Sunday Morning Questions: Drama Desk Edition

Let's have a day free of crazy today, shall we?

My slow slide into the bucket of other people's insanity started last Thursday evening, when I visited a local gay bar and learned a few quality lessons that I'd like to share.

My state has one gay bar an hour away, on the half where I live. In order to be around my brethren I have to take a trip across the state line into New York and travel through some scenic little rocky byways until I arrive at a tiny hamlet with a Wagnerian name. And there, nestled on the little town's main street, across from the picturesque train-station-slash-hamburger-joint, is the teeny-tiniest little gay bar that anyone's ever seen.

It's cute, I'll give you that. The bartenders there are friendly, the snacks come in a cone of tissue paper, the TVs are large, the drinks are cheap-ish, and I've never had a bad time since I've started going there every couple of weeks.

If you sense a big but coming, you're definitely on the scent.

I was actually recognized by one of my readers after I'd sat down and ordered a drink—apparently my chin and grin from my various avatars are that recognizable (I know it wasn't my dick, since I wasn't sitting there with my pants off. For a change. And hey there, Vince, if you're reading!) So that was kind of fun. And I was actually making a new friend who was sitting next to me at the bar. He was a dweeby guy who was obviously a little smitten with me. How could I tell? Because he looked as if he wanted to melt into the floor whenever I spoke to him—and when we weren't talking, he kept staring at me as if he wished I would.

So I was talking to the fellow. His name was Mark. Mark wasn't really my type—he was kind of nebbishy, and soft-shouldered, and big-assed, and wore a narrow-wale dark brown corduroy blazer the likes of which I haven't seen since bad movies set at Columbia University in the nineteen-seventies, but he was sweet and shy and kind of adorkable, so I was making polite conversation and getting to know him. I learned that he fancied himself a singer, and was waiting for a friend named James.

I'd assumed, since I talked to Mark for close to an hour and a half without his friend showing up, that James was an imaginary excuse he'd invented at the beginning of our conversation in case I turned out to be a clumsy masher, or a total freak, so that he could extricate himself easily. But no—close to midnight, in through the front door burst his buddy, surrounded by a cloud of drama. You know the type. Big chubby guy with platinum hair and a stink of look-at-me. He stood there talking to one of the employees, his voice rising and falling in pitch, audible even over the group of drunk girls at the other end of the bar screeching along to the chorus of The Cranberries' "Zombie."

Mark explained to me, right before James came over, that the week before James had gotten into some kind of fight with a woman who lived above the bar, or something, and that the cops had to be called. There was light pushing, and name calling, and the threat of pepper spray. From the way Mark described it, it sounded like quite the night for the sleepy little hamlet.

So, because I'm an instigator, when James sat down and gets introduced to me, I came out and as a humorous icebreaker said, in a totally-kidding voice, "So, I heard you started a bar brawl last week! Complete with broken bottles, some tobacco-spittin' cowboys, and both gangs from West Side Story!"

Anyone else would've, you know, laughed it off and said, "Yeah, I'm crazy that way"—or realized that I was obviously kidding—but this big old queen started to gasp and rapidly flutter his hands to cool his cheeks, like he was my ancient maiden Aunt Fanny from Savannah and I'd gone and done interrupted Sunday supper by stompin' up the verandah with mud all over my feet, and started talking about how he would NEVER start a brawl and the IDEA of such and he was a VICTIM and . . . well, if you've ever watched The A-List: New York  or even seen a cluster of urban homosexuals, you can probably imagine the torrent of drama.

So I said, seriously, leaning in, "Mark told me what happened. I'm sorry if I offended you. I was kidding around."

That's when he went, "Uh, Bob? Slob? What was your name again?", with his index finger waving all up in my face. (He fucking knew what my fucking name was, the fucker.) "I don't know who you are, or what you do, or where you came from, but this entire affair affected me very deeply and I do not intend to talk about it with anyone this evening! I am not going to say a single word. I have talked about it with the people I need to talk about it with, and those are the only people to whom I am going to talk about it. In fact, I am closing my mouth and not speaking to you again."

He closed his mouth for two seconds and looked at the karaoke book.

"In fact," he immediately said, taking a deep breath to support the stream of words about to come, "I am not going to say a word about this incident ever again. And fuck you, you hear? Fuck. You!" I raised my eyebrows and pressed my lips together, a little taken aback. Listen. I know everyone doesn't have the same sense of humor, but I didn't say anything offensive enough to merit that kind of response.

James closed his mouth for one second, and then immediately started in again, "Because I am the victim here and my good name was trampled on and this is not a topic for discussion, and I will not talk about it! . . . "

And readers, I swear to god, he flipped through the karaoke book and kept going on and on about how he wasn't going to talk about it any more, for an endless amount of time, without taking a breath. Not a single breath. Remember those FedEx commercials with the fast-talking guy? James made him look like a rookie in the minor leagues.

Finally he wound down, his maiden-Aunt-Fanny indignation running out of steam. Once his mouth shut, I, in my iciest tones, replied coldly, "And yet here it is, five minutes later, and you're still fucking talking about it. Hmm. How 'bout that." Then I went back to an investigation of the gay rag in front of me, and put on my frostiest Ice Princess robes, and proceeded to ignore him for the rest of the evening.

After he calmed down, that bitch spent the rest of the night trying to get back into my good graces by sidling up to me to remark how thin and young I looked and how he wished he had my hair, but I was having none of it. I don't take a fuck-you lightly. Even poor Mark tried to apologize for James by informing me he was 'excitable,' but I couldn't whip up even a thin facade of tolerance.

There's a broad line, gentlemen and ladies, between someone joking around, and someone deliberately trying to be offensive.  I understand that not all silly jibes land as intended—which is why I apologized when I realized how offended he was by mine. I believe it's right, when your nose is out of joint about the way someone treats you, to say why and ask them not to do it again. My joke might have been badly timed, or just plain bad. But it was framed as, and intended to be, a joke. When I made the apology and he went ahead and deliberately messed up my name and give me a big hearty Cee Lo Green fuck you, he was deliberately offensive.

The lessons I learned:

1) New York queens are waaaay bitchier than the midwestern variety;
2) I need to honor my instincts about those with an air of drama about them;
3) James cannot sing Anita Baker's "Sweet Love,"; and
3) I should not be permitted to talk to strangers in gay bars.


Let's get to some questions, shall we? Because of Friday's incident in which another blogger decided to bombard both this site and my formspring.me account with over three dozen abusive messages, I've had to disable anonymous questions at Formspring until he's on his medications. If you have an account there, though, you can certainly ask me questions—or just send them to my email account in the meantime. I'd be glad to answer them in this weekly forum.



Do you believe in an afterlife? A deity independent of the human mind?

It's a nice notion to which I have a sentimental attachment, as I was raised believing so. If pressed, however, I'd have to say that no, I don't have that kind of faith.

What is your favorite site for finding fuck buddies?


I get hit up most often on BBRT and on Manhunt. I find Adam4Adam a good service in certain parts of the country, and pretty cruddy in others.

Ever been in a 3-way or group? What was the total number of guys involved in the action? If this occurred more than once than what was the largest group of guys?


The largest group in which I've been involved was about thirty-six men. It seems in the large groups, there's a lot of pairing and tripling-off, so it never really feels like a massive free-for-all.

I'm really interested to hear about what happened with the bi couple, more for the fact of if they were fighting over your dick more than anything ;)


The following question will probably confirm me as a sexual libertine who can't keep his partners straight, so to speak, but here goes: Which bi couple?

I was reading you questions and you mentioned one that ended as it getting complicated but which ever you wish to share


Ah, that bi couple. It was complicated.

For about six or seven months I was seeing a childless married couple near me—both in their late twenties, both professionals, both very good looking. No one would have suspected that he was basically impotent unless he was taking a big cock up the ass, and she was turned on in a major way by watching him get fucked, and then climbing on me for a ride herself.

I thought it was a good relationship. They were inviting me over a couple of times a week. The sex was great. Then it just stopped. No explanations, no reasons given. They didn't respond to my emails or phone calls, so I just let it drop, though I was worried I'd done something wrong.

Six months after they stopped seeing me, I ran across them in a local market. She happened to be exactly six months pregnant. The entire conversation was so awkward, especially when I brought up her pregnancy, that i was convinced the two events were probably connected.

They got what they wanted, I suppose, and what the husband couldn't provide. But I felt a little bit cheap and used after.

(More cheap and used than normal, anyway.)

I'm a bit slow ... you mean you fathered the bi couple's child?


I believe that there came a point at which they started viewing me not as a playmate, but as an opportunity, and that is what came to pass, yes. I have no solid evidence for it.

your Bi which is awesome so what are your attractions are they equal to both sexes


I'm about as likely to look at a sexy woman or a man and think, "Hot."

I'm more likely to fantasize about men than I am about women when I'm indulging in that kind of thing.

I'm much more likely to hit up a guy than I am to go out looking for a woman to play with, because men, basically, are sluts. Although in the last five years I've limited most of my play with women to married couples or boyfriend/girlfriend couples, and although in the last two I haven't even had the heart for much of that, I'm totally open to having female playmates.

Do you get the sense that men are more repressed in CT than MI?

It may be the county in which I live, which is both populous and wealthy.

I find it interesting that the moment I leave the county and travel either to Westchester or New York City, or head east to New Haven, I get bombarded with offers for sex on services like Grindr or Scruff. The moment I step back into my home area, nothing. There seems to be a big blanket muffling the sexuality of these 625 square miles.

If you could own the entire series of any 5 tv shows, past or present, which would they be?
Doctor Who, Absolutely Fabulous, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Avengers, and Blackadder.

Where does Mr. Steed come from?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steed

When you are craving a cookie what flavor is it? Is it fresh baked or store bought?

I'd go for a spicy molasses cookie, anytime.

When you were younger did you ever experiment with fruits or vegetables in your hole?

I did not, because there was not a fruit or vegetable available that my parents couldn't look at and say to themselves, "Hmm, that would be so much tastier if we bought it in a can."

I did have a broom handle that was my intimate friend in my pre- and early teen years.

When you blog about getting money for sex do you get some readers emailing/commenting badly towards your for that? Like you've burst their image of you they have or something.


No. Usually I get more offers from guys to pay me for sex.

Although I did often swap sex with the expectation of payment when I was in my teens, I don't make a business or even a habit of it these days. Some men, however, like to mix their sex with money, and I'm not going to turn them down. At the age of 47, and without a porn star's body, I'm highly flattered that I get as many offers as I do.

I don't worry about bursting my image with my readers, because I am not invested in maintaining a particular image with the men and women who read me. I live a life I very much like, and leave it to others to worry about who gives a damn.