The Power of Ma Peen

Some sage advice from me to you guys: if one of your friends suggests a Christopher Street bar crawl, just say no.

Or at least have bladders that’re larger than ours. The plan was to start at Rock Bar, right at the Hudson, and work our way east one bar at a time, stopping in for a single drink in each. I agreed to the plan because it sounded, as Barney Stinson might say, legen—wait for it—dary. In my head I pictured myself with my four friends, stopping in pubs old and familiar and new and interesting alike, then leaning against the bar ledges and tossing back shots, all in the spirit of friendly camaraderie.

What actually happened was that we’d arrive in a bar with our legs crossed and expressions of pain on our faces, and then we’d all immediately run for the men’s rooms. After what would feel like hours of pissing like horses while making orgasmic sounds of relief, we’d stagger to the bar, take a couple of sips of something, and then repeat the process as we walked cross-legged with another gallon of liquid trying to slosh out of our urethras.

Middle age is a bitch, folks.

One of the friends I was with that night last week was an old buddy from Michigan whom I’ve known for almost a quarter of a century. He was young and handsome and a little bit arrogant when I first met him; over the years he’s grown jowly and morose. He moons over and falls desperately in love with twenty-year-old male Russian strippers who don’t see anything more of him than his wallet. When they’ve tickled him like a human ATM and extracted all his cash, he mopes and wonders why he’s so alone. Eeyore, I think of him.

By the time we staggered into Pieces near the end of our trip, Eeyore had been itchily consulting his phone every thirty seconds. After I came back from the restroom and waved away the cute bartender offering liquid refreshment—I’d had enough fluid to pee out a tank suitable for a Titanic set piece—I found him slump-shouldered and morose on one of the barstools. “Can we make one more stop. . . ?” he asked me.

“Well, sure,” I said, praying that wherever it was had a clean men’s room.

“. . . in Midtown?” he concluded.

It turned out that Eeyore had learned that one of his crushes was at a bar near Grand Central. His name was Ken, and he was a lawyer. We gathered that Eeyore’s plan was to show up, stare at Ken from afar, and feel sorry for himself for not being able to go home with the guy. It sounded like kind of a downer of a ending of a boozy kind of evening, but we agreed to it, steeled ourselves to holding our bladders for another twenty minutes, and went out to hail a cab.

We quickly saw, upon walking into the Midtown bar, that Ken was not exactly what we’d expected. Eeyore had described him as a ‘hot redhead with a killer body’, when in actuality he was a kind of skinny, skeevy-looking redhead with a pot belly who was drunk off his ass. He was also singing along, badly, with the piano player in the lounge. “Why’s he singing with an accent?” I asked.

“He’s from Alabama,” said Eeyore, staring at Ken over his drink. “Is that the accent you hear?”

“No. . . .” I said, trying to think of how to phrase it. “It sounds more like if a Muppet version of Bette Davis were auditioning for Wicked. While gargling with Listerine. That kind of accent.”

“Oh, stop,” Eeyore growled.

We met Ken immediately after he finished defying gravity, when he came over, spilled his drink on me, and then proceeded to shake all our hands and immediately mangle our names. “This is my boyfriend, James,” he said, putting his arm around a handsome Asian man who’d been lingering off to the side.

Well. All of us looked at James and Ken as they exchanged pecks on the lips, and then at each other. And then we looked at Eeyore, who looked like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon being slowly deflated. I swear, the man shrunk two inches in height right before my eyes. His lips had permanently wrapped around the straw in his vodka and soda. He stared at the floor.

“Aw, honey,” I said, as I rubbed his back, after Ken and James had retreated to the other side of the room, where they dabbed at each other like fledgling couples tend to do. “Are you all right?”

“No,” said Eeyore, sounding like he meant it. “He’s so beautiful.” He sighed, and stared at Ken while he sipped at his drink.

I looked at Ken with more sober eyes, and saw an overgroomed thirty-something stuffed into some Abercrombie & Fitch clothing too young for him, but I kept my mouth shut about it. “I know, sweetie. Do you want me to break them up?” Ken turned his eyes to me, and raised his eyebrows. “It wouldn’t take much.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“All I’ve got to do is give the boyfriend a little of this,” I said, grabbing the crotch of my jeans, and squeezing. I spread my knees out and thrust forward my groin. “And you know. Give him a little of this.” I narrowed my eyes in James’ direction—neither he nor Ken were looking our way at the time. I bit my lip, and curled it, and let loose with a few come-hither looks intended purely for comic purposes. Then I sneered in a cocky manner and pretended to spank an invisible bottom.

It didn’t cheer Eeyore up completely, but at least I got a small laugh out of him. That’s all I wanted. “Oh yeah,” I growled, toward James’ back. “The power of ma peen will take care of James for you,” I told Eeyore. “Twenty-five minutes, tops. Then Ken’s allllll yours.”

“Yeah,” snorted Eeyore, as I pulled up my feet onto the bench where we were sitting, and jacked my legs open to their widest. “That’ll work.”

“Don’t underestimate the power of ma peen,” I scowled at him.

A drag queen dressed in head-to-toe zebra print, as she passed by, reached out and touched me lightly on the wrist. “Very subtle!”, she assured me before moving on.

I looked at Eeyore. He looked at me. We both burst out into laughter, and I gave him a hug. I hadn’t fixed his sadness, but for the moment, I felt like I’d stopped the bleeding with a friendship Band-Aid.

Well. I was still having issues holding my water. I spent a few minutes in the restroom emptying my bladder (and making out a little bit with a boy who was enjoying his twenty-first birthday). When I returned, my buddy Eeyore was sitting slumped over on the bench, fascinatedly watching Ken and James across the room. The pair were faced off against each other like a couple of fighting cats—shoulders hunched, eyes wide, mouths twisted into snarls. All that was missing was the puffy fur and the exposed fangs. “What the hell happened?” I asked Eeyore.

“I don’t know!” he said. “One minute they were all over each other . . . it was disgusting . . . and then the next. . . .” He gestured at them.

The pair rose and stalked by our table, in the direction of the outer bar. Their hands were stuffed into their own pockets.

The drag queen passed by on her super-high stilettos, very carefully balancing a martini in her painted talons. “There will be drama to-noight!” she assured us.

For several minutes Eeyore and I sat at our table, watching the formerly-happy couple bicker in the other room. They faced each other at the bar, gesticulated wildly, and shook with anger. At one point, Ken got up, slammed down his drink so hard that it sent a spray over the bar, and stomped out. He returned a couple of minutes later, stomped past poor James, who looked as if he’d been socked in the stomach, and marched into the piano lounge where we were sitting.

“Well. Guess who just broke up with his boyfriend?” he asked Eeyore. Then, seeing James come after him, he sighed heavily, and escaped to the outdoor courtyard. James pursued him, obviously with a few more things to say.

“Holy fuck,” I said.

“Holy fuck,” Eeyore echoed. He seemed as stunned as I. Then he looked at his watch. “Twenty-five minutes. Almost exactly.”

“What?” I asked, not comprehending.

“The power of your peen.” He gestured down to my junk.

“Oh,” I said. Then it sunk in. “Oh! Crap!” I’d been joking, of course. I knew it. Eeyore had known it. But there we were, less than half an hour later, and the happy couple’s relationship was hanging in tatters. “Wow. The power of ma peen.” I looked down at my open legs, amazed.

Eeyore reached down, put his hands on my knees, and gently pulled together my thighs. “Be careful where you aim that thing, cowboy,” he said. “It’s done enough damage already.”

Sunday Morning Questions: Bear Week Aftermath Edition

My recent sojourn to Cape Cod didn’t coincide with Bear Week in Provincetown . . . though we overlapped a little. The last couple of days of my beach resort town vacation, mixed in among the tourist families and the twinkish gay boys with a weekly rental to their names were men of a decidedly more hefty and hirsute sort. By the time I left on Saturday morning, the patio of Joe’s Coffee on Commercial Street was overflowing with bearded men whose chest hair was bursting out of their XXL tank tops.

And I certainly heard about Bear Week, the entire time I was there. You should see this place during Bear Week!, every merchant told me, with a knowing shake of the head. They would whip up visions of streets packed from side to side by partying bears, and of two-hour waits at the more popular restaurants, and of entire supermarkets gutted of everything, even health food, after swarms of hairy men descended upon them like ravenous vacationing locusts.

I’m not crazy about crowds, personally, so getting out before all that happened was fine with me. Also, why attend Bear Week when it was all I heard about from my real-life friends when it happened?

Not to mention the delicious and nearly constant stream of drama I get to witness on social media, afterward. The big saga I got to witness this year involved a very active and body-conscious muscle bear and his circle of friends blocking and defriending anyone who dared to suggest that Bear Week in Provincetown can be clique-ish and exclusionary. Not in MY experience, they sniffed as they clicked on the delete buttons, and then proceeded to gripe about the offenders in their various social media feeds. “Tedious insecure people!” said one of them. “Extreme introverts!” said another. “Obviously they have body insecurities that border on mental illness,” said another, dismissively.

Now, if you think about it, a bunch of similar people of the same social circles blocking others and then agreeing among themselves they were right to do so is pretty much the dictionary definition of being clique-ish and exclusionary. Somehow the irony is escaping them, however. I’ve commented several times that for a group that had its roots in pushing for an acceptance of more body types, ages, and types of masculinity than were popular in gay iconography twenty-five to thirty-five years ago, its self-identifying members can sometimes be even more clannish and restrictive than twinks and circuit boys. The extreme intolerance of dissent within their own ranks that I sometimes witness just kind of reinforces that.

And what is achieved, exactly, by vilifying those who dare to express an opinion they don’t wish to hear? Does feeling excluded automatically make someone an extreme introvert or someone with borderline mental illness? Can’t someone simply be disgruntled—and maybe even somewhat right to feel so—without being classified under some DSM-5 diagnosis?

There are people out there, certainly, who hang back and don’t make an effort, then crab about it afterward. There are many people who achieve self-fulfilling prophecy by telling themselves (or others) repeatedly that they’re going to have a miserable time at a social event, that no one is going to like them or look at them, and who then give off such a negative vibe that everyone stays clear. The person in question gets the easy vindication of being right, but at the cost of making himself (and everyone else) pretty miserable.

In big gatherings there are often a number of very closed-off, cliquey bears. (There are also cliquey muscle boys, and cliquey twinks, and cliquey nudists, and cliquey orgy hounds. Just depends on the group.) There are also a number of people who are so insecure that they refuse to have anything other than a terrible time. When the latter set up a hue and cry after an event, they’re pooping on the good times everyone else had—and it’s understandable to feel confused or even hostile about it. When the former badmouth and block anyone who dares dissent, though, it not only feeds into the negativity, but reinforces it.

Your experience is not everyone else’s. Your good time is not everyone’s good time, nor is your week of feeling lonely and miserable what everyone else shared. Talk about your experience, certainly. Share it. But do so thoughtfully, and without painting everyone else to be the bad guy. Do it in a way that encourages communication—not shuts it down entirely.

But enough about Bear Week. Let’s get to some questions from my readers. Feel free to ask me yours either via email (there’s an address in the sidebar on my blog), or via formspring.me.


Do you find when composing your blog that the language just flows and it is perfect as written? Or do you find yourself going back and recomposing whole sentences and paragraphs?

I don’t spend a whole ton of time on my journal entries. Although I do take my entries from my personal journal and post them publicly, they are at heart written for my eyes. I have a busy enough life that spending hours and hours on a blog post doesn’t seem like a great investment of time.

So mostly my journal stuff tends to be what I would think of as first draft material. There have been a couple of occasions in which I’ve taken old journal entries and repurposed them as essays; in those cases I’ve had to do some considerable revision.

My general rule of thumb is that I don’t like spending more than an hour writing an entry. Certainly the writing shouldn’t take any longer than the actual sex acts described therein. Since I do a chunk of the writing work in my head beforehand, generally I can stick to this goal. I’ll take a considerable amount of time deciding what approach I want to take to a piece, what the focus should be, and how narrow I intend to keep the aperture of my mental camera (I don’t know how to describe it in any other way), so that when I sit down to write, I know what I want to do.


Adding to the last question—as your write do you discover things about yourself—that is, coming to realizations that you were not fully conscious of?

Absolutely. This is why I keep a journal.

I’ve always joked that journal-keeping is a lot cheaper than therapy would be. Since I know a lot of people who have seen therapists—and I know a lot of therapists, too—I know that I’m not far from the truth. Sitting down on a consistent basis and attempting to face truths about my behavior is exactly what I would want to achieve through therapy. I simply choose to do it through writing instead.

I don’t always come to an epiphany every time I sit down to write. Sometimes I learn things about myself only over the long course of time, or when I examine old entries about similar topics, or individual lovers. As I learn to see the patterns of my life, though, I get more insight into what makes me tick. If I seek change, knowing myself makes it easier.

What I do know is that as I live my life, I leave behind a trail of words. They don’t describe me in uniformly glowing terms, or as some idealized version of myself. If I wanted to be a role model, or leave the impression that I was a better and nobler person than I actually am, I wouldn’t dwell so much on my failures, or my insecurities, or be so frank about my sex life. What those words do is paint a picture of who I’ve been and who I am now, warts and erections and all. Because of my 35-year habit of keeping a journal, I’m not ashamed of that person in the least.


Manual or electric toothbrush?

I couldn't live without my Sonic toothbrush. That thing disintegrates plaque on contact and leaves my gums feeling like they've been massaged by a thousand tiny fingers.


Given the ratio of fakes and flakes on hook-up sites, do you have recommendations or a recommended strategy for bottoms seeking to get laid?

First of all, I have to concede that I'm not usually advertising on hook-up sites as a bottom. A real and successful bottom might be a better person to ask.

There are legions of bottoms on Manhunt and Gaydar and other hook-up sites, however, and they're all competing for a limited number of tops. A bottom needs to stand out in several ways.

At bare minimum, I ask that the bottom:

--Respect my privacy
--Refrain from being a psycho stalker
--Refrain from behaving as if he's entitled to my dick, and
--Not be a pest.

If you can convey your sanity in both your profile and your subsequent communications with the top you want, then he really should respond politely.

But you still have to stand out as a likely prospect, which to me (other tops might have other standards!) means conveying:

--A genuine desire to meet
--A means to make a meeting happen, sooner rather than later
--The promise of a rinsed-out hole
--That you're someone who'll be focused on my cock first, and his own orgasm second, and
--That you're someone who will not allow substances to interfere with the sex.

Then and only then do tops look for the most personal things they want from a bottom. These are even more highly individual traits. For me, they include:

--A hunger for sperm, especially mine
--Guys who share my enjoyment of sub/dom, dad/son, and non-vanilla play
--A great kisser, and
--A very tactile approach to lovemaking.

But that's just me. Other tops are going to have other specific interests.

You've got a limited amount of time to impress a top. The more quickly you can communicate your stability, genuine interest, and specific ways that you suit an individual top's needs, the more likely you are to get his cock. Typing " 'Sup?' " or "Looking?" isn't going to do it.

A couple of other things: With so many bottoms showing ass photos online, no top wants to have to beg and plead to see your photos. If they're locked, unlock them up front. If you don't have them posted in your profile, for the love of god post them—or offer in your initial note to send them through email. And please don’t lock them again immediately. Chances are you’re not running for Congress. You can leave them open for the top to peruse at his leisure.

Show yourself to your best advantage in your profile, your photos, and in your interaction with the top. Make him feel as if he's the one top who can satisfy your needs—definitely don't act as if he's a dildo attached to a pair of hips. Don't make outrageous claims you can't back up. And keep hunting, even when you've been rejected a few times.

Stupid Faggot 2

The boy’s on all fours before me. His fingers are splayed out to give him balance, as he slowly pistons his mouth up and down on my erect cock. A long ponytail of raven hair hangs over one shoulder—but there’s no denying his essential masculinity. Not with his muscular body, his lean waist, the two perfectly round semi-globes of his ass that are clenching and bouncing close to the floor. Not with that heavy, uncut Puerto Rican dick striking the floor like a drumstick.

I’m trying to find fault with his performance. I need something to nitpick. He’s not giving me any opportunities. He’s not grabbing onto my meat with a too-firm hand and squeezing the fuck out me. He’s not grabbing onto me all, in fact. He’s doing a steady, sloppy, slow back-and-forth on my cock, and licking out at my nuts when he comes in closest to them. It’s hard to censure him for that.

Then my phone vibrates. It’s in the pocket of my jeans, which he’d removed and folded and placed on a chair. Twice it rings. Three times. He’s still staring at me, rapt in his worship of my dick. I see my chance. “Well?” I snarl. He backs off me, surprised. “My phone’s not going to fucking answer itself,” I snap at him. I place one of my bare feet on his shoulder and shove hard. He doesn’t seem to know what I want him to do. In exaggerated syllables, I point at my pants and say, “Bring . . . me . . . my . . . fucking . . . phone. Key-rist. Stupid faggot.”

“Yes sir,” he says, scrambling. He scurries across the floor, pulls my phone out of a pocket already bulging with tens and twenties, and brings it to me. Quick as he is, he still can’t avoid the fact that the moment he puts the device into my waiting hands, the vibration stops and the screen goes black. “Here you are, sir.”

I stare at him like he’s insane. “It doesn’t do me any good now, does it? Is my phone buzzing?” I hold it out to him. “Well? Is it? You know what buzzing means? Como se dice?”

“No sir. It’s not buzzing.”

“Right. So I missed the call. All because of you. Fuck. Can’t do anything right, can you?”

“No sir. I’m sorry sir.”

Abasing himself before me excites him. It’s what he wants. What he hires me to do. His dick was erect before, but now it’s rock-hard and glistening. I can see a drop of pre-cum forming where his slit winks out between folds of foreskin. His eyes are just was wet and wide. Every time I curse in his direction, he becomes more and more excited. “Fuck,” I say, examining the phone. It was a quarterly courtesy call from Wells Fargo that I would’ve let go to voice mail anyway. “That was an important call I missed. You little piece of shit. You fucking little stupid spic faggot.” Every invective I throw his way only excites him. I can see his nostrils flaring at the insults. He’s breathing the way men breathe when they’re close to orgasm. “Jesus. I’ve busted open piñatas with more brains that you.”

“I’m sorry sir. I’m just a piece of shit spic faggot, sir,” he says, breathlessly.

“And?” With a tone of supreme irritation, I raise my eyebrow and look down at him from my throne on his most comfortable armchair.

“And I won’t do it again,” he ventures. I shake my head. Incorrect. “And I’ll try to do better.” Wrong again. “And I’m just a stupid faggot, sir. I’m a little piece of shit.” I crook the corner of my mouth and stare as if I can’t believe what the fuck he’s saying. “What, sir? Tell me.”

I gesture at my cock, which is lying between my thighs, slick from his spit but otherwise unoccupied. “Christ,” I mutter. It’s supposed to sound as if I’m saying to to myself, but I want him to hear. “I have to tell this stupid fucker everything. You better not stop sucking,” I warn him, as I hold the phone to my ear. “Hello? Hey man. Yeah, sorry I missed your call there. Nah, I’m not doing anything important. Just getting my dick sucked. Nah, some spic boy.” I pause. “He’s all right.” I drawl the last two words so they collide. Aaahight.

The boy’s eyes are so dilated with excitement they’re little more than two oversized pupils. He stares at me with fucking adoration writ plain on his face. The more I insult him, the better the blow job gets. “Nah, not that good. Remember that kid we let suck the both of us off at that bar? Yeah, the one in the Village. Kind of like that.” My conversation, of course, is entirely imaginary. There’s no one at the other end of the line. I don’t even have the screen on. “Huh? You want to see? Okay, hang on.”

I turn my body back so it’s squared with the boy between my legs. This time I actually unlock the phone’s screen and fire up the camera and point it down at my dick. “Fuck,” I snarl at the kid. “You ain’t no model. Keep sucking.” When I snap his photo, it captures the ardor my disdain arouses. I take four or five photos in all. They all show the face of a young man who is totally into his task of worshipping and servicing a big dick. I go back to my imaginary conversation. “Yeah, I got a couple. I’ll text you in a minute. Huh? He’s just some Puerto Rican cocksucker. Dime a dozen.” I pause, then snicker as if the other guy has said something funny.

While I do, I pull my dick out of the boy’s mouth. “Oh yeah. I remember that one. Mmm-hmm.” I shove him down onto his butt. Gesture for him to lie down on his back in front of me. Then I shove my left foot into his mouth and use the right one to stomp on the base of his cock. “Yeah, well this one’s not worth shit. He gives me two hundred to visit. Fuck, I know. First time he tried to pay me in tacos. I know, right?”

The boy is still staring at me with puppy love in his eyes as he slobbers over my foot. When I absent-mindedly grind my bare heel into his nuts, he sucks in air through his mouth, winces, and whines slightly, but he doesn’t complain. It just makes him lick up and down my sole faster and harder, using his broad flat tongue like he might on an all-day sucker. “Yeah, okay,” I say, wrapping up my imaginary call. “Sorry about missing you before. It’s the faggot’s fault.” I chuckle again. “Yeah, I don’t know how I always end up with the stupidest pieces of shit out there. Long as they give me their holes though, right? All right. Later, buddy. What? Yeah, I’ll text them. Just remember he’s an ugly motherfucker. Okay . . . later. See ya.” I pretend to click off the call, and spend a moment pretending to text the photos I’d taken a few moments before. Then I throw the phone down onto a nearby pillow.

I stretch out my feet, drawing up the right leg a few inches and letting it land on his nuts again. He gasps from the pain of it and draws up his knees to cradle my foot. “Who was that, sir?” he asks, removing my foot from between his lips.

“Is that any of your fucking business?” I scowl.

“No sir.” His dick is rock hard against my ankle. He pushes into me, excited. “I love that you talk about me to your friends, sir. I love that you call me names to your friends. Thank you sir.”

“You know what I like?” I tell him. I pick up my phone again and check my mail, like I’m bored.

“What sir?” I wait a while to speak as I continue to check my messages and open up Facebook to see what’s new. It puts him on edge. “What is it, sir? Do you like my faggot mouth? Do you want my faggot ass? Please tell me. What do you like?”

I move the phone to the side, as if I’d forgotten he was there. “I like when you don’t fucking talk at all.” He sighs, and melts into the floor. “Now shut up and suck my dick again,” I order. “That's what your mouth should be doing. Stupid fucking faggot.”

Though he doesn’t say a word for the rest of the time we spend together that afternoon, he doesn’t have to. Those expressive eyes of his articulate how much he exalts me.

Sunday Morning Questions: Stalkery Edition

Not that long ago I opened up one of those apps that locates nearby guys for you based on GPS information—Scruff or Growlr, it probably was, since I don’t use Grindr any longer—and I had a nice conversation with a good-looking guy in the vicinity. Nice, but brief. He said I was handsome; I said I felt the same about him. We established that we lived within about twenty-five miles of each other. He asked if I had a big dick. I let a picture do the talking on that one. We both agreed that we should meet sometime, and swapped phone numbers.

And that was it. I flipped off my tablet and went to bed.

The next morning I woke up and looked at my phone. I had ten texts from the guy, spaced out over the hours normal people are sleeping. Are you awake? read the first. Message me if you’re awake when you get this, read the second. Then, I’m up thinking about you and if you’re awake, could you text me back? And so on. If my phone didn’t automatically go silent at ten o’clock and night and keep quiet until nine the next morning, I sure would’ve been awake (and slightly ticked off) at getting a fifth text at four o’clock in the morning, that’s for sure.

When I awoke to all those texts, I found my interest had naturally cooled overnight. I logged onto whatever app it was I’d found the guy, and within seconds—seconds—of logging on, the guy was sending me messages. I’ve been texting you, he said. Maybe you aren’t getting my texts? Your number is ###-###-####, right? Are you around this afternoon? Hello? Are you there? I was feeling disappointed in the guy and hounded and getting a sense of deja vu from earlier in the calendar year, so I just sat there and tried to think of what to do. Then my phone buzzed. I’m trying to talk to you on Scruff (or Growlr or whatever it was), it said. Maybe you aren’t getting my messages there?

Mikey, my brother, said not so very long ago that I get off on being pursued. Which is correct. I’ve spent a lifetime being the one chased. But he very quickly added that if someone pursued me too much, I get turned off even more quickly.

Also true. And even by the most lenient standards, this guy was pursuing me a little too much. A little too hard.

And, as it turned out, a little too crazily. I decided rather than reason with someone who was turning out to be a freak after a brief conversation, I’d cut my losses. I blocked him on the app. I made the decision to ignore the texts (and eventually, phone messages) the guy was leaving for me, because answering them would merely let him know that he actually had the right phone number. For a week I got upwards of twenty messages a day that got increasingly weird. I remember one that ran, From the wilderness an a-rooooo! of the wild wolf cuts through the night as the beast searches for his lost mate.

All I could really think was, what the fuckety fuck, dude?

Eventually, I’m glad to say, it all came to and end when, after over dozens of texts and voice mails he texted with a long and snippy diatribe against me that concluded, When we first talked I THOUGHT you were a nice guy who wasn’t going to turn out to be like all the other assholes in my life but I guess I was WRONG about THAT. I wanted to text back, When we first talked I thought you were sane, but I guess I was wrong, too. But I didn’t.

The whole affair sounds like comic fodder for another of my Department of Odd Encounters-tagged blog entries. But when it was happening, I was really quite shaken, and frightened. I didn’t address it directly in my blog earlier this year when it was going on, but for a couple of months I had a very serious issue with a seriously unstable stalker—and I’m not talking about some random dude leaving unkind remarks on my entries, or someone who exists only as digital bits sending me endless text messages. No, I mean a real-life, local, out-of-his-fucking-mind stalker, who went out of his way to let me know he was tracking my activities both online and in real life. I was genuinely afraid for a period of time I’d come home and find a pet bunny boiling on the stove. And that’s all I have to say about him.

I’ve had stalkers of varying strengths all my life, from the ones who merely moon from afar when they see me, to the ones who stare at me balefully in public locations and leave me notes assuming that I correctly interpreted their stern and forbidding glares as The Look Of True Love, to the ones who follow me around a campus or a town, to the outright freaks who contact me at every turn and see no harm in ‘showing up’ at Macy’s when I’m shopping there and then ‘just happen to be driving the same route’ when I’m taking the back roads home.

I’ll be honest. I don’t get it, guys (and gals—because I’ve had plenty of female stalkers, too). I don’t understand how it’s ever okay to send someone a dozen text messages overnight when you’ve just virtually met. I don’t understand how a person justifies, in his own head, cyber-stalking someone and then bragging about it to the object of his affection—or how he ever imagines that it’s A-OK to creep around behind someone and monitor his whereabouts. I don’t get the mentality. I can’t fit it into any of the little boxes of rationality and sanity that organize my own life. It’s just unfathomable.

I was sexually assaulted, years ago. I wrote about it in these pages. Sure, I’m flattered when someone pursues me, but because of my experience, there’s a limit. Cross that, and I’ll automatically choose the closest and most convenient—and I won’t be coming back to give a guy a second chance.

Enough venting on that topic. Let’s get to some questions from formspring.com. (And again, if you don’t have a formspring account, feel free to send me your questions via email. Just, you know, not two dozen of them via text, overnight.)

Okay since you like some perversion, what is your take on water sports?

My take on water sports is that it's too mainstream and vanilla to be classified a perversion.

Guys pissing on, or in each other is just another form of sex play. It's not scary; it's not particularly dangerous. From a sensual perspective, the sensation of warm wetness on the skin is pleasurable. Sharing piss can be exquisitely intimate; it can also be used to establish or reinforce dominance and submission. Like any sexual tool, the locus of excitement comes about more from how one uses it, than the act itself.

A lot of people have very strong toilet taboos from their childhoods, but you know what? A lot of men grew up being told that anal sex is a bad thing. Judging from the numbers of butt-up photos I see on Manhunt, they managed to get over that taboo. Fear of piss, can also be overcome, and so can calling it a perversion.

Have you ever fucked outside in the rain? If so, did the rain add anything to the experience?

I suppose I have fucked outdoors in the rain, though it wasn't deliberate; there have been plenty of times I've been caught in a park by a sudden downpour, though.

In these cases, the rain hasn't exactly added anything, save for the constant need to wipe the water out of my nose and eyes.

In other words, it wasn't like a Rhianna video or anything.

Do open relationships work?

If both partners work at it, absolutely.

Part of the narrative of our sexually-repressed culture is that sexual satisfaction can (and indeed, must) be achieved only in a monogamous union. Anything less than that is, in the knee-jerk popular conceit, failure.

With that message so firmly pounded into our heads from our youths, it's difficult to wrap our brains around the notion that many couples have arranged their lives outside the dominant narrative to include open relationships. For these couples, the arrangement isn't a 'second-best' compromise; it's not an admission of failure or a confession that things didn't work out as planned. It's a working system that keeps the couple together, that makes both parties happy, that often enhances the relationship, and that even can keep the sexual flame burning strongly between the two.

An open relationship is not going to work if both people don't want it, and it's especially not going to work if one person is being dragged into it by the other. And it's going to feel awkward in the initial stages, and as if it isn't working, as the couple puzzles out exactly what their own rules and boundaries are going to be—especially the first few times that either person ventures out to be with someone else.
Persistence and negotiation will pay off, however. With effort and with time, an open relationship can definitely work—I know many couples who have had such arrangements for decades, and to insinuate that their relationship is less equal to any monogamous couple's is ignorant and derogatory.

Dick Dock

There are two paths into the darkness beneath the dock. One is sneaky, a shortcut by the wooden stairs that leads down from the hotel patio and pool above. The other is longer—a trip around the dock’s perimeter to an opening in its middle, where anyone and everyone standing in the shadows can see who’s approaching. I take the latter route, aware that I’m fully illuminated by the patio lights a dozen feet above my head. My flip-flops kick up sprays of sand as I approach.

I want to be noticed.

Behind me, the night sky is speckled with stars. Salt water waves softly rise and fall, phosphorescent and ghostly. Beneath the dock is pitch-dark, but I can hear the sounds of whispers, the wet squelch of mouths on dick. The sighs and sounds of sex. I can feel dozens of eyes upon me. I’m not imagining things, as I shuffle through the sand and duck my head to join them.

My eyes adjust within moments. Deep in the shadows, in the furthest recesses, I can see them. Men, two dozen, three dozen. A couple are making those soft, moist sounds as they suck each other. Most of them are leaning against the wooden supports, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for someone to make it happen.

I intend to be that someone.

I’m not so cocky that I think every man wants me. (I just act that way, sometimes.) What I do know is that I’m a sexual catalyst. I’m used to walking into a spot in which men gather for sex—bookstores, baths, cruising parks—where little or nothing is happening. Then I make it happen. Not much is happening here. The men have gathered. They’re standing in a long line, shifting from foot to foot, restless, against the iron girders supporting the massive dock at its rear. But they’re not doing anything.

I walk to the back. Stroll along the line. I can see the faces, pale and wraith-like, as I stroll to choose a spot. There’s all shapes here, all sizes of men. All ages. I’m pretty sure I could have my pick. To keep from banging it on the beams above, I have to keep my head bowed slightly. But in that stooped position I proceed down the line, pretending I don’t notice the heads turning to follow my progress, the hands swinging out to encourage me to linger.

Then I spot one. He’s wearing a white tank top and a pair of white shorts. In the lightless enclosure, he’s practically glowing in the dark. The kid’s a puppy, a short little fucker—five-four and muscular, maybe twenty-one, twenty-two, tops. He actually steps forward when I approach, as if to block me from going any further.

Like I don’t already know I’ve found what I want.

His mouth tastes like liquor. He’s obviously a little drunk; I can tell he’s unsteady when he raises himself on tiptoe to kiss me hungrily. My hands run over the trace of fuzz outlining his jaw, stroke his hard biceps, then pull him in. He’s shoving his hand down the front of my jeans and mauling my dick, treating it like a squeeze toy. I grab his wrist, choke it, pull him off me. My asserting control instantly makes him cool a little down.

It’s time for me to unbutton. My jeans drop to my knees; my shorts follow. His fingers fumble with the buttons on my shirt. I loosen the top two for him. Anonymous hands from behind me reach around to undo the others. I’m standing there in the cool night air, most of my skin exposed, with a hot-looking horny little pup pulling my mouth down to his. And I’m thinking to myself, fuck, at this moment my life is so good.

The pup goes down on my dick. His mouth is deep, hot, and sloppy. Trails of his spit slide down my nuts. The hands behind me squeeze on my nipples. Another man steps forward to take the boy’s place on my lips. He’s muscular as well—a short, beefy guy with a cue ball of a head. His fingers reach around the base of my dick while the boy sucks on it. He’s an aggressive kisser, too. I moan and lose myself in the softness of his lips.

My power as a sexual catalyst is beginning to work. Men are clustering around us, now. Our threesome is five people, then seven, then ten. There are hands all over my body as men reach out to touch me. Hands on my dick, on my shoulders, rubbing my close-cropped hair. I feel a mouth on my crack, and then hands pulling apart my cheeks. A tongue invades my hole. I don’t know who the fuck it is, and I don’t care. I just know it feels good.

I’m tempted to lose myself in the sexual charge of the surge of men around me, to crowd surf on the crests of sexual pleasure as men go at me, up and down and front and back. But I have a wallet in my pants pocket, so I retain some watchfulness to keep track of that. Still. It’s a fucking hot feeling as the crowd gets bigger and bigger, with the three of us at its center.

Around me the men who’ve been touching me, licking me, tasting me, are playing with each other now. I feel dicks jut into my thigh, bare asses back up against me. The pup abandons my cock and falls back onto the sand with his pants around his ankles. Almost immediately, an older man squats over him and lowers his hole down onto the pup’s face. The bald dude takes the pup’s place on my dick. For a few minutes we swap blow jobs back and forth, while other men touch and stroke me. My bald buddy comes suddenly and without much warning while I’m sucking him. I feel his hands on the side of my head, pulling me in, and then find my tongue covered with a salty bath. He tastes good. I swallow him down, stand up, and share the last traces with a deep kiss. He whispers thanks in my ear, then disappears into the night.

There’s plenty more to enjoy, though.

The pup’s back on his feet. He’s mine once again. The kid actually pushes away whoever’s kneeling behind me and munching out my ass and positions himself between my thighs. I feel his cock stab at my butt. Part of me wants to laugh—he thinks he’s going to dom me? It’s like watching a fucking chihuahua try to mount a bullmastiff. All I’d have to do is shrug and the little runt would fly off. It’s adorable and funny to watch him try, though, so I let him do his thing. He’s so drunk that he doesn’t even know where my hole is; he keeps hugging me around the waist and grinding up against my backside while he searches for it with his little boy dick.

I’m sure to the crowd it looks like I’m getting fucked by the pup, but he’s really not even close.

A hole backs onto my cock. I don’t even know what what its owner looks like. Men are pulling my head to theirs for deep kisses, drawing my hand by the wrist to their cocks, trying to get me to choose them. I pick a guy in leather. He’s in his forties or fifties. Solid as a rock. A built motherfucker. He’s wearing a leather harness and vest, boots, and a leather pouch beneath his jeans—which he loses fast enough. Once the hole’s off my dick, the leather guy bends down to clean me off. His mouth is hotter than even the pup’s.

He and I kiss. His mouth surrounds mine completely as his tongue forces itself between my lips. His dick is thick and rock hard. The prince albert in its head is a heavy gauge, probably a double-zero. I try sucking on his meat for a little bit, but there’s too much metal knocking around in there; I don’t want to have present chipped teeth to my dentist the following week. He loves sucking on me, though. Knowing I have a hot boy still stabbing fruitlessly at my hole and an even hotter leather daddy on my dick makes me feel like the fucking king of Provincetown. My hands grab onto the beam above and I swing back on it, chest and underarms exposed to the ocean breeze.

The leather daddy has had enough of the pup’s impertinence. He swats the boy off my backside and turns me around, then bends me over. My shoulder hits the iron support girder. I gasp when I feel that ring of thick metal press against my hole. I’m thinking there’s no way this guy’s going to be any more successful than the pup. He can shove and push all he likes, but there’s no way my hole is going to stretch for that fat pierced hog. He’s got a bottle of lube in his pocket, though, and an agenda to invade my hole. So I let him keep pushing.

The pup’s on my mouth again. He’s getting off on my grunts as the leather daddy shoves and attempts to buck into me. He pinches my nipples, stares in my slitted eyes. “Take it,” he whispers, over and over again. “Fucking take it.”

Then I do. It’s an unexpected surprise when the leather daddy’s dick just suddenly slides into me. My hole was a barrier moments before. Now it’s an opening, a tunnel, a chute tightly wrapping around the guy’s cock. The prince albert is stretching me like crazy. My eyes fly open, my jaw drops. It’s intense—fucking intense. But it’s not agony. If it were a misery to be plowed by that dick, I wouldn’t be so god-damned rock hard. The pup squeezes my tights harder, making my ass contract.

The leather daddy is coming. He sprays his load inside me. He’s barely been in a half-minute; he hasn’t even slid back and forth. I can feel his dick contracting and expanding as he shoots, though, and I feel the warm juice dripping out of my hole as slowly and carefully he withdraws his dick. I try to stand up, to collect my pants, but the pup’s insistent. The older dog showed him how to fuck; now he’s anxious to try.

I feel the head of his cock push into me, finally finding its warm, wet target. But then he’s climaxing too, even before he’s gotten inside. Maybe he’s turned on by fucking in the other man’s leavings. A spray of the juice joins the leather daddy’s load inside me. The rest of it ends up on my ass cheeks. He hugs me tightly around the waist again as he comes. I feel his furry little face against my back, his seed dripping down my butt and down onto my calves.

I’ve been rigid this entire time. Someone wheels me around so that my back hits the girder. He’s down on his knees in front of me. It’s a silver-haired fox. When he sucks on my dick I can only see the top half of his face, but even in the darkness I can tell he’s mighty good-looking. A gym rat. I rub my hands over his mighty biceps when he reaches up to squeeze my pecs; he’s wearing a sleeveless T for easy access.

I’m getting close. Part of me wants to save the load, to keep going all night. Part of me knows it’s not going to get any better than this moment, though. I feel hands reach for my ass, fingers dipping into my cummy hole. Men around me are discussing in murmurs about whether or not I got bred. I let the hushed gossip float in one ear and out the other. The guy with the biceps is edging me closer and closer to my orgasm. When I come, it sounds loud in the quiet. Yeah, I hear guys whisper around me, encouraging me. Drop that fucking load, someone whispers in my ear. The darkness turns to shades of purple and indigo as I squeeze shut my eyes as I shoot. I can’t tell whether the rush of sound in my ears is my coursing blood or the ocean’s waves. The muscular man sucks me down and keeps his mouth on my meat, nursing out every drop of seed from the tip. Then he withdraws.

Weakly, I lean back against the girder. Someone’s sandy hand closes around my dick. The grains are painful; I wrestle him off and push him away, then cover my junk and pull up my pants. My wallet’s still there, thank god. Even as men still try to convince me with soft hands and sweet whispers to stay, to let them clean me off, to kneel down and take care of them or to turn around again and take another breeding, I fasten my fly. One of my flip-flops is buried in the sand. I find it and close my toes around the thong. Then I detach myself from the crowd and the hands and stagger in the direction of the dock’s far end, and the stairs.

My legs are weak enough that I need to sit in the dark for a moment. From the middle of a pair of cross-braces between posts I watch the army of sex hounds fill the void where I had stood. I can’t see details, but I can see single silhouettes merge with another, then with other pairs.

No one on Commercial Street casts an eye at me when I emerge from between buildings onto the sidewalk. I stroll in the direction of the town’s west end. My hole is sore enough to make me walk more slowly than usual. I’m conscious that there’s a load or two making the seat of my shorts wet. I’m not the only man who’s going to be tottering home from the dick dock with a stain or two, though. Even from a distance, I know the men in that dark crawl space are moving and merging, coming together like molecules in a chemical reaction.

And that night, at that hour, I’d been the catalyst.

Repost: The Rest Stop at Dusk

(I'm on vacation this week. You won't mind if I share this oldie but goodie in my absence, will you?)


I had an hour to go on the road, back to the home I hadn’t seen all weekend. It was dusk at the rest area, and the cars were gathering. I stuck my hands deep into my pockets not so much to hide the erection growing there as to adjust it so that it would be more visible. Then I stepped out of the car and walked past the parked vehicles and the staring eyes within them.

My visiting family was supposed to fly back home on the first day of the year. On new year’s eve, however, I discovered that instead of merely driving to the airport the next morning, I’d be making a twelve-hour trip to drive the family all the way to the east coast, then return again on my own. The trip out was miserable. The journey back, however, didn’t wear me down as much as I thought I would. So when I passed the rest area where occasionally I’ve been known to spread a little seed, I decided to stop.

At this time of day, during the rush hour home and after dark, almost every car held a single man in the driver’s seat. Some fiddled with their phones. Some pretended to be listening to their stereos. A few made no pretense why they were there. Their meaty hands rubbed over the bulges in their slacks as they cocked their heads and stared at me through the windshields. A couple I found unattractive; I avoided their glances as I passed. One kid caught my eye, though—a young guy with a pencil-thin mustache whose black knitted wool hat made his head look like a bullet. He leaned forward onto the steering wheel of his old Mustang to stare at me as I walked by. I held his glance for as long as was comfortable before I passed by his car and strolled up the sidewalk to the restroom.

The restroom urinals are right inside the men’s room door at this particular location, and the door’s always propped open. Anyone could poke a head around the corner from the waiting room and spy men peeing, if they really cared to. The outer doors protest loudly when they’re pulled open, however, and at this time of day there was very little foot traffic inside. The only person occupying the entire restroom was an older guy examining himself in the mirrors over the sinks, further into the washroom’s interior.

He was in his late fifties or early sixties, this guy, with a long braid of a dirty silver color hanging from beneath a distressed suede hat. His shirt was faded denim. That of his jeans was even more faded and worn. The boots he wore were pointy and so beaten that it was impossible to tell what color they once had been. He looked a little like Willie Nelson, in fact, though not as lean or likely to ask my assistance for FarmAid. He looked at me in the mirror, measuring me.

I stood at the innermost of the urinals and unzipped. It only took a few seconds for Willie Nelson to join me. He stood at the urinal next to mine, the tip of his booted foot nearly touching my black Converse. I didn’t even bother to pretend I was trying to pee. There was no need. Willie unzipped and pulled out a dick that made my eyes boggle. Soft, it had to be a good seven inches, and thicker than mine is hard; as it began to stiffen, I knew I was in for one of those rare massive dick sightings.

The thing was about ten inches when it finally stopped swelling and growing. He pulled back the hood from his monster and pointed it at me, giving me a broad, toothy grin. I nodded back, displaying my meat, as my eyes detected traces of yellow in his mustache and beard.

The outer doors swung. Willie and I took our places in front of the urinals, pushing our hips close to thrust our hard-ons into the shadows. Again, there was no need. The guy who joined us was the kid from the car, the one who’d stared at me on my trip in. He was wearing the Michigan white boy’s equivalent of hip-hop clothing—baggy pants with the waist hanging at the base of the ass, puffy winter coat, new sneakers with blinding white laces.

And he stared at me like he wanted to eat me alive.

Willie Nelson stepped back and displayed his dick again. He wasn’t exactly an attractive guy, but you don’t see dicks like his all that often. The kid’s eyes flicked from his massive erection to mine, and back again. He took a place next to Willie, his thumbs hooked into his pants pockets, the tips of his fingers rubbing the hard bulge they shrouded.

“You ever put out in a rig before?” Willie Nelson asked me. His voice was gruff. When he exhaled the words, he smelled of cigarettes and loneliness.

I nodded. I’d been fucked in a truck in a rest area the day I got my driver’s license.

“I bet you’d look real pretty in mine,” he said. The kid reached out and tried to wrap his right hand around the trucker’s dick. The fingers barely touched the base of his palm. His other hand reached out for mine and closed around it. His skin was ice cold. I reached out and cupped the kid’s crotch. I could feel his dick just beneath the denim of his baggy jeans, hard as metal and warm to the touch.

The trucker thrust his hand down the back of my jeans. His fingers snaked down my crack, probing for my hole. I was still clean from the morning’s shower; I let him do what he wanted. “Pretty little pink butthole on you, I bet. You want that, boy? You want this monster up in there?”

It was mentally tempting. And at my age, I don’t get called ‘boy’ very often. But it’s been too long since I was fucked, and I wasn’t going to be able to climb back on that bicycle with the trucker’s length and girth.

So I said nothing. I didn’t really need to. The trucker was stroking himself faster and faster, talking dirty to get himself off. “Legs spread, presenting that ass to me . . . shit. I bet you know what the fuck you’re doing, too. You know how to get a man like me off, huh?” The kid’s eyes glittered as they darted from me to the trucker. He ground his dick against my hand, but made no move to haul it out. “Yeah, sluttin’ your hole out to me, you fuckin’ whore, taking it like a bitch while I seed your little pucker, boy. You like that? You want that?”

The trucker used his free hand to squeeze his nipples through his shirt while he jacked himself rapidly, and then he jammed it back down my pants to connect with my hole again. My own dick was hard and wet at the tip, where a bead of precum had formed and attached itself to the kid’s wrist. The shiny filament connecting us glistened in the florescent light. The trucker’s head tilted back as he stared sightlessly at the ceiling. His finger shoved inside me slightly, but not very far. He grunted, and bucked.

When his load hit the back of the urinal, it did so with a hollow metallic collision, spraying out in one massive gush that immediately began to drip down the porcelain. A much smaller second dribble followed, barely making it out the tip. The pencil-mustached kid stared as if he couldn’t believe his eyes; almost immediately when it was done, he looked me in the eye, gave my dick one final squeeze, and scampered like a frightened bunny. Willie Nelson withdrew his hand from the back of my pants, zipped up looking vaguely embarrassed, and shuffled over to the sink to wash.

And I stuffed my erection down the right leg of my jeans, fastened and collected myself, and walked back to my car. Pair after pair of eyes followed me from the single men in their vehicles, parked in the shadows in the lot. I still felt them coming in my direction as I locked the doors and pulled out my phone.

I tapped out a text message to Spencer. I really need to engage in rambunctious sexual intercourse with you at your earliest opportunity, I wrote him.

You’re back in town? he wrote back immediately. What time? I told him to meet me at my place in ninety minutes.

And then I drove home with an erection that lasted until I saw him.

Sunday Morning Questions: Looking Edition

I’ve written before about the old battle-ax of a grandmother I had on my father’s side. She was a woman on whose face I literally never saw a smile; one of my earliest childhood memories is of answering the front door to my childhood home shortly after we moved in and seeing her on the other side. I fled, screaming for my parents.

It’s not that she was hideous, or disfigured, or scarred. She wasn’t. She managed, however, always to wear an expression of extreme disapproval on her face. She constantly looked as if someone had farted, only she was too polite to say whom. Usually the disapproving look—lips pinched and pursed, eyebrows raised, eyes narrowed—preceded one of her amazingly deft put-downs. If I was sat down to play a piano sonata for her, I could perform perfectly and receive a sigh and a remark that she supposed more lessons would iron out the rough spots. When she visited once when I brought home a report card of straight A’s (or O’s for Outstanding, which I recall was the system my schools used until I hit ninth grade), she sniffed, made the face, and commented to my parents that I probably wouldn’t have done as well if I’d gone to a real, non-public school.

There was no pleasing the old biddy. So basically I stopped trying, and considered myself free of her. And even though she’s been dead and gone for years and years, now, there’s been a specific time lately when I find myself pursing and pinching my lips, narrowing the eyes, raising my brows, and preparing to launch a censorious cannonade in some unfortunate’s direction.

Specifically, it’s when I read the one-word sentence, Looking?

Oh, you know it’s the bane of the online cruising world, too. I’ll log onto Manhunt or Adam4Adam and within a couple of minutes my box starts to get cluttered up with the damned things. Most of the time the guys who send me the note don’t even bother to write it in the body of their message. It’ll just be a subject line of Looking? or U looking? or the ever-popular Lookin NOW???

It knocks the romance right out of cruising, I tell you.

I don’t really mind that the guy is getting right to the point. I don’t object to a blunt sexual come-on. I’m all for those. I’m just an old-fashioned guy who would like a pretense of the slightest whisper of a shade of a fraction of courtship in a guy’s bid to get my dick in his hole. I’m infinitely more likely to drop what I’m doing and hop in the car for a guy who instead of writing some variation on LOOKING? takes a few extra seconds to say, Hey, I was looking at your photos and I find you very attractive—would you happen to be free this evening for some naked fun?

That’ll get my attention and my response. Looking? makes me screw up my face like my librarian grandma.

As for the guys who use it . . . well, I’ve pretty much given up on even responding to them. The ones who do it repeatedly, I’ll block, simply so I don’t have to see the messages. I don’t care about grammar, about syntax or spelling. I don’t care if a guy has an educational level of eighth grade. If all I merit is a one-word salvo from a guy, I’m likely to suspect he’ll be just as lazy in the sack.

On that, I’ll give a pass.

Let’s get to some questions on formspring.me. If you would like to ask me questions there, please do—but if you don’t have an account, email them to me directly at the address in the sidebar, with the subject line of Sunday Morning Questions. I’ll quote them anonymous and respond over the coming weeks.

Hello Rob, I too have been a long time follower of your blog and recently found out you like to play / played with your brother, do you have any stories on your blog about that?

I've written several times about my relationship with my brother, under the 'mikey' tag.

Have you ever spent a night at a steam bath letting strange men fuck you in the dark corners? If yes, any chance you'll be at Steamworks Toronto soon?

I have indeed. And I have also spent the night at a bathhouse fucking men in dark corners, dark books, dark steam rooms, and in fully-lit enclosures.

I'm not going to be in Toronto soon, but I know Steamworks Toronto quite well. It's a great facility.

Does a little pain or fear stimulate you sexually?

Pain, when skillfully and artfully applied, can be a wonderful stimulant. There are certain erogenous zones for me that I find can result in great pleasure when put to a little excess of stimulation.

The buttocks, for example, can feel great when they've been caned or beaten to a red heat. The stinging and prickling only enhances the sex for me and for many of my partners. I love my nipples chewed to the point of pain, as well; nothing can get my harder. A bite (of the non-breaking variety) to the skin can be really erotic.

But if you're going to do something weird, like pull out a nose hair or a pube during sex, or poke me with a pin, or stomp on my insole while we fuck, chances are I'll complain and probably deck you. Not necessarily in that order.

Fear doesn't stimulate me so much. Worry just makes my dick deflate.

What kind of uniform gets you hottest?

The Good Humor Man. That white suit and pointy cap goes right to my groin!

I kid. Though I do like a good Chocolate Eclair bar.

My favorite uniform is actually neither military nor sports-related. I used to have a fuckbuddy relationship with a UPS delivery man who would make random 'deliveries' to my house when he was in the neighborhood. I used to love it when he'd drop those brown shorts and let me fuck him on the sofa. Seeing UPS men in their trucks in those turd-brown uniforms always gives me fond memories.

Have you ever had penetrative sex inside a vehicle? Was it moving?

I've had lots of sex inside of vehicles.

Not while they're moving, however. I did get road head once and I was too nervous to let it continue for very long.

I wasn't worried about getting caught, or observed by a truck driver, or anything. It was simply that I kept hearing my dad's voice in my head saying, "In an emergency situation, the distractive presence of that young man's head in your lap is going severely to hinder your response time." And yes, he talks just like that.

The Other End of the Telescope

We rode into the city together, Rock Star and I. At the train station he rested his head on my shoulder, his lids heavy with sleep. On the train his long hair covered my shoulder and arm like a cape as he dozed all the way to Grand Central. His dog lay between us on the seat, his head in my lap. At Port Chester and Rye the dog sat up to observe who boarded the commuter train. Most of the time, though, he joined his human companion in a deep sleep, both them using me as a pillow.

A family of four sat across the aisle. The two girls bounced in their seats at the sight of the dog, but soon they were too busy looking at the speeding landscape outside the window to pay his sleeping form attention. The husband and wife, though, regard us with smiles; she spent a long time gazing at the sight of my hand in his, of his cheek against my shoulder, of the warm and comfortable tangle of human and canine limbs on our seat.

She thought we were a couple. They all do, when we’re together in the city. When Rock Star and I walk down the street—or rather, when Rock Star and I run after the dog on the street, pulled by his lead as he lunges from one potential pee spot to the next—Rock Star looms over me with a hand around my shoulders, or around my waist, or his fingers intertwined with mine. Of course they think we’re a couple. Maybe we are.

The first time he did this, I automatically pulled away. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

I struggled with the words. I grew up in a time in which public displays of affection between men were inconceivable. The taboo is deeply branded into my psyche. I can’t overcome it automatically, even though I know I ought.

“Are you worried you’ll get beat up?” he said. Then, with his arm encircling me, he pulled me close for a hug and a kiss to the top of my head, right in front of a mass of tourists emerging from the subway to see the Empire State Building. “Sweetheart, I’ll be right there to protect you.”

So of course, now I let him hold my hand as we walk down the street. I melt when he does. Even my huge mitts are tiny in his palm. I always feel like a child when he slips his grasp around mine. I feel taken care of.

When we stopped at the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park to get the dog some water and to share a lemonade, he had me sit with the dog on a bench and wait for him. He returned with two giant iced lemonades and three ice creams—two for us, and something called a Pooch-ini for the dog. We relaxed in the dappled shade, trying to eat the frozen concoctions before they melt into nothingness.

He told me a story while we ate. He’d visited a bar with friends one night, several years back. An older man tried to pick him up. That part doesn’t surprise me. Rock Star has a look that draws glances. Men and women alike stare at him as he strides down the street on his impossibly long legs with his hair billowing out behind him. They wonder if he’s a Somebody. I can see how they’re taken aback at his beauty. And when we’re together, and he’s whispering in my ear or clasping my hand in his, I see them staring at me, too. Some of them have envy in their eyes. I’ve always imagined that they’re wondering how a guy like me can land a Rock Star.

But the point of the story wasn’t that he had to suffer some random come-on. The hapless older man was named Bert. He sounded like a paunchy old-timer with faded looks and a conviction that he’d have to pay for the time of anyone as attractive as Rock Star. When Rock Star’s friends began to roll their eyes and snicker at the guy behind his back, Rock Star defied their expectation that he’d join in the derision. Instead, he left his friends and talked to the man for a long time, then spent time dancing with him on the floor. They didn’t have sex, but Rock Star generously gave up a portion of his evening simply to make the guy feel more attractive, and less alone. He does things like that.

When he told me this story, I sat there and thought to myself, Oh shit. Am I a Bert?

Because that’s what our brains do, isn’t it? It didn’t matter that we’d spent hours together that Saturday summer morning acting like boyfriends, that we’d kissed and hugged and held hands in front of total strangers from Bryant Park to Madison Square. It didn’t matter that he’d bought my train ticket and surprised me with ice cream. I’d had a hundred and seventy pounds of sheer good fall into my lap—two hundred and ten, if you counted the dog—and I allowed my happiness to be upset by a tiny grain of black doubt. Try as I might to banish bad thoughts, they kept assailing me. I was no match for Rock Star’s comeliness. I was too fat, too old. Too sheltered. Too ugly to be with him.

I tried to dismiss all nonsense from my mind. Mostly I did, as we ducked into one air-conditioned shop after another. But sunny as the day was, shadow still lurked close to the horizon. The doubt that for six months I’d been some kind of contemptible exception, a pity fuck, a charity case, kept trying to eat away at my happiness.

Later in the day we went to an art gallery run by one of his friends. An artist was taking portraits there all afternoon with a camera that was over a hundred years old. She’d pry off the back of the wooden contraption, insert a modern portrait studio plate in the back. The camera had no lens, or perhaps had one that was very primitive (I was too busy with the dog to listen to the entire lecture); she had to control the exposure length herself, manually. Well, Rock Star wanted his portrait taken. I didn’t, but I accompanied him and the artist outside, as we moved the heavy camera and its wooden tripod from the upstairs gallery onto a creaky old elevator and out onto the street. We wandered for a few minutes while the photographer attempted to find the right light and the right spot to take her portrait. Then when finally she settled Rock Star into a seat on a cement pillar, I stood back and took snapshots of her preparing him for a photograph.

There was something intimate and almost erotic about the process—even surrounded as we were by tourists and diners and heavy traffic. She had to position the camera mere inches from Rock Star’s face in order to get him into the frame. Then she spent several long moments helping him adjust his hair, or to reach out and turn his his skull a few degrees in a different direction. As always, I was struck by his handsome good looks as she took first one photo, then changed the plate to take another. On my phone, I captured several images of her peering through a pinhole in the wooden box, and of Rock Star looking dreamily off into space, his legs spread, his hands folded peacefully between them.

I wanted to remember that moment.

We had to part soon after that. I was meeting other people; he needed to get the dog to his apartment in the city. But it was funny. I had a quiet moment to myself a couple of hours later, and thought I’d send him the photos I’d taken of him having his portrait done.

At the very same instant, Rock Star messaged me. I hadn’t realized it, but when he’d been sitting there, allowing the photographer to adjust the tilt and incline of his face, centimeter by centimeter, his hands had been folded over his own phone, and that he’d been taking photos of me. In some of them I’m staring with concentration at my phone’s screen as I point its lens in his direction. In several others, I’m straight and tall, shoulders back, as I stare off at something distant, while 9th Avenue and its old historic buildings recede to a vanishing point where I stand. As I captured photos of him, and of a moment I wanted to preserve, he was doing the very same of me. Without my knowledge, he’d collected images of me the way he saw me—the way wanted to remember me.

I honestly gasped when I saw them. In those images, I’m attractive. I’m impossibly tall, and lean, and more handsome than ever I considered myself. I look strong, and capable. I look as if I’d turn heads. I flipped through those photos, which I received at the same moment I sent the ones I’d taken of him. Instantly all the shadows that had attempted to ruin my afternoon vanished. I was no Bert. Not in those photos. I was no pity fuck. No charity case. I understood why Rock Star wanted me. It occurred to me for the first time that perhaps when I caught men and women looking at the pair of us, that some of their regard might have been for me. Or at least, how radiantly I glow in Rock Star’s presence.

Two men, capturing fleeting photographs of a moment we both wanted to remember for a long time to come. Two perspectives on the same instant, each from the other end of the telescope. Maybe—I hope—we’ve fixed that afternoon for all time to come. Suspended it in an amber of our own making. Age will never alter the moment; it’s immutable to time.

Whenever in the future I look at those photos, I know my heart will beat a little faster at the memory. For I will remember that once I found this man impossibly fair, and know that in his eyes, I was equally as beautiful.

Summer Dip

The man I see the most is the man I write about the least.

Once a week, twice, sometimes three times I meet Rock Star. I know the mile-long route to his home as well as I know my own street. I’ve spent more time tramping around his neighborhood, walking his dog with him, than I have my own. Six months, we‘ve seen each other. And yet I don’t write about him much, because I want to protect him. Maybe—more than a little—I want to protect my own self. My heart has been quick to ache since the Spencer days.

But I’m writing about him today.

Meet me for a dip? he asks on my phone, which lights up with his message. It’s a blistering hot early summer morning. Barely nine o’clock, and the sun’s already baked suburban landscapes to a blistered crisp. The air’s so humid that it already feels I’m swimming. A dip sounds like just the thing.

I pull into the circular drive in front of his home and park my car in the cool of the hundred-year maple shading the portico. I can feel the asphalt cooking beneath my feet as I pass by the house’s grand front porch, and duck under the hidden little archway built beneath an attached gazebo. I emerge in the back yard, one of the highest points in our hilly locale. Below, down the hill, a hundred years ago lay farmland. Today the old barns and outlying buildings have been converted into sweet little homes, the other parcels of land divided and built upon. There’s too much of a haze this morning, but if I peered hard enough on a clearer morning, I might be able to glimpse in the distance the Long Island Sound.

Beyond a circumference of ancient hedges I hear splashing. I round the stone pathway. There’s a swinging wooden half-door breaking the perimeter of hedge. It’s open. But I stand on the threshold for a moment, simply because he’s so beautiful.

Rock Star is in the pool. He looks like a study of Christ, deep beneath the water. His arms are outstretched, his feet together and pointed, his long hair streaming down to the middle of his vertebrae. The pool hasn’t been resurfaced in some years; the bottom is patched with gray spots. The paint has darkened so much that the water looks unclean, though I know it’s not. I can smell the chlorine from where I’m standing. He’s a Connecticut messiah in a pool of deep turquoise. When he emerges from the deep, hair plastered wetly to his skull, it’s with scarcely a ripple. He blows the water from his nose, and rubs his eyes. His hands reach up to the chrome bars of the ladder, and with strong arms he pulls himself out.

I still stand there, hands in my pockets, to admire his beauty. He hasn’t noticed me. Pool water is still cascading from his trunks as he reaches for his towel. It’s not until he’s pressing the terrycloth against his head, sponging liquid from his long hair, that he realizes I’m there. Though his eyes are large—almost outlandishly so—he always gives the impression of being half-lidded. At the sight of me, a shy smile blossoms across his lips, and those heavy lids droop to the three-quarter mark. “You startled me,” he says.

“I had to look,” I say simply.

It makes him smile even more. There are times I wonder why this young man bothers with me. When I first started seeing him, he made me so nervous that I couldn’t relax. I was afraid if I exhaled, if I let down my guard, I’d discover that he had a thing for ugly old geezers, or that I was a masochistic pity fuck. It wasn’t until the end of our second month that I realized I was making him nervous as well. I still do. He drapes the towel modestly across his nearly-naked body, as if I haven’t glimpsed it before. “I hope you like what you see,” he says.

He’s sweet. I crack a grin.

“Did you bring a swimsuit?” he asks.

“Of a sort.”

“Do we have to go shopping for you?” he half-scolds. We’ve been shopping before—weekend dates up and down 6th Avenue. He’s treated me like a Ken doll in H&M, and made me try on at Zara items I have no intention of buying.

“I’m good,” I say.

I move in to take him in my arms, but he’s too quick for me—and too slippery. He steps out of my grasp and propels himself into the pool in a perfect arc of a dive. When the tips of his fingers pierce the still water, the rest of his body follows like a greased needle. He sputters when he comes up, and looks at me. “What’s taking you so long?”

I raise my eyebrows. Kick off my sneakers. Remove my footies. I drop my camo shorts onto the grass, slip the T-shirt from my torso. I’m wearing a pair of elastic-y briefs that’ll do for a swimsuit. There’s spare underwear in the pocket of my shorts, for after. Not that I really need a suit. No one overlooks the pool. We could swim naked if we wanted. “How’s the water?” I ask.

“Glorious,” he says.

I kick at it tentatively with my foot. “Christ!” I swear. “Liar.”

“What?” he asks.

I sit down on the poolside concrete. Immediately my butt starts to burn. “It’s fucking cold.”

“It’s good once you get in,” he says, swimming over to where I sit.

“I hate cold water.” I have a whine in my voice, like a whimpering Scooby-Doo.

“It feels great,” he says.

I look at him. I’m dubious.

He reaches up and puts a cold, wet hand on my thigh. I flinch. “Trust me,” he says. “Just slip on in. Come on.” He holds both my hands in his, like I’m a child who doesn’t know how to swim. “I swear I’ll keep you warm.”

I do hate cold water. Every square inch of my skin recoils at the thought of having to submerge myself in that ice bath, even on a baking hot day like today. But I can’t refuse Rock Star. I claim my hands again and slide downward, lowering myself a few inches at a time. I have to hold my breath to get it done; it’s painful going. But there I am, finally, shoulders beneath the rippling surface of the waters. My teeth chatter.

“I’ll keep you warm,” he promises again.

He pushes me against the pool’s side, so that the concrete bites into my back. His mouth is on mine; his tongue invades my mouth. Rock Star is taller than I. His shoulders are broader. He’s lean, but he’s muscled. I feel like a tiny thing in his grasp, and for me it’s a novelty. His hands are on my shoulders, his body is pressing against mine as we make out.

And for a few moments, I forget about the cold.

His mouth tastes of chlorine. His kisses are simultaneously hot and cold. Water splashes into our mouths, wets our faces. I feel his arms encircle my waist. When he pushes off from the wall and pulls me with him, I have to tip back my head to keep from swallowing when I laugh as we glide across the pool’s width. “Don’t you like swimming?” he teases.

“I didn’t come here to swim,” I say into his ear. “I came here to see you.”

His dark eyes smolder. They burn into mine. “You turn me on so much,” he says.

“Show me,” I challenge.

We swim back to the ladder. He pulls himself out, helps me when I emerge. He loses his trunks by the diving board. My sopping wet underwear joins his on the concrete. The sun will dry them both before we’re done. We’re two naked boys walking nude outdoors in the sunshine. He leads me back to the path beneath the gazebo, where it’s cool beneath the stone arch supporting the porch above. There’s grass sticking to my feet, and a curious butterfly idling around us, but I stop noticing anything save him once we’re making out in the dark passage.

His hair sticks wetly to both our skin. I stand on tiptoe so that our mouths are level. He whimpers when, this time, I shove him against the wall. His hands reach for my hardening dick. I push them away. He tries again. I make sure my meat is out of his reach. “Turn around,” I tell him.

“Fuck me,” he begs over his shoulder. “Take me upstairs and lube me up and fuck me.”

“Shut up,” I tell him.

“I need you to fuck me. I need you to own me.”

“Shut up,” I repeat. I push his head and shoulders down; he braces himself against the stone wall. Then I part his legs roughly, spreading them. Water has tamped down the hairs in his ass crack. He yells loudly when I grab his cheeks, yank them apart, and taste his hole. His yell disturbs the mourning doves nesting nearby. I ignore their low, fluttery protests.

“Fuck,” he whispers. The side of his face is pressed into the sparkling local granite.

His ass is cold from the water; it tastes like the pool. I know how to work this hole. When I first started fucking it, it was tight, tight, tight. Now it responds to my mouth, opens on command. I slurp on that hole, knowing my mouth must feel like lava against that chilly surface. When it blossoms under my lips, I chew on it. I rake my teeth over it. I seize the rosebud between my incisors and suck on it. He stomps at the hard dirt with his heel, like an impatient stallion. I can see his own dick, heavy and engorged with blood, swinging between his legs directly in front of me. I squeeze it roughly, not caring when he yelps.

Then I swing back that sizable rod. I suck the swollen head, run my stubbly chin up the shaft from head to balls. I chew on his scrotum, make him twitch and cry out when I suck his nuts into my mouth. Then I’m back to his ass again. Licking, chewing, opening it with my tongue as surely as I intend to fuck it wide with my dick.

He’s beyond coherence. “Please please please please. . . .” he’s murmuring with closed eyes.

I stand up, press the knob of my dick against his hole. I pause to slick it up with spit. His eyes open, full of the fear of being stretched without lube. “Trust me,” I tell him. “I’ll fill you up.” Then I shove.

This time, the mourning doves in the gazebo eaves flap and flutter with a rush of wings at the sound of his animal howl. Their alarm covers his cries of joy and relief. For a long, still moment we both pause and watch them, a half-dozen or more, as they wing heavenward into the brilliant summer sky.

No, I don’t write much about Rock Star. But I don’t want this memory to slip away, this mingling of flesh and noise with the scents and sounds of a perfect summer morning. I don’t want to forget the perfection of it, the sweetness, the feel of his slippery flesh against mine.

And now I won’t.