Sunday Morning Questions: Breeder's Law Edition

I've been having one of those weekends. You know, the kind in which I have all kinds of opportunity for messing around . . . but no one to do it with.

In fact, it's been such a dry weekend that I was able to pull out the graph paper, the plotting pins, and the ol' geometrical compass so I could perform a scientific study. And it made me come up with what I think is a new and irrefutable principle. In fact, I've given it a name so that it can be studied more widely by the scientific community at large: The Breeder's First Law of Reciprocal Attraction.

The Breeder's First Law of Reciprocal Attraction states, thusly: The amount of attraction between two units is inversely proportional to the distance between them. That is, to guys in Phoenix, I'm catnip. To men in California, I'm a tin of canned sex. To guys in Australia, I'm fuckmeat on a stick sprayed with pheromones and covered with wrapping paper made out of the most hardcore of porn.

For the local guys, though, I could wrap my dick in hundred-dollar bills and they'd still not get off their asses and investigate. Maybe it's the holiday weekend. Maybe it's the stars. Maybe I've just worn out my appeal. But I'm pretty sure it's Breeder's Law in action.

By the way, if you'd like to enter the giveaway for the jock I've been wearing all week, please make sure to enter before midnight tonight (or early Monday morning. Who'm I kidding? I'm not going to be checking the final emails before tomorrow). Check in Monday's entry for all the details.

We've got more questions to round up today from formspring.me. Please stop by the site and leave your questions for me--you can do it anonymously, if you'd like.


Sorry, this was the first Q. Suppose you are in a monogamous relationship.. and your partner decides to never have sex again... what do you do?

Unless you're in a coma, one's partner should not be making unilateral decisions for the both of you. If this were to happen within a relationship and it was causing unhappiness for the partner who wanted to continue having sex, it would be either time to renegotiate the monogamy clause, or to seek counseling or outside assistance to explore the reasons and remedies for the sudden celibacy.


You mentioned a few weeks ago you were doing something at the local middle school with music. Are you teaching something there? or just volunteer stuff

I do school visits sometimes for my primary career. But I occasionally get hired on a free-lance basis for my crazy keyboard skills. In that case, accompanying a squadron of kids for a solo and ensemble festival.


Why did you decide not to teach?

I'm a creative artist who sometimes teaches, not a teacher who tries to squeeze in some creative work between his classes and research. I enjoy teaching and am a good teacher, but for the last several years I've preferred to focus on my creative work.


Did you ever get around to playing D&D, or was it strictly a cover for your meetings with Earl?

I played it once—with the original white box rulebooks. Yes, I'm that old.

The dungeon master was a guy in my seventh-grade class named Henry, who had a reputation as the school's uber-nerd. On an everyday basis he wore Star Trek buttons all over his clothing. Dozens of them. Really. One of them blinked and was shaped like one those tricorders, or whatever they're called. He also wore a 'Frodo Lives' button and sometimes a cape like Gandalf's.

Frankly, Henry was embarrassing to be around. And not just because he mixed his fandoms.

But Henry was the first person I knew who had the white-box D&D rulebooks, and he tried to start those of us who were nominally his friends into letting him be the dungeon master. The problem was that he was kind of a dick as a dungeon master; all the frustrations he had as the most picked-on kid in the class (now that I think of it, that's probably the sole reason he was in my circle of nerdy friends...he made us look normal) came out in his campaign, that Saturday morning. I think my half-elf cleric was dead barely before the 20-sided diced cooled off from the character creation.

I was kind of pissed, and told him where to shove it. And while my other friends continued playing D&D, I just used it as a cover for my Earl visits.

In the interests of full disclosure, I was a fan of other RPGs, and tried to lure people away from Henry's campaigns with Runequest, Gamma World, and especially Traveller. I loved Traveller.


Your creativity and intelligencel intrigues me, do you have any non sexual blogs you follow that you would recommend? I don't consider myself a writer even with an English Lit degree but I am always looking for interesting blogs to peak my interest

Your flattery, er, flatters me. Thank you. I read a mixture of blogs online. My favorite general-interest one would probably be Towleroad, because of its mixture of gay political-interest posts, music and entertainment news, and science posts. It really is more than just a Lady Gaga Watch blog, which is a relief.

For entertainment news I enjoy the A.V. Club. I also enjoy Tom & Lorenzo's Fashion, Television, and Pop Culture blog. WebUrbanist is always thoughtful and interesting. And I am always fascinated by the Shorpy Historical Photos site.

Apparently my brain demands a steady diet of ephemera. I'm sure you can find any of these sites by Googling them. Is there anything you think I should be reading?


The new Comments tab lists all the published comments and lets you delete them. You no longer have to visit each blog post and manually remove spam comments?

I don't delete comments. I mark the obnoxious ones as spam. Blogger makes them invisible, and internally tracks the IP address so that it can automatically move future posts from the same address into the spam folder.


Spencer makes you so happy. Do you suppose when you make the move your wife would consider taking in a boarder? Perhaps Spencer could be a gardener or the driver.

That's a sweet fantasy, but I don't think Spencer wants to spend a life as my gardener. I see a bright future for the kid; he should be free to pursue it.


Music questions here: 1. Have you ever sang Poor, Poor Pitiful Me in karaoke (it's my favorite). And 2. Would you ever post video and/or audio of your piano playing?

1) No, but I do like that song. And 2) I don't think my piano playing is really all that exceptional. Competent, yes, which is why I get hired on occasion to play in the background, where no one is really noticing me.

I would consider posting a recording of me singing, though. Because although I'm not a particularly great singer, I surely do it with gusto.


do you like bear?

I surely do, but for some reason, the local bears don't seem to like me. Or else they don't like to show it. Maybe it's my hair.


Did you write another blog before this one? Because a lot of guys here call you Rob, but I don't remember an entry where you actually say your name is Rob.

I think I may have had snippets of dialogue in my blog in which a guy might have addressed me by name. Additionally, many of my readers have written me and gotten a response signed with my name.

Which is Delores. (No, I'm kidding.)


This might not be popular, but I for one am interested in reading about one of your MMF experiences. Do you have any thoughts about writing about that? Do you take requests?!

It might be more popular than you think. I would write about them more if I was having more of them; I enjoy meeting with married couples, but I haven't done so for a little over a year. The last couple I was seeing parted from me somewhat awkwardly, so I might not have been as inclined to pursue replacements readily.


Are you attracted to the way a man smells?

Unless he smells like a skunk, or is highly perfumed, yes.

Smell is the one sense that can turn me off of sexual activity almost instantly. Although I like both a natural musky scent or a light cologne sometimes, If a guy is at too far an end of either side of the spectrum, I'm likely to be gagging too much to engage in some good old-fashioned rogering.