Sunday Morning Questions: Chew It Edition

I’m not really a candy person. That is, I’m not going to turn up my nose at it. I don’t have a lingering neurotic fear of wrapped candy as the result of a childhood trauma involving a circus clown, a birthday piñata, and a Mexican donkey, or anything. But if you laid down an array of expensive hand-rolled truffles to my right, and a bowl of discount-brand Cheetos snack equivalent on my left, I’d walk away from the table with orange fingertips, fake cheese breath, and the plate on the right untouched. (Well. If there were a coffee-flavored truffle, I’d probably pause to Hoover that down my piehole.)

I make an exception for one particular brand of candy, though. In the last year I’ve become addicted to Chimes Ginger Chews—little sugar-dusted chunks of taffy-like goodness with a strong taste of crystallized ginger. I carry around in my man-bag a little tin with a supply of them; they’re good for satisfying any post-meal sugar cravings, they freshen my breath, and they also come in peanut butter flavor.

Secretly I suspect they’re probably about as healthy as M&Ms, but since they’re ginger flavored, I can pretend they’re all organic and natural and healthy and shit.

Many thanks to the reader who very kindly gifted me with a one-pound supply of the things from my Amazon Wish List! They’ll keep me (and my dentist) happy for months to come!

Let’s get to some questions from readers, courtesy of formspring.me. Or spring.me. Whatever they’re calling themselves these days. If you've got questions you'd like to ask, either email them to me directly with a subject line of 'Sunday Morning Questions,' or use their site to submit them anonymously. I'm always grateful for the chance to talk about myself. Yet again.


Have you ever had music playing while fucking? Is there any kind of music that you find works well with or stimulates fucking? Does any music get you (even more) in the mood to fuck?

I'll come out and say it: I dislike music during fucking.

I am not fond of dance music during fucking. I don't like pop music while I fuck. I don't want to be listening to R&B or country music during a lovemaking session. And I really dislike guys who sing along to the music while we do it.

The only time I personally find music acceptable is if I'm about to bang someone in an apartment with paper-thin walls and I don't want the neighbors to hear the yelling. Then I'll turn that shit up.


What actor would you like to play you in the story of your life?

I'm going with Bradley Cooper. Because we're practically twins.


Did your family eat around a single table when you were little?

Although they were unconventional in a lot of ways, my parents were very strict about having a sit-down dinner at the table, with no television, and polite conversation of a general nature. I can only think of a handful of occasions when we didn't eat all together until I left for college.

Mind you, after about the age of ten, I was cooking about half the meals, since my mom hated preparing dinners and both my parents were often working in the late afternoons. So they weren't THAT old-school.


I was revisiting your Landscaper series and was curious about how you two got in contact, as it's not really revealed in the first piece. Do you still meet up with him and might you right more about him in the future?

Yes, absolutely I still meet with the Landscaper. It's not frequently, exactly, because after each meeting it takes his internal clock a while to reset to a point where he desperately needs the man-to-man contact again. We originally met when I answered an ad of his on Craigslist.

I have not been writing about these encounters, though, for three reasons.

The first, and simplest, is that there's a sameness to what goes on in the meetings. I tend to want to write about encounters that bring a little something new to the table, either sexually or interpersonally. There have been a couple of developments with him of a minor nature that I would write about . . . save for the two reasons below.

The second reason is that when I write about the Landscaper, there's a very small (but VERY vocal) contingent of readers who immediately write in tsk-ing and tut-tut-ing comments that accuse me of 'exploiting this poor man's internalized homophobia' or other similar nonsense.

I've got two responses to that. The first is: FUCK YEAH I AM! That's what makes it hot, bitches.

And the second, more reasoned (but no less sincere) response is that I would posit I'm giving this guy, who obviously has never, ever allowed himself to pursue with men the physical intimacy he so very obviously craves, a safe space to explore his sexuality.

I'm not going to stalk him. I'm not going to blackmail him. I'm not going to endanger his relationship, or beat him up and rob him. I'm not urging him to leave his wife and kids and leap into a relationship for which he's clearly not ready and doesn't want to be pressured. I'm not pushing him to do anything he's not ready to do. In fact, though I'm ostensibly the 'trade' in this situation, I'm letting him call the shots from meeting to meeting. We haven’t verbalized it, but he keeps returning to me because he understands every single one of those things.

I give him an amazing time, and he gets the outlet he wants and needs. If that's exploitation, it's of the very mildest kind. Furthermore, I would ask the moralists who make it their business to pout and throw tantrums whenever I write about the Landscaper: where are you guys when I'm tossing out racial epithets during some in-bed roleplaying with minority bottoms? Or when I'm butching it up with gay guys who are fascinated with my marital status? Or when I’m letting some young guy call me ‘daddy’ as I’m impaling his ass?

The self-appointed critics are, to a man, okay with me treating gay guys as sexual fodder. It seems that once I throw the Landscaper into the mix, however, suddenly well-off white straight men are an endangered species who must be protected from me at all costs. And that disparity strikes me as self-loathing, on their parts.

There's a third reason I've stopped writing about the Landscaper, and that's because at the other extreme, some readers are way too overly vocal about wanting more entries from him. It's not as grating as the second reason, but it's a little tiresome to write a hot entry about some other sexual encounter and the only comments I get are along the lines of "This is hot and all but what happened to the Landscaper?"

The name of this site is not The Landscaper's Blog. I would like to compose more entries about him, but the conditions have to be right.


Hey man . . . gotta tell you, I'm a bit jealous of your scoring record. While I keep drawing a blank. I'm pretty good looking, but don't photograph well, well all the self-pics come out so weird, that I wouldn't fuck myself . . . get the drift? What gives!

I'd suggest that you take the time to figure out how to take better selfies. If you're taking your own photos and they're not turning out well, you've really only got yourself to blame. It's not as if your digital camera or your phone camera is going to run out of film, right?