Thursday, January 5, 2012

Sweet Harmonie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lord,” I said.

“Maybe it’ll be you!”

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

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

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

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

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

“No thank you,” I replied.

“You need to loosen up.”

“I’m plenty loose!”

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

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

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

“Ah. . . .”

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

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

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

“Twenty-five,” I lied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I fled the party as quickly as possible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Merry Christmas, Lover

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Under the Wire: Last-Minute Gripes of 2011

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

The Breeder’s Last-Minute Online Gripes of 2011


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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Bless us, every one!

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

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Sunday Morning Questions: Courage Edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



How many sexual partners have you had?

I would be unable to count, at this point.

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

Why wouldn't I?



Are you a member of the jihadists for peace movement?

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

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

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

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



What would you do if your kids found your blog?

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

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

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

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



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

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

Friday, December 16, 2011

My Love

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Good Buddies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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