Sunday Morning Questions: Remedial Formsping Edition

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Fleshlight

Apparently the men of this county like to pay for their pleasures. I had a cool hundred-dollar bill in my back pocket to prove it.

This was no man, either. The kid was barely nineteen. The beard he was attempting to grow was barely peach fuzz that clung to his long, sloping line jawline; his skin was the color of bittersweet chocolate. His frame was thin, his shorts the preppy plaid so popular in this part of the country, his shoes made to grip the slippery decks of a sailboat. His T-shirt was of a fine weave, featured some fussy sewing around its V-neck, and probably cost more than my entire ensemble put together.

Not that I'd removed any of my clothing. I wore what I think of as my cruising sneakers—a pair that's so old and ratty that I don't care if they get spattered with mud, piss, or cum. My jeans hugged my hips; my own T-shirt was tucked in the buttoned denim, though it had come loose in the back. My fly was unzipped; I'd hauled out my dick and nuts and let them hang heavily. The metal teeth bit slightly into the flesh. Enough to bring me pleasure—not enough to cause pain.

He handed me the plastic canister. Thicker than a can of vegetables, it was at its broadest end, though not as large as a coffee can. It looked like a shortened telescope of sorts, save for the puffy, pink lips spilling over the top. They opened in what was supposed to look like invitation. A flexible slit opened in their center. I stuck my index finger into the molded mouth, teasing the hole with its tip. "This is what you want me to fuck, huh?" I asked, sticking my finger in to the base. I held the mouth near my dick, so he could see exactly how deeply I'd be going in.

The kid's eyes opened wide. He sucked in his lip, wet them, then nodded.

I shrugged. I've played with a Fleshlight before. One of my readers sent one to me, so I could try it out. I'd never before had the opportunity to use one in front of another person, though. And I certainly hadn't been asked to pleasure myself with one of the devices for pay, until now. "I'll fuck it," I told him, trying to convey that I was horny enough to fuck anything. Then I whispered, like we were trading secrets, "Get down close and watch."

He fell to his knees with a thud on the family room floor. This neat, paneled room was filled with family photos; a framed painting of a desert temple occupied by handsome, dark-skinned pharoahs and consorts hung over the fireplace. The kid had probably grown up playing video games and Sorry! in this room, I figured. Now, with his folks away, he'd invited me over to play a game of an entirely different sort.

I could feel his breath on my dick, he was so close. I grabbed some of the lube close at hand and squirted it expertly in my palm, then slapped it onto my dick until it glistened. With my clean hand I gripped the barrel of the Fleshlight, and used my slimy finger to probe it once more. The kid cleared his throat. The base of his hand massaged his dick through his pants. I wondered if he'd be bold enough to take it out.

"You watching?" I asked. It was a rhetorical question. He'd barely blinked since I'd started. I pushed the head of my dick against the molded mouth. My engorged head caused the soft material to swell and distend. Then, slowly, deliberately, I slid inside. I let inch after inch disappear, bit by bit, while he licked his lips and breathed heavily close by.

A Fleshlight to me feels nothing like the real thing. Someone had given me the tip of soaking mine in warm water, before use, in order to render it warm and pliable. This boy hadn't done that with his. The sensation was tight and not unpleasant, though to me the real stimulation came from knowing the kid was fixated on my every action. I could see the excitement in his eyes, could read almost every pornographic thought flitting through his young mind. He didn't look at any part of me save my dick and swinging balls, as I slowly worked the plastic barrel up and down over my shaft. I twisted and turned the cylinder so that it smacked with every stroke; when I'd withdraw my dick, the pink lips would cling to the meat as if reluctant to let go.

For long minutes I worked the Fleshlight over my inches. Gradually, over time, I added more hip motion. Eventually, without any announcement, I was fucking it with my hips.

"Hold it," I told him. I reached out and took his hands and curved one, then the other, over the hard plastic shell. "Hold it tight." Once I'd gotten him angling it correctly, I let go and stuck my hands behind my head, so that my pit hair curled over the edges of the arms of my T-shirt. I bit my lower lip and screwed up my face to make it look as if I was having the ride of my life. My lip rose and curled into a sneer, hugging one side of my nose. "Fuck yeah," I whispered, as I continued to fuck the device.

He clung to the walls as if his life depended on it, his neck crooked so that he could watch my angry meat sliding in and out. "Maybe," he said, speaking for the first time in long minutes, "maybe you want to fuck me."

"You didn't pay for that," I drawled.

It was that admission, more than anything the Fleshlight itself was doing for me, that pushed me over the edge. I came soon after in a noisy rush in which I rattled the table of knick-knacks behind the sofa next to me. He and I both held down the barrel to the base of my dick while I unloaded. His fingertips rested on mine for a moment after I'd done. Then he withdrew.

I was pulling in my dick and zipping up when he started to unscrew the interior of the Fleshlight from its casing. He lifted the plastic shell to his lips, and upended it. Like he was chugging the last remains of a Frappuccino, he downed the load I'd left inside. A trace of my spunk remained on his lips when he was done.

That gesture, more than anything else he'd done the entire time, aroused me. "Can we do this again?" he asked. The hope was written plain, in his eyes.

He needed this, on some level, I realized. He needed this remove, this distance from what he truly wanted. I understood that I shouldn't push it. I shrugged. "Sure. You know how to get me."

"Thank you," he said, in an automatic, well-bred manner. He walked ahead of me and graciously opened the side door. "I'll be giving you a call."

I was pretty sure he would be, too.

A Family of Whores

I love my father dearly, but he has a tendency to drive me a little nuts. It only take a tone or the juxtaposition of a couple of his words to reduce me to a teenager again, with my defensive hackles standing straight up and my heartbeat pounding, readying for an argument. A lot of the time I'm utterly baffled at how he thinks I've managed to care for myself—not to mention others—all these years, when he tells me things like, "I hope you remembered to move your bank account from Detroit to Connecticut. Because that's an awfully long drive back if you have to see a teller." Or, gravely, "Do you see a dentist? You know you should see the dentist every six months."

And a lot of the time I feel as if I'm some kind of underqualified nurse assistant left to care for a dotty old man. One who will hold an entire phone conversation stretched out uncomfortably over the sofa with his ear pressed against the coffee table, because he refuses to take his cell phone out of the charger because he's worried about the battery level going under one hundred percent. ("I might have an emergency and need that three percent!")

Sometimes, though, he can surprise me. I was talking to him last night after his return from a visit to his sister's, in Tennessee, when he said, "You know, we were going through some old photographs during the week."

"Oh?" I said, certain that what was coming next was going to be an exhaustive catalog of every photo he saw. My father the former academic cannot remember the names of any of the women on his favorite television show, Desperate Housewives—he refers to them as 'the red-head, the dumb-ass, the hot Latina, and the ugly one'—but when it comes to photographs, maps, or old letters he has the steel-trap mind of a curator at the National Archives.

"And I was very surprised when we found an old diary belonging to your grandmother."

I considered this news for a moment. Now, my father's mother was a crabby old battleaxe. Equal parts gin and disdain ran in her bloodstream when she was alive. When she finally died, she arrived at the mortuary self-embalmed. If she'd kept a diary, I was pretty certain it was full of entries like, Shooed little bastards from down the street off the lawn, or Had a fun day of shushing annoying patrons at the library, or Put out poisoned meat for the neighbor's cat. "Fascinating," I said suppressing a yawn.

"It's from 1934," my father rattled on. "And while it's not of much use to a historian—that is, it doesn't shed any light on the economic turmoil of the Great Depression—it certainly was interesting."

"Oh?" I asked, preparing to stretch out for a good mental snooze. "Why is that?"

"Because apparently my mother was—" And here he mumbled some words.

I sat up in my porch chair and cocked my head. "Excuse me?"

He seemed rather embarrassed. "I think you heard me."

"No, what I thought I heard you say was that your mother was kind of a slut." I nearly bolted out of my chair. "Wait. Is that what you said?" I asked, excited at last.

"Yes," he admitted.

"Oh my god!" I exclaimed. "Tell me more!"

My father, in his dry way, went on to explain that the diary had been written during my grandmother's senior year of college, when she had somehow managed to graduate Phi Beta Kappa while going out every night with a different boy. "She kept a really detailed record of what they did," he told me.

"You mean, sex?" I thrilled. My grandmother had never seemed so interesting.

"Well." He seemed a little embarrassed to be discussing his mother's amorous life. "As far as we could tell, she used a system of plus marks to indicate how hot 'n' heavy things got. So if she put down kissing plus, we figured the guy was a pretty good kisser. And if it said heavy petting plus plus plus plus. . . ."

"Oh my god!" I commented.

He laughed uneasily. "So, along with the other stuff she wrote. . . ."

"You're not getting away with that, old man," I snapped. "What other stuff?"

"Well. . . ." I could tell he was considering whether to tell me or not. "She also rated the guys on something it took us a very long time to figure out. On a lot of the entries she rated them either soft, firm, or something that read r-k h-r-d that we figured had to mean rock hard."

"Holy fuck," I nearly shouted. It's a good thing I have no near neighbors. "Your mother was a whore."

"I just don't know why she didn't destroy the diary after she met my father," he said, not bothering to disagree with me.

"She might've forgotten about it," I pointed out. "Or thought she had, when she hadn't."

"But still," he said, and for the first time I could tell he was a little cross with the deceased woman. "She had to have known what incendiary stuff this would be, if anyone found it and read it. I mean, I can't imagine writing down all the details of my sex life and chancing that anyone would read it. Could you?"

I had to suck in my lips for a moment.

"Are you there?" he asked at last.

"Mmm-hmm," I replied.

"I just can't imagine. Could you?" He repeated the question.

"Nooooooo," I lied. "Nuh-uh. Not me. Never."

My poor father. The only good man in a family of whores.

Breaking the Drought

I'm in a dark room in the Marriott, read his email message. He named the room number. Greased up, horned for anonymous dick, and ready to go. Want some? 


I'll be there in 10, I wrote back.


Simple as that.


Or, nearly as simple as that. The Marriott is not very far from me at all, but I'm not familiar enough with the city that I was able to locate its parking garage the first time around the block. Or the second. The third time, I gave up and parked in the deck of the mall across the street. The extra walk added another five minutes to my trip.


His door was cracked. I pushed my way into the room, and saw him kneeling on the floor at the far end. He'd pulled the curtains to, but hadn't made any effort to tuck in the edges to block out the late afternoon sun. The hotel's television was on, as was his laptop. He'd left the bathroom light on, as well. The room was really about as dark as Grand Central Terminal, but that didn't matter.


He knelt in front of the room's armchair with his back to me. I could see his hand frantically working his dick as I shut the door behind me. The man's profile photos hadn't been all that flattering. There'd been nothing wrong with them, but they were of the amateur variety taken at too close a range, with too strong a flash, so that they'd all come out pale and out of focus. None of them really showed off how fit was his physique, how broad his shoulders, how rounded and nipped the muscles of his arms. His white tank top hugged him like a second skin, stretched by his broad pecs and hugging his narrow waist.


Then there was his ass, plainly on display below the hemline. Round. Beefy. Perfect.


I walked past the enormous bed and the television blaring on the pay-per-view movie channel, and stepped in front of him. He looked up at me as I unzipped my camo shorts and let them drop onto the ground. I wore a rubber double cock ring; my balls hung low over its tug. My dick was half-hard, and pointed at his mouth. I let him dive for it once I'd sat down in the armchair.


He sucked like a starved man, eating my dick to the root. I could feel his throat opening to accommodate me. It then closed around me like a tight hole, clinging to my inches with a wet, tight grasp. The man had no gag reflex; he impaled himself into the pole in a way that would have made a lesser cocksucker choke and gasp. I did see tears forming at the corners of his closed eyes, though.


His head was bald, shaved clean. I stroked it gently and let my palms guide him into a steady rhythm. The man's own dick stood straight up at attention, stiff and fat and hard as cement. It stabbed into the empty air as for long, long moments the man continued to slobber and feast over my cock.


"Fuck me," he said at last, standing up. He was an impatient child who'd done his chores and was demanding his reward for a job well done. I nodded, slowly, then stood up to kick off my shorts and my sandals. He reached out with both hands and shoved me roughly, once, twice, in the direction of the bed. The third shove sent me toppling backward onto the mattress. My conqueror climbed atop me in a victory pose.


He didn't plant a flag in me, though. That was my job. He spat on his hand and rubbed the saliva onto my cockhead, then sat down on my pole in a single, swift motion. He'd already lubed himself, and the inside of his ass was like lava in the air conditioned room. I gasped as he sank down to the bottom, and began grinding his hips, trying to take me even more deeply.


"Squeeze it," I commanded. He responded by clenching down in a way that felt like a tight, wet, warm hand. "Oh man, you're good," I whispered.


"Buddy, you don't know," he smirked. Then, to prove it, he started grinding with a determination I'd rarely before seen. We made out, our lips sloppily smacking over the other's, our tongues darting in and out as he continued to pound his meaty butt onto my dick. "You're gonna give it to me," he said. "Then I'm going to get down there and nurse on that big, beautiful monster meat until it's hard and you're gonna give it to me again."


"Okay," I agreed, putting up no argument against that particular scenario.


There have been very few guys in my life who are really good at sitting on my dick and milking a load from me. Most kind of bounce up and down in a pleasant enough way until I push them onto their backs and jackhammer home the load. This man, though, knew how to work his muscled hole to drive a man crazy. While balanced on the balls of his feet, he ground and swiveled and worked his hips up and down in a steady, insistent rhythm that let me know that I was pretty much helpless against his need. I was going to blow inside him, because of his actions and his attentions, his eyes told. And there wasn't a fucking thing I could do about it.


He was right. After a very short time my eyes began to close. My breathing grew heavier. My own hips rose and fell with his. And soon I was letting loose the first of my loads deep into his hole, which he held down to the base.


I'd been with the married guy, jacking off for him in the privacy of his van. I'd met the guy with the dog, just the day before. This was the first opportunity I'd had to fuck, though, since my move. My load felt huge. I kept shooting and shooting while my body shuddered and shivered. Almost immediately he rose off me. A thick glob of my semen from his ass fell with a plop onto my stomach. He remained crouched above me, his hand rapidly working the skin of his dick. Moments later, his own load dripped down into me, mingling with my own seed in a puddle near my navel.


He immediately licked and slurped up the twin loads off, then, with them still on my tongue, kissed me deeply. We shared that payload of seed between us, passing it back and forth in our kiss, and then at last he burrowed between my legs and greedily cleaned off the rest of my dick.


"Your dick's not going down," he said with a cocky grin, after a minute of attention.


"Nope," I told him.


"I like that in a guy," he said.


I flipped him onto his stomach and drove it home. He groaned deeply as I slid into his cum-slick hole. His head hung over the mattress' edge; the harder I pounder at him, the more red and swollen with blood grew his head. His hands clutched at air, trying to grab onto something, anything, to help him cope with my maddened, impassioned bullfuck. At last he grabbed onto the bedframe with one, and the floor with the other. His mouth opened in a deep-chested roar. "Yeah, fucker!" he shouted. "Do some fuckin' damage to that hole."


The dirty talk only made me fuck him harder. My knob kept bursting through his second ring and popping through. I could feel the pressure of it against my cock head with every thrust. Every time I punched through, he let out a gargled cry. Bubbles of spit clung to his lips; his brow was knitted into a pained and worried expression, though the bliss in his eyes was obvious. "Yeah," he kept moaning. "Do that. Do it just like that."


My next load arrived more quickly than the first. My pounding was so hard that I'd bounced two of the pillows off the bed. He grabbed onto one and clung onto it for dear life while I shot a second load inside. Once I'd completed the deposit, he shoved me back onto the remaining pillows and once again sucked my dick clean. This time I let him linger down there for long, long minutes, while I breathed deeply and let the air conditioning cool off my sweaty skin. In a daze, I watched the same previews play over and over again on the hotel television, until after fifteen minutes of attention, my new buddy kissed his way up my stomach and tits to my lips. "Shame you can't go for three," he said.


"Who says I can't?" I growled, as I pushed him off.


For the third fuck I settled his knees at the edge of the bed, and fucked him on all fours from behind. The position gave me the maximum opportunity to lengthen my thrust, to adjust the angle as I saw fit, and to vary the tempo as I liked. With his head buried in the mattress, the muscle stud groaned and surrendered himself. He wasn't at all aggressive, now. Not insistent. Hungry, perhaps, but not as wild about it. He was just hole, receptive and wet and warm and slippery, his insides already painted with two loads. While the sunlight faded from the room and the TV continued to blare away, I very slowly, very leisurely fucked at first. Then I picked up the pace, stabbing at him, twisting at impossible angles to make it hurt.


He responded without words, groaning and letting out helpless cries as he lifted his ass higher and higher. I fucked him harder, so that my balls slapped against his. The sound of flesh against flesh drowned out even the hundredth advertisement for a Steve Carell movie I'd already seen; I wasn't paying attention to the television any longer. His arms flailed out, once more grasping at nothing. I fucked and fucked until I was slamming him again, abrading his face against the bedspread as I pushed him harder and deeper against the fabric. By the time I unloaded a third time, his hands had clutched the coverings and clenched them so hard that the creases he left looked as if they'd been permanent pressed in.


While I remained inside him, still shuddering, he reached between his legs and masturbated himself to a climax once more. It only took a few strokes before he blasted his load over the bed in long, wet ropes.


I pulled out, and stood there, panting and sweaty. He stood up, laughed slightly, and ran his hands over his smooth head. His lips worked, and let out what sounded like words, but not in any language I recognized. The syllables were gibberish, I realized. He seemed to realize it too, because he attempted to speak again, with the same results. Then he shook his head, rolled his eyes at himself, and disappeared into the bathroom. I heard the shower running. When I entered the bathroom to rinse off my dick with a cloth, he was steaming under a stream of water, hands pressed against the wall, his forehead against them. He looked as if he had nothing left in him.


THANK YOU, he managed to text by the time I was eating dinner across the street. You fucked the language right out of me for a few minutes!!!


Which, when you think about it, is not a bad compliment at all.

Sunday Morning Questions: Urban Dictionary Edition

With a large portion of the country suffering oppressive heat this week, perhaps it was natural that the most-asked question I got on Formspring.me in the last few days was a variation on, What do you do to cool off on a hot day?


The basic answer is that I sprawl around my house, naked, in a direct line with the air conditioner, so I can bask in it. Usually that does me.

But when I want to get out, I'll head to the local mall and waste some time there. Or I'll hit the movie theaters. My very favorite thing to do on a sweltering afternoon, though, is to visit one of the large supermarkets in the area. Not only do I generally find them more interesting to browse than the mall (especially if they pride themselves on being an upscale, gourmet kind of place), but I know that once I spend a good five minutes shivering in the dairy sections, where the refrigerators are on full blast, I'll be more than ready to go outside and warm up once again.

The heat I can stand. It's the cold that makes me miserable.

As for sex on a hot afternoon? Some people find it sticky and miserable, but I can't think of anything better. Maybe it's because I had my first orgasm on the hottest afternoon of the year, or because I associate summer with being out of school and whoring all day in the parks and restrooms of my little home town, growing up. These months, and the heat that comes with them, are the best time of the year for fucking.

What do you guys do to stay cool during the warmest days?

Now, on to the Formspring questions. As always, if you'd like to ask me something anonymously (or not-so-anonymously), feel free to visit the site and ask away. I'll answer anything that I haven't answered a dozen times before, or that's not too invasive.


The hottest guy ever wants you, but only if you give him a blumpkin. Would you? Have you?

Nope, and nope. If that's what he wanted, he wouldn't be so hot any longer.


What is your opinion on cybersex?

It's so easy to have actual sex. Why would anyone care to fake it?


You've written about many people in your life. Will you ever write about when you met Mister/Miss Right? Or is that off-limits?

I'm not really a believer in the One True Right Person. I believe we meet several people throughout all our lives with whom we can forge strong connections. It's up to us to follow through on those opportunities, not. For many people, a choice of emotional or sexual monogamy can limit subsequent opportunities severely. I'm not at all saying that monogamy's a bad choice. It's simply not for me.

If you're asking me to write about my spouse, it won't happen. I have privacy issues there.


About how many friends from high school do you still talk to?

I have friends from middle school and college with whom I talk, mostly on Facebook. I have absolutely no friends from high school with whom I'm in touch.


What was your first sexual experience with your bro? What did you do?

It started with showing off to each other, progressed pretty quickly to me sucking him, and ended with me getting rammed.


Have you ever had a sex related injury?

I've had a couple of guys handle me so roughly, either by ungentle hand treatment or by too much teeth, that I've had abrasions or chafing.


Do you like having sex in the dark or with the light on?

I prefer a dim setting—not entirely pitch black, but dark enough to keep me focused on the sensations at hand.


When u top, do you prefer the btm to already have a load or fresh for your deposit?

I enjoy both scenarios. I don't get preloaded holes often enough, though, so I could deal with more of that.


Have you ever wanked on Skype?

Yes. I don't do it often, though. I prefer to do it on cam4 or Yahoo, where I can have a larger audience.


Your blog counter is currently around 657,000. Do you have plans to do anything special to celebrate 750,000? Perhaps more cum encrusted briefs?

I'm certainly willing to take suggestions, on my trek to a million. Do you have any?


Who was the first person you ever kissed?

Unless you count assorted relatives who pecked me on the lips or cheek when I visited, the first person I really kissed was my sixth-grade homeroom teacher.

Open Forum Friday: Gunn Shy

Tim Gunn used to have a segment on his self-titled and underrated Guide to Style that used to make me think about my body, more than any other television show on fashion and dressing. Now, none of that genre of TV devoted to makeover and tips on dressing really fascinates me. In my household, though, some of the shows were popular second-tier choices for viewing on the DVR after all other possible options had been exhausted, and I'd find myself occasionally absorbed by the disasters on What Not to Wear or wincing at the fashion reprimands of one or another of one of the Queer Eye guys.

I liked Project Runway, however, and I find Tim Gunn an upstanding, frank, and funny kind of guy. The part of his show that always fascinated me was designed to illuminate to that week's makeover victim some salient points about self-image. Tim would line up a bunch of women similar in coloring and height and age to the woman being made over. Usually they were dressed in nothing but underwear. They'd be arrayed from skinniest to heftiest. "Now, Yvonne," Tim would drawl to the woman, index finger pointing to heaven alongside his cheek. "I want you to go stand between the two women you feel represent your weight and size." Inevitably, the woman would head right for the last two women in the lineup—the heaviest, most rotund of the bunch. Then Tim would step in, gently shake his head, and steer the woman a place in the line based on her weight and measurements, which was always near the skinny end of the queue.

I used to scoff at this phenomenon, the first few times I saw it. Then I realized that given the same lineup, if Tim Gunn had arrayed for me a bunch of body types then asked me to stand between the two where I believed I fit, I'd make a beeline for the guy who looked like Chris Farley and squeeze my carcass between him and John Goodman. And then Tim would cluck like a worried hen and steer me over to Scooby Doo's Shaggy and call it a day.

My readers can take a look quick look at the photo at the blog's top and tell what kind of body I have. I'm lean. I'm six-foot-three and my waist is a size thirty(ish). When I'm shopping for dress shirts, I have to go for a men's small. Slim cut, or modern fit, or whatever you'd like to call it—I need clothes with a bit of structure and clean lines, to highlight the stuff I like and obscure the stuff I don't. Even shirts with a fitted cut have a tendency to look baggy on me. Because I have no ass, pants have a tendency to fall down around my waist and bloat out like I'm wearing a diaper. When recently I found a really nice pair of dress slacks that not only fit perfectly, but actually kind of flattered me, they came with a precious and vaguely insulting brand name like Calvin Klein Super Ultra Slim Tight Petite Nipped Tuck Tiny Trousers. For Men. No, Really. At those moments in which I manage to be objective, and conscious, and aware, I know that yes, my place in Tim Gunn's lineup is roughly between the clothespin doll dressed in Banana Republic, and Adrien Brody in The Pianist.

Still, my go-to reaction when I dress in the morning and look at myself in the mirror is, God, I'm a cow.

I'm aware that my perception of my body type can be pretty far off from what it actually is; I sometimes joke to people with whom I'm close that the only thing keeping me from a diagnosis as anorexic is that I'd get too hungry to stop eating. When I get into one of those moods in which all I can do is look in the mirror, grab the flesh around my waist and sling it around like a sack of Jello while pouting and moping, I need to stop, quiet my mind, and remind myself of the reality of the situation.

If I can manage to do that, instead of letting the hysteric in me shriek and cower, I'm actually pretty happy with my body.

When I was seeing Spencer, I went through a lot of the same rigors with him. Watching him hate his body really drove home the point that what we are and what we see are two different things. Here was a beautiful boy with a perfect dancer's physique, strong, masculine, and muscular, who daily would refer to himself as a tub o' lard, or a fatty fat fat fatty fuck. All I could do was gape in bafflement. I watched him stare in the mirror and tap on his chest and wish aloud that he was so skeletal that he could count his ribs through a leotard. I listened to him contemplate, half-seriously, a diet of nothing but scented Kleenex and cigarette smoke.

Craziness.

I've known it work the other way as well. One acquaintance of mine who has invested heavily in his life to become what in gay shorthand would be called a muscle bear, recently spoke about how he had grown up a skinny kid and always saw his skinniness as a sign of weakness; he'd spent a lifetime bulking up and growing to what in my eyes are almost comically massive proportions. He's groomed himself to fit the bear culture's ideal, and still thinks he's not big enough, not furry enough, not covered with enough facial hair. He can't look at a skinny man, he told me, without associating it with his weak youth, and with ineffectualness, and with femininity.

It was an honest confession, yes. But it still made me want to reply with narrowed eyes and an answer of Fuck you very much, I'll show you who's masculine, you big ol' queen.

When it comes to Tim Gunn's lineup, I think a lot of us have two instinctive reactions of where we belong—the first to move to the extreme where we fear others see us, and the other a more considered and honest assessment of where we fit.

We've talked about self-image before in our Open Forum Fridays, and the discussions have always brought out some interesting comments. For today's forum I'm curious about where you see yourself fitting, and where Tim would tell you that you actually belong. What have you done to overcome feeling like the fat boy or the skinny kid? How much influence does that phantom vision really have over you—or how does it motivate you?

Speak up, and let us all hear your thoughts.

Reader Assets: #15

Your humble blogger apologizes for the brief (one-day) hiatus in his regular posting habits, yesterday. Not only did he have something along the lines of bad weather of the brain, but his notebook computer grew erratic to the point that typing on it became a misery.

However, thanks to the local Apple store, which replaced the trackpad in the space of an afternoon and gave me a new battery, to boot, we're back in business.

Sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that the title of this week's feature has changed—from asses to assets. What a difference a single letter can make, eh?

Since we had such an overwhelming support for the idea of our readers showing off their dicks as well as their holes, starting this week, I'll be accepting photographs of any kind of reader junk you'd like to show off. If you're shy about your butt, but want readers to see your rod—now's your chance to lure admiring bottoms to your boudoir. If you've showed off your ass previously and want to turn the other way for the camera, give it a shot. I'm game. Dripping with cum, rock hard, soft and relaxed . . . we like all kinds of dick here.

Of course, I'd be happy to share your asses with the world, too. So don't hold off on those. Make sure to check out the original post to see how you can show off your best side to the world.

BrooklynAss

It's kind of tough to find any fault with this photo. I love the sexy shot of that exposed, tight hole, which looks to be fringed with just a tiny bit of fur. The submissive position makes me drool. I love the dick and balls, prominently on display. The underwear around the ankles is a realistic touch. And I even love the shape of this guy's feet.

You know, BrooklynAss, I'm not that far from Brooklyn, now. You should invite me to help you take some more photos. Of me inside you, specifically.

Indiana Guy

"Not the best you'll see, but what the heck," said Indiana Guy of his photos, in his email to me.

Sorry, Indiana. You Hoosiers are way too fucking modest. That is one beautiful ass. Round, smooth, perfectly exposed (both in the sexual and the photographic sense) . . . I think you're discounting its appeal way too much. You, sir, have a fine ass. You should be proud of it. I'd be proud to have it wrapped around me, or sitting on my face.

Stefan

Oh, Stefan. You actually made me drool, with that full-body rear shot. Fucking beautiful, my friend. I love the shot of you prone, with the gentle curves of your furry butt exposed for us all to see.

And that other shot with the hat? It's a little sassy, a little Fosse, a little Liza, like some lost porn version of Cabaret. And with that comment, gentlemen and ladies, I have earned my gay card. Thanks, Stefan. I know many of my readers are going to appreciate those shots.

Rafael

Sorry, gents. In a Reader's Assets first, Rafael has requested

that his photos be removed because he is worried 

that his family might recognize him in them. It's a pity.

What his family is doing reading this blog, I'm 

still trying to figure out. 

And that's it for this installment, my friends. Make sure to send me your nude photos for display in this very space. You'd be surprised how many friends you'll make by it. If you enjoyed this latest batch, be sure to let our contributors know!

Little Flaws

One of the things to which I’m still unused, after living for six weeks in my new home, is crossing the state line on a regular basis. But I live in a place in which, if I turn the wrong way in the middle of the night during a groggy pee run to my bathroom, I can accidentally find myself stepping from Connecticut to New York without knowing it. I’m just not accustomed to it. In Michigan and in Virginia, or even in my very distant childhood homes in Georgia and North Carolina, we had to drive for a good hour or more to reach a border. It was an accomplishment—not something that sometime happened accidentally when trying to find that little Mexican restaurant on that street by the river.

(Admittedly, in Detroit, it was possible to travel ten minutes south and head into an entirely different country, which is even more of an accomplishment. But I rarely did it because the border crossings made me stressed.)

It’s a lot easier to head for the Home Depot over the border than it is to the one closest in the state; if we head out to the movies, I have to remember to check times in the Port Chester and White Plains theaters. Likewise, when I’m cruising online I keep forgetting that in addition to the fifty-or-so-mile sprawl I consider to my east, I need to look even a couple of miles over the border to the west as well.

So I was a little surprised, that Sunday morning, to find myself in the hills along the Hudson river, knocking on the door of a ramshackle, but quaint, home in the middle of a mountain town thronged by cyclists from Manhattan, looking for local color and cool canopies of greenery the city couldn’t afford them. When the door open, a shirtless man greeted me and pulled me inside. While his enormous dog sniffed and beat its tail against my thighs, the man pushed me roughly against an old wall stripped down to its original horsehair insulation and kissed me, deeply.

His lips were soft, and warm. His tongue probed deep into my mouth, and I found myself surrendering to him. We hadn’t spoken a word yet. We’d talked enough online, over the course of the previous week. He’d told me all the things he was into, and all the nasty things he wanted to do with me. The guy was a cock-oriented service pig, he told me, but at the same time, very aggressive in his approach.

I was good with that.

I let the guy manhandle me in the middle of his hallway. The entire first floor, as far as I could tell, had been torn down to the studs in preparation for some major renovation. There were entire floorboards missing, so that I could see straight down into the basement. The house had the elegant bones and charm to spare of a Depression-era construction, but seemed a little difficult to maneuver around.

My new buddy finally pulled away from our long and passionate kiss. He was a good looking fellow—older than I, goateed, gray-haired, spectacled. The sort of man who could go very easily from a sharp suit to a pair of jeans and a tank top. “You’re really handsome,” I remarked.

He met my gaze square on, and in a dreamy, romantic sort of voice, said, “You’ve got a lazy eyelid.”
The remark lifted me right out of whatever sexual reverie I might’ve fallen. It’s true; one of my eyelids hangs ever so slightly lower than the other, something of which I’ve been particularly conscious since one of my optometrists asked me, “Have you suffered a stroke?” NO I HAVEN’T. Jeez. It’s not like I walk around with one lid wide open and the lashes of the other scraping. It’s a difference of a fucking millimeter.

“Really?” I asked, not all that happy. “That’s what you’re leading with?”

He made some kind of lame apology and laughed it off, to the point at which my irritation at being made so self-conscious faded a little. I followed him upstairs, where we stripped down in the steamy bedroom and started to make out some more. The dog, in the meantime, followed; he hopped up on the king-sized bed. Once it was obvious he wasn’t planning to get down, we let him recline and snooze at its foot.

“You’re a really good kisser,” I said, after a while.

He stared squarely over my eyes. I thought he was going to thank me. “You know,” he said at last, “right before you came over, I had one of those crazy eyebrow hairs that was super-long, too. I trimmed it.”

“Fuck,” I said aloud, sitting up and grabbing for my left eyebrow. I started to scoot off the bed.

“I’m not saying you have a crazy eyebrow hair,” he protested, too mildly.

Yet somehow I knew he was. By then I’d reached the guy’s dresser mirror. I didn’t have a crazy long eyebrow hair. I did, however, have a single eyebrow hair that sometime while we’d been grappling against the wall, had become pointed slightly down instead of to the left. That was it. “You’re driving me nuts,” I told the guy. “Any more physical defects you want to comment on? Get ‘em out of the way, maybe, all at once? Thinning spot? Pasty white skin? ”

He thought I was joking, and laughed. “I didn’t say they were bad things.”

Whatever.

Maybe I was just grumpy from having tiny flaws spoken aloud (you didn’t see me saying anything about his big belly, after all), but I didn’t have much fun for the rest of the morning. I’d gone in expecting a lot of cock-oriented service—his speciality, supposedly—and didn’t get a damned thing. He didn’t suck my cock. He didn’t eat my hole or work on my balls. We made out. I ate his butt and stuck my dick insider, and then was treated to him telling me not to shoot (“Why trade all this pleasure for five seconds of orgasm?”) . . . until he shot without warning me, and then hopped off. “Sorry, dude, but once I’ve shot, I’m done,” he apologized.

Yeah, I was decidedly grumpy.

I was lying face down on the mattress, checking my phone, when I felt a tongue between my butt cheeks. I relaxed a little as it licked with determination, enjoying the sensation of its warmth against my hole. Then, with a start, I realized it was the dog.

What’s it say about an encounter when I had more pleasure from the guy’s mutt?

Trade

He was leaning against the back of his truck when I pulled into the parking lot near my new home, hands deep in his pockets. The setting sun left golden auras around everything basking in its rays, in a late benediction before it would set for the day, ten minutes later. The man was already golden enough—an Apollo of sun-bleached hair on his tousled head, on his thick forearms, and covering the sun-tanned legs sticking from out of his shorts. His shoulders were broad and muscular; his face model-handsome. He could easily have had any man he wanted.

He’d wanted me.

I nodded as I pulled in. Over the air conditioning and through the window I heard him cough nervously and straighten. He checked me out when I stepped out—feet stuffed into my size eleven sneakers, the deep V-neck of my T-shirt sloping down my chest, my camo shorts hugging my legs. Then our eyes locked. This was a wealthy man, I realized, once I saw that face up close. He might have been driving a landscaper’s truck, but it wasn’t the truck of a laborer, or a day-to-day contractor. It was the owner’s truck, a truck that had nary a scratch or sign of use. That truck had never carried a tool, or a bag of cement, or a load of slates for the large homes in the area. His clothes were casual, but expensive. His face was well-cared-for, and his haircut pricey. I know the signs of Connecticut wealth.

“Hey,” I said, holding out my hand. He started to offer me his left. I noticed the gold band on his ring finger. He switched at the last moment to his right, in a handshake that was firm, but sweaty.

He wanted to say something. His lips worked in a way that betrayed his nervousness. “You look like your photos,” he said in a deep voice.

“You thought I wouldn’t?” I asked. He shrugged. Man, he was a wreck. It was obvious he didn’t do this often, if he’d done it before at all. I wondered what it had taken for him to summon the nerve to meet me here. An easy lie to the wife and the cost of a quart of milk for the trip home? A Valium? A shot or two? “You wanna—?” I jerked my head at the back doors of his van.

“Oh, yeah.” For so fluidly muscular a man, his motions were jerky and abrupt as he yanked open the doors. He gestured for me to enter.

I was right, I realized when I slipped inside. No matter how butch it looked from without, inside it was luxury. The floor was carpeted; leather upholstery covered the seats. The interior was clean, and shampooed, and save for a small box of baby toys behind one of the rear seats, surprisingly devoid of anything personal. There was enough room in the back for a couple of men to stretch out, as he’d promised. I sat on my haunches until he’d climbed in and shut the doors behind him. Then I sat down and spread my legs, letting my hands rest on my crotch.

He sucked in his lips so that they disappeared for a moment. Then he cleared his throat. “I . . . what do we do now?”

He couldn’t have been more than thirty-six or thirty-seven. His own furry legs scissored in and out. “Well,” I said, not betraying any emotion. “I think we’d agreed upon something.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bill clip, round and fat enough to look like a prop from some episode of The Sopranos. He skimmed through a couple of the larger denominations to a series of twenties, then counted out bills in three sequences of five. Once he was done, he handed them over, then stuffed the remainder in his pocket. I took the curled bills, without breaking eye contact, and stuffed them into one of my pockets. “Is that okay?” he asked.

It wasn’t the rhetorical question it could have been. He was genuinely worried, and craved approval. He wasn’t talking about the money, either—fifty percent more than I made the last time I whored myself out in the back of a van. “Sit back,” I told him. “You wanted to watch. So watch.”

Once he’d leaned against the opposite side of the van I unbuttoned my camo shorts. I let the zipper sound as I pulled it down. It wasn’t especially hot outside at this time of day, and there was enough of a remnant of air conditioning that I wasn’t breaking a sweat, but in the quiet I could hear the rasp of his breathing. His legs jerked involuntarily when I lifted my hips and pulled down my shorts, exposing the erection underneath.

I sat on the shorts, then wrapped my hand around my cock. The wad of cash bulged against my butt. Slowly, up and down, I worked the shaft. I squeezed my fingers until the head was purple and engorged. The slightest dome of pre-cum formed over the slit.

His rasp turned into a rattle as his breath caught in his throat. “How big?” he whispered.

I shrugged, like it was nothing. “Eight.”

“Fuck,” he said.

“It gets the job done,” I replied, staring at him. I could tell he was imagining right then, and vividly, exactly what job.

The arrangement had been only for him to watch while I masturbated in the back of his van. Plain and simple. He hadn’t told me whether he had any experience with men, but it was easy enough to guess that he hadn’t. The man stared at my dick like he’d never seen one before, or never seen one erect. Maybe not even his own. It was easy enough for me to picture him playing with his own tool only in the dark, or keeping his eyes closed as he dutifully made love to his wife. Many men don’t look at themselves; they don’t really know what their dicks look like. Or what they’re for.

He couldn’t remove his gaze from mine, though. I showed off for him in a lewd way, slapping my meat against the palm of my hand so that the noise resounded through the tiny enclosure. I toyed with the slit, drawing long strings of precum that would snap. Then I would eat the remaining clear pearl from my fingertip, all while staring him in the eye. For long minutes I stroked and showed off, growling and grunting when appropriate, and twisting my face alternately into scowls and then heavy-lidded ecstasy.

When I looked in his direction, instead of at my big dick, I could tell he had a bulge in his shorts. With his knuckles he kneaded it from time to time, but he made no gesture to bring it out. From time to time, he licked his lips. “Can I touch it?” he asked.

I thought about it for a moment. I like being touched, but somehow it seemed nastier not to let him. “That wasn’t in the price,” I said.

“Fuck.” He swallowed again, hard. “May I lick your nuts, then?”

Not can. May. I shrugged, as if somehow nut-licking was less invasive than his fingers around my dick. Immediately he lunged onto his stomach and lay down between my outstretched legs. I felt his hot breath on my balls for a moment or two, and then the tentative tip of his tongue on the skin. That wasn’t going to do. I reached down and grabbed my nuts in a clenched fist and roughly shoved them against his face, letting him smell them. His mouth opened, and I popped them in.

He licked on them and sucked the pair avidly while I continued to stroke. “Fuckin’ cocksucker,” I grunted. The words brought a whimper from him. “Don’t think you’re getting your mouth on my meat, either. Not at that price.”

“Please,” he breathed, taking a break from my balls.

I shoved the back of his head down onto the shaved sac again. “Fuck that please shit. Lick.”

I recognized the mingled humiliation and gratitude in his eyes. I’ve seen it before in the faces of hundreds of boys of all ages. And every time, it makes my cum begin to boil. I breathed out heavy streams of air as I grew closer and closer. I lifted up my hips and ground my balls into the man’s face. His eyes closed as my butt hit his chin.

“Yeah. Fuck yeah!” I said the words in my piggiest bass, just before I unloaded.

My sperm oozed out of the tip in a thick stream that dropped onto his face. He reacted with shock at the sudden wetness coursing down the inside of his nose, but I kept my hand on the back of his head to keep licking. His eyes were wide open as he watched more of my load cascade onto his face. When I was done, I wiped the tip of my dick in his hair. Then I sat back, took my shorts, and began pulling them back on.

He watched in silence, my sperm still baptizing him. Only when I was buttoned and zipped did he speak. “I want to call you again,” he said.

I shrugged, like it was no big thing.

“I’ll be discreet,” he said. “I won’t ever bug you.”

I pulled out my phone and looked at the time.

“Maybe I can suck you next time. You’ve got a big dick. A real big dick. I’ll pay.”

“I’ve gotta jet,” I said, jerking my head at the doors once more. He unlatched them from the inside. The sun had set, leaving the parking lot growing dimmer by the moment. “You know how to reach me.”
“Dude.” He was afraid to stick his head out of the van, and rightly so. It was still covered in a rivulet of sperm that had reached his chin. “That was hot.”

I only said one word more: “Good.”

Then I walked away, while he still wanted more.

Sunday Morning Questions: Boot-Wearin' Edition

My dear readers,

I have a bit of an email backlog. I'm understating the matter. If my pending reply box were constipation, I would've been rushed to the hospital with a ruptured bowel a full eight weeks ago.

It's all because of my move, of course. I started getting backlogged the month before my relocation, as I frantically rushed around trying to organize everything. Then in the weeks after my move, it's taken time for me truly to feel settled, and to have time enough to attend to everything I used to.

I've been trying—trying—to triage the situation. For the last week I've been attempting to reply to all emails pretty much as they come in, so that the black hole of electronic correspondence that is my Yahoo! account won't grow any larger. For those emails that merit longer replies, though, there may be a longer delay. So please. Bear with me. My intention is to get to all my emails, but every time I open up that pending folder and see how crowded it is, I suddenly would be rather doing anything else.

Now, I've told you guys this before. A few times, in fact. After a few flare-ups this week, though, I ask that you keep a few things in mind when writing me:

1) Please don't refrain from writing. Your emails are largely a joy. They're one of the reasons I keep blogging. I love hearing from you guys. But...

2) Please be aware that I may not reply immediately. So...

3) Please don't write a follow-up letter demanding to know why I haven't replied. And especially please don't say stuff like, You must have thought my last letter to you was really boring because you haven't replied. That just makes me sad and a little irritated. And most especially...

4) When I write to tell you that I have an email backlog, please don't lecture me on how to manage my email account, or send me links to more efficient Getting Things Done systems, or scold me on my responsibilities as a net-lebrity, whatever the hell that is. That's not going to inspire me to answer your email more quickly.

All I ask is for a little more patience than usual, for the next couple of weeks. I've had a big upheaval in my life. Thanks.

Okay, let's move away from that topic and get to some of your questions from formspring.me.


What does your own cum taste like?

I think you should give it a try and tell me.



I saw your advice about bottoms with piles and I have a different opinion. I am a bareback bottom, with hemorrhoids. sometimes they bleed. That is often beyond my control, i've run out of characters to respond, how can i send you a longer message?

I'd suggest either continuing the question in another question here, or emailing it to me. The original questioner might learn something from your insights.


What was the last lie you told?

I told a friend I was on the phone with my dad because I didn't feel like saying, "I'm really too lazy to meet up with you this evening."


I'm meeting up with a guy who has a lot more experience than I do. I'm pretty sure I'm going to do something wrong or just look stupid. Should I say this is my 1st time or just kind of fake my way through?

If it's genuinely your first time, say so up front, once. Just once. I'm more inclined to forgive someone ignorance than a deliberate lie about his experience level.

And instead of worrying about doing something wrong or looking stupid, just be cheerful about your activities. Don't apologize; if you're getting frustrated, just ask him nicely to tell you what to do differently so it's happening the way he likes.

You know, even if you were the worst sex in the world for the guy, your first time, it wouldn't be the end of the world. Any sex is better than no sex. Plus you'll have that much more experience for the next time. Everyone's got to start somewhere.


have u ever been to the middle east or south asia?

I have not. Are you inviting me?



Do you sometimes get "nasty-talkin', cigar-smokin', boot-wearin' S.O.B. who likes to dominate and control his bottoms?"

I don't smoke cigars, or anything else. I have a few pairs of boots, but the only ones that get any wear are the snow boots, in winter. I've been called an S.O.B. on occasion.

Nasty-talkin', I can usually handle.


I'm married and have a bi married FB. We are lucky enough to manage a few overnights together and, when we do, we have multiple sessions, cumming between 5 and 8 times before morning. Do you like multiple, super-draining sessions like that?

Those are the kinds of sessions I typically look for, and which many of my partners can attest that I handle with enthusiasm.

It's been a while since I've had an 8-load night, though.


Your beloved brother's an attorney, isn't he? Confess!

I don't know why my brother's occupation has turned into such a guessing game. No, he's not an attorney. Why do you ask that?


You have your fans and self-esteem. Defocus on the fans and share what *you* think your strengths as a writer. Where can you improve? No one is perfect. Ideals vary too much for agreement.

I'm very highly critical of my writing; not a single entry goes by without me critically looking at it to determine what works and what does not. Writing in my blog often leaves me frustrated because it's pretty much first-draft stuff, written in little corners of the day that aren't occupied with my life and my real writing endeavors.

I'm always looking at what works and what doesn't, though, whether it's a change of tense or turn of phrase or the way a post is structured. Then I'll write another post to work on my problem areas.

Often the posts that people seem to respond with most enthusiasm are some of the entries over which I wasn't all that thrilled, myself. And sometimes the posts of which I'm proudest don't make much of an impact. I don't write to pander to an imaginary concept called 'fans.' I write about the things that interest me, and that I want to remember, and that I think are important.

Generally, though, I think I'm good at tapping into areas of common experience and making my own unique encounters seem relatable. I'm glad that I connect with my audience and that I do have people who consider themselves fans, but this blog is not me trying to garner applause. I'm merely posting the sexual entries from my personal journal.

Field Trip Friday: The Museum of Sex

Last August I recommended my readers check out the biography Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade. Steward was one of those fascinating gay men whose life on the margins of society during much of the twentieth century was so meandering and unpredictable that it reads more like fiction than fact. A constant chronicler of his sexual life, he managed to bed (among the hundreds and thousands he obsessively tracked in a ‘stud file’ of three-by-five cards) were celebrities like Rudolph Valentino, Rock Hudson, and Thornton Wilder. He was a illustrator fascinated by the art of tattooing, a writer who gained a late-in-life notoriety under the pen name of Phil Andros, and an all-around fascinating pervert who made even Alfred Kinsey gawp in wonder.

I recommended the book highly when it came out and still do, not least because it was written by one of my blog’s readers, but because author Justin Spring managed to craft a fascinating narrative of a life that’s usually overlooked and neglected, but which, when examined, proves to be overflowing with all kinds of literary and sociocultural interest.

Well. Last night I put on some clean duds, hopped on Metro North, and headed into Manhattan to the Museum of Sex, because Justin very kindly invited me to an opening night private party for an exhibition of Steward’s memorabilia. "Obscene Diary: The Secret Archive of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist and Pornographer" is the name of the exhibit, and I’ve got to tell you guys, if you’re in the metropolitan New York area, take an afternoon or evening and visit the place. It was easily the best exhibit in the museum.

It was a little crowded last night—the freely-flowing alcohol served by muscled boys in Speedos had something to do with it, methinks—but I managed to spend a good hour walking around the gallery, looking at the original manuscripts of Steward’s earliest writings, the cards from his stud file (including the celebrity encounters, with their secret codes outlining exactly what the pair did), the drawings, the tattoo designs, the books, the reams of explicit photographs from the guy’s infamous orgies. There’s definitely a lot of obscene material there.

And frankly, all I could think, while I moved through the crowd, was, I wonder what all my crap would look like, nicely framed and under glass?


Justin, who’s the exhibit’s curator, managed to track me down among the crowd and talk to me for a few minutes—which only confirmed my belief that he’s a hell of a smart man and, by inviting me, has exquisite taste in his friendships. He confided that the installation was finished only minutes before the doors opened that night, and that the paint was still drying on some of the walls even as we spoke. If you’re reading this, Justin, thanks for being not only a gracious and handsome host, but a learned gentleman, as well.

Take the day or weekend off and have a little field trip, guys. It’s well worth it.

Will: The Boy Scout Story

(This is the last of the Will series. Thanks for putting up with it.)



I’ve never been one of those romantics who believes in One True Love. Any adult with a certain maturity and an openness of emotion encounters a number of people throughout a lifetime who, if they were to communicate and work hard together, could form an admirable and loving partnership.

Life is abundant in its offerings, and anyone who’s not a hermit or a misanthrope, if he keeps his eyes open, will spot many chances for not one, but many true loves. I’ve fallen in love many times in my life, and recognize and honor the feeling for what it is—a joyous thank-you to the heavens for the plenty in my life. I loved Spencer. I loved Will. Neither man made me want to throw over my longer-lasting, much deeper relationship. (I might not believe in monogamy, but I believe in commitment.) But while they lasted, I loved as best I could.

After his return from the failed attempt to become a monk, Will found a boyfriend. He was a younger guy, chubby, naive, only two years older than his son. The pair broke up and got back together with roughly the same frequency and regularity as the high and low tides, but during the good times, they seemed to be compatible together. Will and I were still friendly when we saw each other, though we hadn’t had sex for well over a year—long before he’d gone off on his aborted holy mission. I’d moved on to other fucks. My butthole had begun to close up again.

Then one Saturday afternoon, I went to the baths. I seem to recall being lonely that day, and restless, and not even so much horny as in need of human contact. So I drove down the freeway, rented a room for the afternoon, stripped down, and sat on my bed with the door open and the lights low. Men passed by. Some slowed down, others whizzed by.

After a long time, one man stopped in the doorway and leaned there. He was naked, save for a skimpy towel around his waist and a dark blue NYPD baseball cap. His hands rested on his hips. He stared at me. “I saw you come in,” he said in a low voice.

It took me a moment to realize it was Will.

At the time, Will to me was the essence of masculinity. His hairy body was like Alec Baldwin’s in his prime. Though his waist was slim, his chest was broad and muscular. It had been so long since I’d seen him undressed that it was difficult for me to look him in his brown puppy-dog eyes.

I kept wrenching my own eyes away from Will’s perfect pecs. He looked like an gym equipment model come to life. “So, I’d been thinking about coming to this place for a while,” he said to me, since I was still obviously too surprised to speak. “But I didn’t really think it would be my thing, and then I ended up near here for dinner, so I said what the hell, and then I saw you walk in, and wow, here you are.” He looked down. It was obvious he was mentally adding the word naked to his sentence.

“Yeah, here I am,” I said. My arms folded over my body like a Botticelli Venus. “And here you are.” I felt embarrassed by his presence, though it was obvious we’d both come for the same reasons.

“So . . . you wanna make out?” he asked, finally. Tentatively. As if he expected a no.

My hands trembled as I pulled him in and closed the door. I instantly remembered all the things I loved about my previous times with Will. The smell of him—soap and faded cologne and armpit and crotch. The way his hands touched me. The feel of his mouth on my body and his lips on mine, soft and needful. The taste of his salty skin. The way he enjoyed holding me down, even as a formality I protested and begged him to slow down a bit, before forcing himself inside me when he’d had enough foreplay and couldn’t hold off any longer.

The way he fucked, long and deep and rough, his nails digging into my shoulders and his hot breath on my neck as he pushed and panted his way to orgasm. Then afterward, turning me over and wiping me off, and gently using his mouth to help me climax. Once I’d shot, he held my cock in his mouth until it was completely soft, and crawled up beside me.

I felt sad. Sad that I didn’t have twin lives to lead, with him dominating one. Sad that I spent my time with him in regret, instead of enjoying him as the blessing he was. I felt sad that I thought of sex with him as something that’s bad for me, like a rich dessert that I enjoy but deep down suspect I shouldn’t have.

“This is the worst of all possible places to have had this reunion,” he said, as both of us listened to the crappy music thumping from the loudspeakers.

“You’re the best person I could have met here, though,” I murmured, still sore and dozy from exertion.
“That’s a little over the top to say, don’t you think?”

I laughed. “It did sound cheesy. But you know I think you’re one of the kindest, nicest, most gentle-hearted people I know, though. I’ve never kept that a secret from you. Even when we weren’t, well. . . .”

“I know, I know,” He lay there for a moment. “And you are loyal, obedient, thrifty, brave. . . .”

“Liar. I bet you were a boy scout, weren’t you?” I asked, suddenly sure of it. I could see him as a kid in the uniform. “I bet you were an eagle scout.”

“No, no,” he laughed. “Never an eagle scout, though I was a boy scout for a while." He paused. "Do you want to hear my boy scout story?” I nodded, and he put his arm around me as he murmured in my ear.I felt safe in his arms once more, and luxuriated in the sensation of his warmth, the rumble of his voice, the fur against my back, his presence. “Okay. I went through cub scouts and then Webelos and then into the boy scouts—I’ve never told this story to anyone before. You sure you want to hear it?”

It felt like we were in the dark again, at his old bachelor apartment, in the early days. The days when our love had been pure and unaffected by awkwardness. I smiled. “Of course I do.”

“Well, okay, but you’re the only person in the world I’ve ever told this story to.”

I nodded, honored.

“I joined the boy scouts and everything was cool at first, then within a couple of weeks the scoutmaster said that we’d be having a boy scout jamboree. Some of the other kids got excited about that. They started holding up their fingers like this.” Will closed his thumb and forefinger into a circle, and then held up his three remaining fingers in the traditional OK sign. “I didn’t know what it mean, but it was like a secret signal from the kids to the scoutmaster. They had this tradition of de-pantsing the new kids at jamboree, you see, and they were asking the scoutmaster if they could. He gave them the signal back, telling them it was okay. You’re sure you want to hear this?”

"Stop asking me that."

“I didn’t know it until the week before, but the jamboree was like a camp, except just for the weekend. My dad went along as a chaperone. It was cold, and we were all put into these cabins that weren’t much warmer. One of the things they did right off was to tell me and the other new kid from our cabin was to go looking for a ‘bacon straightener.’ We were going to have bacon for breakfast in the morning, you see, and they needed this bacon straightener to make it. There wasn’t such a thing of course. We went to the cabin they told us, and they said, ‘oh, the bacon straightener’s in cabin thirteen,’ and then we’d get to cabin thirteen and find out they’d lent it to cabin eight, and so on.”

I smiled and nodded, expecting the story to go on in the same comic vein.

“So they make us go from one cabin to the next until we’d gotten to all of them, and were catching on. Finally we get to the last destination and we’re cold and tired, and these guys grab my friend and they start ripping his pants off. He was yelling and screaming and it sounded like the most horrible thing in the world. Then they started in on me, but they only got as far as taking off my shoes before I struggled free and ran off.”

I’d always hated the cruelty of boys, growing up. “Fuck,” I said.

He had to clear his throat before he continued. “I don’t know why I was so ashamed. I was only what, eleven or twelve? I was a shy kid, and Catholic, and I didn’t want other guys seeing my body. So I ran off in the woods and wouldn’t come back. I only had my socks on. It started to rain, and it was freezing cold.

“At last when I couldn’t stand it anymore, I went back. It was a couple of hours later. I was soaking wet. All the kids were standing out in front of the cabin with the scoutmaster, and my dad was there too. I walked up, all cold and wet, and my dad just looked at me. He said, Why didn’t you just let them take off your fucking pants, you little shit? Then he hauled off and slapped me across the face. He hit me so hard that it left a mark.”

I held my breath. I hadn’t expected it. It was only then that I remembered he’d never, ever mentioned his father to me before. I’d heard about the rest of his family, but not about his father.

Will was quiet for a moment, and his voice was husky. “I don’t know what upset me more. The fact that he didn’t mind slapping me in front of all those other kids, or the fact that he thought I should’ve just let them de-pants me. So we went home after the jamboree and two weeks later I told him I didn’t want to be in the boy scouts anymore." He paused again. "And that’s my boy scout story.”

I thought for a moment, and said what I was feeling. “That was a terrible story.”

He chuckled, sounding as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “Well. Yeah. I don’t know why I wanted to tell you that.”

But I knew.

He’d told me that story because he was afraid of me. He felt vulnerable, after letting himself have sex with me after we’d been separated for so long. He was that cold and wet boy who’s spent two hours out in the woods. He was worried I would slap him down, or that I’d set him up for humiliation.

Will was still that little boy scout, who’d run away into the woods and come back with his tail between his legs. He was still that kid who was perpetually frightened of doing wrong, when all he’d wanted to was save himself. He’d handed me the key to himself by sharing that story. I turned and kissed him deeply to thank him for the gift that he probably never even knew he’d given.

It was the last time we kissed, as it turned out. The last time we made love. It felt like closure, though. It felt like the end of a mystery, when much is explained and loose ends were tied. I took it for what it was, and folded it up and stored it away, so I could remember it later.

I often noted that Will had looked at me with skittish, frightened eyes—the eyes of a frightened doe in the woods, suddenly encountering a hunter. Now I knew they were really the eyes of a frightened boy scout, afraid of the mean boy who might yank the pants from him.

Will: Fair Shake

(This is a continuation of Will: In the Dark, part of the Will series I started last week. The series will be concluded in the next installment.)

Will and I had a very natural, loving relationship for some time. He spent that Christmas at my house, guest of honor at one of the big dinners we used to have for friends and acquaintances who didn’t have family in the area. He sat by my side, and spent the evening having such friendly and in-depth conversations with my father that my dad still asks after him, to this day. He was my companion at my birthday party in the middle of winter. We helped each other with our gardens come spring.

Summer was supposed to be when he was leaving for the priesthood, and I spent most of the first half of the year dreading its arrival. The order with which he was supposed to become a recluse, however, had some kind of change of heart, and told him they wouldn’t be accepting him. It was a blow, pure and simple. He’d spent almost a year at that point studying and preparing himself. He’d made plans to put what little furniture he had into storage for his sons, he’d begun the process of putting his finances in order, of ridding himself of his apartment in preparation for the move. The wrench of having to jam on the brakes jarred him.

It jarred the both of us, really. I know that in this kind of story there’s always a moment in which the relationship starts to go bad. Ours didn’t rot; it didn’t grow so rancid that it’s difficult to look back upon. It did grow awkward, though. And it started soon after his rejection from the order.

“What did your advisor at the order tell you?” I asked, a few nights following the news, after we’d made love. He was in my arms, that small and perfect body curled onto mine in fur-covered curves and angles. I already knew the answer. He was moping enough, however, that I wanted him to say it aloud, so it would sink in.

“He told me to apply again next year,” he said, reluctantly. “That the entire board would be different next year, and that with him at its head, I’d be able to join.”

"A year," I pointed out.

“It’s a year,” he said, stubbornly.

“It’s only a year. You’ll apply again. You’ll get what you want. A year’s not long to wait.” Secretly, though, I was basking in the thought of another year with him.

He sighed. I knew he was thinking it over. I thought that inwardly he was agreeing with me, that he was seeing the rightness of what I was pointing out to him. I thought that in a moment he’d nod and agree with me, and I’d stroke his head until he was smiling once again. Obviously, I didn’t know him as well as I thought. A few moments later, he spoke up again. “Would you be upset if I started seeing someone else?”

I blinked. I wasn’t expecting that question. “What?” I asked. “No. Of course not.” It was, in a small way, a lie. I minded very much the thought of him with someone else. A selfish side of me wanted him all to myself, forever. Fortunately, that side was outvoted by the part of me that knew how stupid and irrational it was of me to expect such a thing. “Sweetie,” I said, very slowly, keeping my voice calm and level. “I want you to do what makes you happy. I've always said it’s unfair to ask you to love me.”

“I still love you,” he said, quietly. He meant it, that night. His eyes were still full of fear as he spoke. “I love you. I do. It’s just . . . now. . . .”

“I get it,” I told him hastily, so he wouldn’t have to say the words. I did get it. Before, I was a safe repository for his affections. I had an official status of temporary. We'd both knew that the relationship as it was, wasn’t going to last. It had an expiration date. Now, though, with an open-ended future, perhaps I wasn’t as practical for him. “I totally get it.”

“You’re upset,” he said, looking at me with the eyes of a scared doe.

I was. “I’m not,” I fibbed. “I’m fine. Really. I love you. I want you to do what you need to do. If you want to date someone, date someone. We'll still be friends. Nothing's different with us.”

Things had changed, though. I left a few minutes later, knowing and hating the fact.

Will hadn’t anyone in mind when he’d asked that question. Within the month, though, he had a guy he was dating—a six-foot-six hulk of a man with drooping shoulders, shaggy blond hair, and a jaw like a bludgeon. He looked like the son of Lurch, of the Addams family. In my journal of the time, I derisively called him ‘Lunk.’ The first time I met him, I saw him as a cruel parody of myself—the height exaggerated, the facial features rendered in broad strokes that were vaguely reminiscent of mine, in a funhouse mirror kind of way. Lunk weighed about a hundred pounds more than I, and walked like a hunchback. I was the first to shake his hand, though, and I spent nights at the bar talking to him and making him feel welcome and part of the group, just to prove there were no ill feelings.

Lunk didn’t last. There were others. There was a blond, chubby artist with the stammer. There was a floppy-haired literary type who, save for the fact that his features were dark where mine were fair, could have been my twin. Every new dating partner seemed to be some kind of attempt to find a man in my image, twisted and distorted as it sometimes seemed. And every time there was a new fellow introduced to me at the bar, I was the first out there with a handshake and a welcoming smile.

Even though inwardly, sometimes, that smile would be through gritted teeth.

Under the circumstances, it was normal that we’d grow apart. We were still friends, though gradually our sex died down to nothing. I felt as if sex with me kept him from a love life of his own. On his part, I think he imagined I was angry with him. We would stand close to each other when we went out together. He came to family occasions, still sat at the table at another Christmas.

But it wasn’t the same.

The final blow to the relationship came a year later. True to his advisor’s word, when Will applied again to the same order, he was accepted by the new board. All the plans he’d put on hold, he suddenly needed to put into motion again. He said goodbye to the last of my stand-ins, and gave up his apartment, and finalized his plans for a vow of poverty. At a party at my house, friends and family gathered to say goodbye. He and I hugged, and parted with tears in my eyes.

He was getting what he wanted. That should have been the end to it. But a week later, I was on gay.com chatting when a private message popped up from Will’s account there. What are you doing on? I asked. Is something wrong?


In my temporary confusion, I honestly thought that there was some kind of emergency that he’d been given special dispensation to resolve on the internet. Though why through gay.com, it never occurred to me. Nope, he typed back. Just so fucking bored.


I prodded him a little more. He was at the order of the brotherhood or whatever they called it, he told me. He wasn’t supposed to be on gay.com, or on the computer at all, but he was tired of everything monastic. He’d had a week of studying and praying and doing good work at the local bread bank, and apparently was over it. So he’d logged onto the biggest time waster of all, and declared himself bored.

I was a little stunned, to be honest. The admission of boredom seemed particularly puerile to me. Will had gotten what he’d wanted. He was doing what he’d wanted to do for years. He’d fucking given away his life, to do this. And after a week, he was bored?

Every day after that, he logged on to chat in the Michigan room about how bored and dissatisfied he was. It pissed me off, more than a little. Will had been heroic, in my eyes; he’d been a larger-than-life figure for wanting what he wanted, and going to extremes to achieve it. Listening to him bitch about the bad food and the lack of internet and the tediousness diminished him. He sounded petty. His reasons for dissatisfaction were picayune. It was like listening to a secretly-taped conversation from that U.S. Airways pilot who managed to his crash-land his plane in the Hudson a couple of years ago and save his passengers, confessing in confidence that he’d really only done it because he didn’t want all those packets of in-flight peanuts to go to waste. I wanted to fucking shake him. Besides. It's a religious order. What had he really thought it was going to be like? I don't think they're known for their spa-like facilities and in-cruise entertainment.

A week later, he was home again. Somehow he got a new apartment, and his furniture out of storage. He started looking for a job much like the job that had given him such dissatisfaction. The priesthood wasn’t for him, he told people. He was just glad to be back. And I, on some level, couldn’t forgive him.

It was unfair of me, but I couldn't help myself. Will had been the man who had always encouraged me to follow my heart and my artistry and do the one thing in my life that made me happiest. I thought he was doing the same. He was my model, my inspiration. I'd upheld him as an ideal, defended his choices to friends and family. I'd thought him noble.

Two weeks, he’d spent at that dream of his. Two fucking weeks before he’d given up and returned to the exact same life from which he wanted to escape. It wasn’t that he hadn’t given the dream a fair shake. He hadn’t even given it a shake at all.

I’d see him at the bars, and I’d wave and smile. I’d hug him, occasionally, in a friendly way. We’d make small talk. But it wasn’t the same. We’d look at each other across the crowds of people—him with those big, sad eyes, and me with my chipper smile, which was a mask, really.

It was a far, far cry from those nights when we’d be in the corner, pressed against each other, making out as if our lives depended on it. Every time I thought of those times, and of the nights of passion, and of the love and closeness we’d lavished upon each other, it sent a pang through my heart.

I thought the friendship was ruined, forever. And then, a year later, we made love one final time.

Will: In the Dark

(This is a continuation of Will: Perfect, which itself is part of a series that took up most of last week. It has a couple more installments to go.)



I'm most myself when I'm lying down in the dark with someone else, just talking. That darkness, that place where we rely on every sense save sight, is where we fill the quiet room with furnishings of our own words and imaginations. It’s a liberating space between sleep and consciousness. Nothing in it is more important there than memory and past experience. There's no worry about whether my hair's a mess, or whether I’m spitting when I talk. There's just me, and the person I'm with, and our words and touch.

I used to bask in those evenings with Will. The first night we spent together was not the last, by any means. About once a month, or sometimes more if it wasn’t a problem at home, I’d arrive at his house with a small overnight pack, a smile on my face, and a hard-on hanging down the leg of my jeans. Even on the weeks in which we weren’t overnighting together, we’d connect either at his place or at mine and spend the evening together.

It was the one period of my life, after I’d flipped to the top, that I returned to bottoming on more than a once-every-dog’s-age basis. I knew with him that I’d be fucked, that within a few minutes of closing the door behind us, he’d have me face-down on his mattress, clothes discarded on the floor, his strong, relentless dick buried seven inches inside me. I loved giving that to him. I loved that my ass was his playground, where he got to do all the things of which he’d always dreamed during his marriage but never tried. I liked knowing I’d been his first, and cherished knowing that handsome man had chosen me over anyone else as the man to take his gay virginity.

It was the last period in my life in which I once again grew accustomed to the sweet security of surrendering myself and my body, while being held in another man’s arms. I never feel warmer, or more secure.

But then, afterward, when my hole was sore and he was panting and spent, we would fall back onto the pillows and reach out for each other in the darkness. We wouldn’t hold back, when we talked. Anything was fair game.

It was during one of the first evenings we spent naked and talking on his bed that I found myself emboldened to ask about what he’d told me, the night he met. Will wanted to be a priest. Normally the Catholic church wasn’t interested in accepting older candidates for study and ordination, but there were certain orders, in remote sections of the country, that secluded members and set them on that clerical path. It was in the dark that Will confided in me that he felt his everyday job was unfulfilling. He looked in the mirror, he told me, and saw an old man staring back at him. He couldn’t bear to leave his fifties without making a change. Even if it meant abandoning it all—friends, security, family—he wanted to spend the remaining years of his life committed to doing good works. He wanted to comfort those in need.

I admired him for that. He was ready to take a big leap in his life—bigger than the divorce, bigger than his own admission, late in life, of his sexual desires. In my eyes, Will was heroic. He was going after what he really wanted.

I wanted to know how he reconciled being gay with his Catholicism; I was not a fan of the Catholic church, then or now. It has always seemed to me to thrive on on the cultivation of fear and inadequacy. I didn’t agree with its policies or its politics, or even really with its tenets.

He said that he doesn't believe God can make anything bad. Will regarded his sexuality as a gift to be enjoyed with the ones he loved, which always made me feel giddy inside. And yet it's a gift that he was willing to give up, along with the gifts of friends and family and music, in service to an entity he’d never seen or heard speak. There really was something admirable in that.

Every once in a while I believe I'm graced with a glimpse of how different my life could be if I'd chosen another path. Now and again I meet people at forks in the road. I continue down the crazy thoroughfare I've chosen for myself, happy to be traveling it, for the most part. But I often turn back my head, see the smaller artery disappearing off in another direction, and I wonder what might have been.

I could see so easily a life with Will. We both knew it would never happen. Yet in private moments I could imagine myself partnering with him and doing the things I did best—fashioning a home for him better than that apartment for the newly divorced. Making him meals. Encouraging him to do the things that were important for him. Yet when the things that were most important for him were the ones that would soon take him away, what was the use of the dream?

During my time with Spencer, readers occasionally would accuse me of not understanding what it was like for him to love someone who was leaving. But I did, because ten years ago, I was in the same position. I knew that another fork in the road was rapidly approaching. The day was arriving, and soon, when Will would be waving goodbye to me from another car headed a different direction from my own.

It really was an act of grace that made us friends. For a spell, he was the closest male friend I’ve ever had. Every time I think of Will it's still with an affection I don't even feel for most of my birth family. I didn’t want him to go. But I didn’t say anything. If I did, it would be as a joke—I’d tell him it would be a lot easier on me if he'd join one of those monastic communities that makes fudge or cheese, so at least I could get a good hamper from him every Christmas. Making jokes was easier than admitting to him how bereft I really felt at his eventual, but certain departure.

Don’t ever suggest to me I didn’t know how Spencer felt, during our time together. Will, my dearest friend, my lover, each day was coming closer to making a choice to discard our friendship behind with the detritus of the rest of his life. It haunted me, though I spoke of it as little as possible.

He knew, though. When I’d grow silent and teary-eyed lying next to him, thinking of it, I thought the dark would conceal my pain. Then I’d feel his hand searching for mine, warm and strong, giving me the comfort I never told him I needed.