeeze to my shoulder. In his wake chase multiple admirers, all hopeful for his attention.

The fleet of pursuers gives the braided man the air of a minor celebrity being chased by paparazzi. Or maybe a porn star. Which isn’t all that unlikely, this week: I’ve already crossed paths with two actors from porn just walking Commercial Street. On my left congregate men in harnesses and jocks giving each other encouragement, sotto voce, as the largest plows the smallest. Some hopeful older men stand solo against the metal beams, shorts down, ass pointed back, anxious for someone to take position behind them.

With every step I take, the more certain I am that I’m not going to get laid tonight. It’s not an issue of my age. Well, maybe to a certain extent. Throughout my sexual career, I’ve always abhorred the idea of being perceived as a sex pest. I won't come on to a guy unless he's sending clear signals. Being seen as an elderly sex pest seems exponentially worse. Never in my life have I pushed my way into the middle of a orgiasts to leech erotic energy like some kind of barnacle. That’s not my style. I never, ever assume people want me. Tonight I’ll make myself available by walking past the seething masses and planting myself at the only uncrowded section at the—sigh—last few feet before the decking above gives way to open beach. If someone chooses me, fine. Not that anyone’s going to be desperate enough to make this long trek.

It’s all right. I’ll stand alone here for a few minutes, watch waves lap the sand, listen to people enjoy themselves, then head home. These old bones are usually in bed by now, anyway, and one night of not popping my cork won’t hurt me. Hands in my pockets I lounge, shoulder abutting the next to last of the metal pilings, while I try to console myself with thoughts like, You had a pretty good run!, or, Celibacy isn’t all that bad, buddy! Think of how much more time you’ll have for...uh...bonsai and sudoku! Resigned to a lonely night, I settle back and wait.

Then a guy sidles up, not two feet away. I get an impression of skin and leather and very little else. My eyes slide sideways to check him out: the dude’s a stunner. Maybe five foot eight of lean muscle and bubble butt, dressed up in snowy cut-off denim shorts, spanking white sneakers, and as equally bright a harness. This guy doesn’t look like your typical Bear Week visitor. He’s ready for a White Party. I’m in the midst of checking him out and wondering why in the world he’s wasting his time down at this end of the dock, when his eye catches mine. Oh, snap, I realize, panicked. He’s checking me out.

Well, well.

I extend my hand slightly at the waist, upward and open, in what’s accepted as the Dick Dock’s universal sign for welcome. I’m certain he won’t do anything. He’s probably wondering why the old coot next to him dares to look his way. I shouldn’t have even made the gesture at all. In fact, I’ll just return my hand to my pockets…

Then he lunges. I find my spine slammed against the metal pillar as his hands wrestle mine, clutching hard as he pins my arms up and to the side. His weight squeezes all the breath from my lungs as he presses with hunger against me. I’m astonished when, as he stands on tiptoes, his mouth covers mine and his tongue forces its way inside. He tastes sweetly of hops, and smells of a lightweight cologne, but what I register most strongly through my shock is the way that in his passion, he releases our hands to cup the back of my head. The man pulls me in, holding on to prevent me from escaping.

Like I want to escape. It’s been far too long since a stranger kissed me with this ferocity. I can feel him melt into my embrace when I crook an arm around his substantial chest. I follow his lead and run the flat of my palm across the back of his skull. His hair is styled with a short undercut, so while the bristles of the sides and back rake my hand, my fingers entangle themselves into the thick, curly mop at the crown. His face is covered with a sexy stubble that grinds into my beard. He must be a stunner in the light. My hands move from his head down his ropy shoulders, take a detour to explore the rock-hard stub tenting the front of his shorts, and then move upward, so I can tweak his nipples.

The sensations send waves of pure pleasure throughout his body. I squeeze harder to make him quake. It’s with an effort that he wrenches himself away to stare in my eyes. “Fuck,” he rasps. “Why didn’t you stop when I grabbed for you?” I shake my head, not understanding. “Back there.” He jerks his head toward the beach ramp. “I was trying to get your attention when you walked by.”

“I didn’t see,” I say. It almost feels like I should apologize, but I don’t get the chance. He’s already popped a squat to tug my shorts down. I believe in dressing light, when I visit the Dick Dock. No phone to worry about. No underwear to fuss with. Tonight it’s just a tee, a scandalously small pair of sweat shorts with my room key in the pocket, my watch, and a pair of sneakers. My erection pops out, released from its jersey prison; my new friend expertly catches it between his lips. It’s like the sexiest circus trick I’ve ever seen.

I’m not given much chance to admire the acrobatics, though. The man engulfs me to the root, expertly throating my dick to the base. He’s relishing it, allowing it to slip and slide between his lips into the most moist recesses. And as he works, a crowd moves in. They’re sexual symbiotes, attracted by heat and lust, honing in to feed. Someone pulls up my tee and hooks it around the back of my neck. An invisible hand reaches around to squeeze and probe my ass. There’s a mouth on my nipple, then another on the spare. Someone tries to pull my head to the side, to kiss me; another moves in behind to nuzzle my neck and rub his dick against my posterior. I don’t resist. None of them feels as good as the man sucking my dick, but each contributes to my bliss.

Now I’m leaning back against some stranger’s naked chest, allowing him to support my weight as his arms encircle my rib cage; his mouth nuzzles against my ear. I can’t distinguish his hands from the dozen others touching me—reaching for my balls, rubbing against the base of my dick, stroking my belly, investigating my beard, riffing across my brush cut. Beside me, one stocky bear leans back to allow another to go down on him. I reach out and grab his balls to give them a tug. We exchange a brief kiss.

My White Party refugee rises with my help. “I need that monster in my butt,” he growls, spitting on his hand and rubbing it on his ass. He steps out of his shorts and hangs them over one of the horizontal girders above, then turns so he’s facing away from me. I know what to do.

I’ve barely aligned my knob with his hole than the stranger lets out a cry. I’m worried I might have hurt him, somehow, though I’ve not even made it in. I pause, concerned, as he stands, straightens, and stiffens. When he turns, though, it’s to fling a thick rope of semen onto the ground, where it lands with a splat. “Sorry, guy,” he says in a normal voice. “I got too excited.” He wipes off the head of his dick and shakes off another glob. “You had that effect on me.”

“Thanks,” is all I say. The spell broken, all the men who had flocked around me dissipate. The fellating pair to my side nod and separate. No one moves in to take the White Party man’s place, so my dick waves and bobs in the empty air for a moment before, with reluctance, I bend to pull up my shorts and wrestle myself back in my tee.

Oh well. It was hot for the few minutes it lasted, right? Standing at the epicenter of a writhing mass, soaking up the attention of a dozen or more men. It was kind of a taste of the good old days, wasn’t it? Something I can think about, later tonight, when I take matters into my own hand? Not bad for an old codger, maybe. There’s still a lot of sweat on my face. I use my tee to mop it up, then ready myself to head home.

“Don’t go,” says a voice in my ear. In the darkness, wiping my face, I’d not noticed the man approach. When his fingers curl around my neck and his mouth covers mine, I realize he’s the Black man I’d passed shortly after my arrival. He’s the only person taller than I down here; I have to tilt my head back to meet his kiss. His heavy braids drape like thick velvet over my shoulder. I run my hands over his abs, his chest, still not completely convinced this is happening. Why in the world would a man of this caliber approach an old fart like me? Over his shoulder, I can see a gaggle of hopefuls still encircling him at a respectful distance, obviously hoping he’ll choose them instead. Yet I’m his pick, apparently.

Then, as I feel his hands once again sliding my shirt over my head, some very weary part of me speaks up. It’s because he finds you attractive, dumbass, it says, annoyed. Stop questioning. Start enjoying.

Like a good self-sub, I obey.

A new selection of symbiotes closes around us. They remove his shirt, pull down his pants, slide mine to the sand. The man’s dick falls huge and weighty in my palm. The tiny noises he makes as I squeeze it arouse me further. He swats off the parasites trying horn their way between us, and pulls me close to him for a full-on embrace. “Do you fuck, baby?” he asks.

“Yes,” I whisper, still marveling at the novelty of being in the arms of a man taller and larger than I. “Love to fuck.” Then I panic. Is this man asking me if I like fucking in general? If I like fucking as a top? Or if I like being fucked? Because from what I can tell, his uncut cock is roughly as thick around as my forearm, and my hole hasn’t been plundered in…nearly nine years? Ten? Is it too late to take it back? Tell him I don’t fuck?

He solves my crisis by spinning one hundred and eighty degrees in front of me and leaning backward so that now he’s in my arms. “I want that big dick in me,” he whispers. “Will you?”

I decide the question’s rhetorical.

It’s the work of only a moment to apply some of my spit to his hole, and another load of it to my cock. He bends from the waist like a dancer, scooping his deep chest close to the sand and drawing apart his legs. It's a dextrous pose. There’s no cry of dismay when I sink myself inside, no premature conclusion. Only warm flesh and a hole that needs filling. By the time I slide all the way in, the crowd has moved in around me. I feel hands on the point where dick meets hole, on my nipples, in my hair, my beard, my hole. One of my partner’s would-be entourage is trying to encourage him to suck his dick, but my partner is too busying urging me on with wordless combinations of consonants and vowels to comply. When the braided man reaches back to plant his hands on my hips to urge me in more deeply, I have to double-check to make sure it’s really him, following the fingers to wrists to elbows to their source.

He stands, though, once more leaning back against me while I continue grinding inside. Over his shoulder he cranes his long neck to kiss me, while between us falls that long and weighty curtain of braids. I place my hand on the side of his face, letting his light beard scrape my palm. My other hand searches for a nipple to tug on. Although I can trace the outline of his thick pecs, I can’t find a nipple. There has to be a nipple, right? Not on the other side, either. Are they innies, and I’m just not locating them?

Forget the nipples. They’re a minor detail in what should be a tidal wave of gratification. A man wearing nothing but a white jock and black harness leans over to kiss me. I let his tongue explore my mouth as I thrust, over and over, into the wet ass occupying my attention. My braided friend presses his palms against the bottom of the decking above and arches his back, easily spanning the distance from ceiling to shore. “Come in me, baby,” he prays. “I want your load inside all night.”

Encouragement like that is difficult to resist. The masses circulating around us seem to agree that it’s time. I feel a hand on the small of my back, urging me inside, a pair of lips on my neck, a mouth on my nipple. Someone reaches beneath to stroke my balls and coax out the seed within. Hard cocks press against me, anxious for attention. I keep my hands firmly planted on the braided man’s hips, however, and lunge away.

When I release, it’s with a loud cry that turns heads. The man leans back so that the tight coils of his hair fall onto my sweaty face; his convex posture urges me to empty myself as deeply inside as I can. Strange lips search for mine, but I’m too dazzled by the fireworks in my vision to respond. My thrusts become gentler, softer, the stirring of a spoon rather than the stab of a knife. Then, with a squelch, I flop out.

My new friend turns to wrap his arms around my neck and draw me close. His lips surround mine completely, in his deep kiss. “You are what every man hopes to find here,” he says, to my astonishment. Then he boops me on the nose with a fingertip. “You are a god-damned gem.” Half of me wants to dodge both barrels of praise. The more egotistical half wishes he’d fired them a little more loudly, for everyone to hear.

Then he grabs his shirt, slides it on without buttoning up, squeezes my hand, and disappears. A half dozen men scamper after him, hoping for leftovers. A handful linger around me, hoping to be my next choice, but I’m drained. After tugging up my shorts, I stumble weak-kneed over the sand, past the scores of men hunting for someone, toward the southern egress.

It’s not until I’ve climbed the steps back up and am stamping sand from my sneakers that I realize how thoroughly my expectations have been exceeded, for once. Maybe age is just a number. Maybe I can still hold my own.

After dark, I chide myself, before my head swells too much larger than it already is. Beneath the dock. Where it’s pretty damned dim.

Still, I consider, as I start the walk back to my accommodations. Maybe sixty’s not shaping up so badly, after all.

***

Hey! If you've made it this far, chances are you enjoy my sexual memoir pieces. May I suggest you invest in an upcoming work of no-holds-barred sexy fiction? I've written a story called Sleazy A for an anthology entitled Dirty Dorms & Fresh Men. 

Dirty Dorms & Fresh Men is a vintage-style collection of hot, retro college-themed X-rated fiction penned by some pretty great authors of man on man erotica. And Sleazy A is based on some of my own college sexcapades. I'm very proud of it, and would be most pleased if you'd preorder a copy today. I'm providing the link, below!

The publishing house for this project can be found at Peterschutes.com . There are already ten vintage-style pulps on sale over there, with more to come. If you sign up for their newsletter, you’ll be eligible to receive a free eBook.

Order your copy of Dirty Dorms and Fresh Men right now!

Yes, And

The twenty-four year old wears his cap of raven ringlets like a crown. They are impossibly ornate, a fever dream made real of some long-deceased painter of the Pre-Raphaelite school. Golden morning light casts a halo atop those glinting curls. His skin is clear; his nose short and pert. The boy’s upper lip projects slightly over the lower.

Against the door frame of his parents’ home he leans, wearing nothing but a pair of beat-up white sneakers and cargo shorts too bulky for his narrow frame. One hand crosses his waist to clutch his side. He looks all the world like a portrait of St. Sebastian, aggrieved in martyrdom, yet still beautiful.

He’s looking me over, too. In my clean short-sleeved shirt and fresh shorts, I must pass the test, because he doesn’t send me packing. “I’ve never been with an older man.” The boy’s voice is deeper than I imagined. Soft, too.

“Well,” I say, equally quiet. “You certainly picked the oldest one out there.”

He tilts his head down, perhaps to conceal his amused smile. Through his fringe of circlets he looks me in the eye as he steps back to admit me into his home. “Come on in, I guess.”

At its root, lovemaking is expression. It’s performance. Improvisation. Two players—maybe more, but at least two—meet upon the stage to create a scene, each the other’s audience. A good performer knows that here the rules of improv apply: the yes, and of the stage carries just as much relevance in the bedroom. Each actor receives the words and energies of his scene partner and builds upon them. Hindering his enjoyment, negating what he has to contribute, refusing to be vulnerable—all these things lead to dead ends, whether enacted in a skit or upon the mattress.

Listening. That’s key. Taking in not merely words spoken, but the implications and possibilities behind them. When the boy says I’ve never been with an older man, I hear: Please live up to my fantasies. I hear: Please lead me. I hear: I picked you for a reason. When he says, come on in, I guess, I hear: Curtains rising.

On the edge of his bed in a surprisingly tidy room, the boy automatically begins loosening the heel of one sneaker with the toe of the other. “Let me, son,” I suggest, kneeling before him.

He hesitates, then leans back, his elbows planted on the colorful duvet. “Thank you, dad.”

Yes, and.

There’s a catch in his voice as he breathes his appreciation, though I cannot tell whether from the novelty of uttering the word dad, or from the touch of my fingers as gently I remove his left shoe. His feet are ridiculously large, like the comical paws of a puppy poised to become a much larger dog. I tug at his right shoe next, then carefully peel the no-show gray socks from his feet. When he stands, his distressed cargos slip slightly down his hips to reveal a forest of thick pubes. Once I’ve unsnapped the button and released the fly, the pants fall into a crumpled mass upon the wooden floor.

He steps out of them, stubby cock fully erect. His torso is perfectly smooth, save for a trail beneath his navel. The boy’s legs, though, are covered with a crazy amount of jet black fur. From the waist down, he looks as if he’s wearing a pair of dark, shaggy leggings. I gaze up with undisguised admiration. “You’re beautiful.”

Yes.

His dick leaps at the praise. I can hear his breath catch in his chest. “I can’t get over how handsome you are, dad.”

And.

“Thank you.” I hadn’t been fishing for praise, but his is pleasurable to hear. Yes. From my kneeling position, I pat the bed. “Sit down,” I suggest. He obeys, spreading wide those ebony-downed legs and folding his fingers over his bony knees. And. I whisper, “Lie back.” And. “Let me make you feel good.”

At first he resists, wanting to keep me in his sights as I run my hands over his flat abdomen, his sculpted pecs, the fuzzy planes of his upper thighs. Eventually, though, he settles down with his fingers interlocked behind his head, keeping it upright so he can watch. I kiss one thigh. Yes. Then the other. Yes, yes. I pingpong in slow motion between them, back and forth, moving upward inch by inch from just above the knees until I can feel his rigid inches baptizing my pate with sticky droplets.

And.

I bury my nose in his scrotum, inhaling deep of its soapy perfume. He has to be fresh from the shower. My tongue darts out. The tip tickles his taint, dances its way around the circumference of one of his eggs, then the other. And. Before he can protest or even verbalize what he’s feeling, I seize his short dick in my hand and squeeze hard enough to draw from him a gasp. And. Then I take it in my mouth and swallow it whole, to the base. I hold there, letting him enjoy the warmth and wetness.

“Oh my god,” he pants. “Fucking amazing.” Yes.

But I’m not done. I relinquish my position at the base and back off his meat, allowing my lips to cling and suckle at his dick and his swollen, cut head. Slowly. Deliberately. When I reach the tip, my tongue dips and plays around the slit. Then I slide back down again, in no hurry, until I return to my starting point. Several times I take him on this ride, aware that he’s watching as I nurse at his rock-hard dick.

Yes. I could do this forever.

He has the impatience of youth, though. It’s not long before he wriggles to a sitting position and pulls me off when I’m at the apex. “Can I do it to you?”

I crunch my brows and stare him in the eyes. My head nods as if he’s asked me the weightiest of questions, and I’ve given it all my consideration. Yes, and. “You’ve never sucked before?”

That’s what he’d told me on the app, at least. He nods, suddenly shy. “I’ve gotten head from two dudes. Just never gave it. I’ve eaten pussy, if that counts.”

While he speaks, I struggle to my feet and pull down my shorts. My own cock has been rigid this entire time, aching to be unbound. Now it bobs, free and proud, in front of his face. I feel a stab of satisfaction at the mingled look of awe and anticipation in the kid’s eyes. I’m at least twice as big as he. “You think you can handle this?” I ask.

He nods. Yes. “It’s so fucking big, dad.” I watch as he gulps. “Will you let me?” And.

Of course I will.

He assists by arranging and fluffing his pillows so I can lie back. It’s sweet, really, how solicitous he is as he ensures my comfort. For a moment, when our faces are close, I hope he might kiss me. He doesn’t. If he’s more experienced with women, perhaps that intimacy with another man is still too awkward. Yet when his curls brush my cheek and our lips are only inches apart, I yearn for another and.

Finally he flops between my outstretched legs and watches as I unbutton my shirt. The boy’s on his stomach, propped up by his arms, perky little butt flexing. In the moment, I don’t think I’ve seen anything so beautiful. The boy is miles and miles of creamy skin and unexplored territory, and I pine to be the surveyor to map him. “May I?” he whispers, stirring the hairs on my balls with his breath.

“You may,” I reply. In my appreciation of his beauty, I’d forgotten about my own dick. It has its own agenda, though, and certainly hasn’t forgotten its prey. Like a junkyard dog against its chain, it strains from between my thighs, angry and slavering and demanding release. When the boy wraps his fingers around it, though, I’m the one whimpering and growling. Yes. And. “Just do like I did for you, son,” I tell him. “Slow. Wet. Make me enjoy…”

He doesn’t need the direction. He sucks on his sulky lips to moisten them. Dark eyes looking up at me, he opens wide and takes me to the root. There’s no choking. No hesitation. Nothing but hunger, pushing him to devour as much and as quickly as he can. A cry flies from my lips and ricochets around the bedroom. His mouth still indulges my dick as, with a single strong hand, he presses me back into the pillows.

I could question his oral expertise. The kid knows exactly what he’s doing. And it’s his first time? Well, he could be extraordinarily gifted. A natural. Or he could be a liar.

In this space, though—this sacred theater, this place of performance and improvisation—I know better than to stem the flow with a no. He’s truly been the ideal partner. Why would I dare risk making him feel self-conscious, or foolish, or question his sincerity and experience? Riffing off each other, following the other’s cues, spinning a story without a script is how we craft this production. We do so together, as artists who share a mutual stage.

Not just here, today, this hour, this bedroom. Every encounter is a story of its own, a meeting of two performers, both of whom share a single spotlight. Two players who set and devise a shared scene. Who execute a single, choreographed bow at its conclusion. Who soak in the silent applause of each other. Who return to their lives happy, sated, and with a tale to tell.

“You like it?” he asks, emerging at last from the trance-like state in which he’s spent the last few minutes. He’s curled into an almost fetal position between my legs, and I revel in the selfishness of allowing him.

Yes. “Your mouth is amazing,” I manage to say, surprised I’m coherent enough for words.

He draws himself up. “Is it?” His eyes, half-covered by the fringe of his curls, bore into mine. We’re at face level again. Yes.

My fingers drape themselves on the back of his neck, beneath the heavy mantle of ringlets. He lets out an inaudible sigh and allows me to pull him closer. The boy’s eyelids become heavy, then close as my lips touch his. I give him the softest of kisses. Yes. “Oh, absolutely,” I tell him.

Without warning, he pounces, pushing me deep into the soft pillows with the weight of his body. His mouth presses hard, even painfully, against mine. Yes. When his tongue pushes deep into my mouth, I can taste myself on him. Hungrily we kiss, abandoning any pretense of taking it slowly. His hands wrench the shirt from my body. Oh, yes. Eager as he is to climb atop me, I take the opportunity to flip the boy onto his back. Still furiously making out, I feel his furry legs clasp around my waist as my cock slips between his thighs. Yes!

With moist, adoring eyes, he gazes up. “Dad?” he whispers. “Do you wanna fuck me?”

“Yes.” Arousal rasps my words. “Yes, son. I want to fuck you.” And into my curled fingers I scoop our mingled saliva from my tongue to press into his hole. “Do you want me inside?”

His head bobs up and down rapidly. “Yes sir.” It’s a plea. “Yes, I do.”

And as I massage my fingers into that hairy crevice, his legs lift into the air.

And I rise to my knees, readying myself.

And eyes locked, I guide his hand to hold me. “Help me guide it in,” I suggest.

“Yes,” he breathes.

And…

***

Hey! If you've made it this far, chances are you enjoy my sexual memoir pieces. May I suggest you invest in an upcoming work of no-holds-barred sexy fiction? I've written a story called Sleazy A for an anthology entitled Dirty Dorms & Fresh Men. 

Dirty Dorms & Fresh Men is a vintage-style collection of hot, retro college-themed X-rated fiction penned by some pretty great authors of man on man erotica. And Sleazy A is based on some of my own college sexcapades. I'm very proud of it, and would be most pleased if you'd preorder a copy today. I'm providing the link, below!

The publishing house for this project can be found at Peterschutes.com . There are already ten vintage-style pulps on sale over there, with more to come. If you sign up for their newsletter, you’ll be eligible to receive a free eBook.

Order your copy of Dirty Dorms and Fresh Men right now!