Friday, February 28, 2014

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Sunday Morning Questions: Jockapalooza Edition

Thanks to several of my readers, I had a birthday that I can describe only as . . . well, you’ll see.

It’s true that I got some DVDs.



It’s also true that I got a book for my relaxation time.



And I did get some underwear.



But mostly I got jocks.



And jocks.



And jocks.


(Yes, I posted the last two before.)

In fact, it was something of a jockapalooza. Thank you, readers! I (and some local guys who like jocks) am a very happy camper.

I’m still taking questions for my Sunday morning columns. My account at formspring.me is still working, but it’s not quite as anonymous user-friendly as it used to be, so feel free to email me at the address on the sidebar. Put Sunday Questions in the subject line so I can find it easily, and you’ll be my favorite reader of the day.


Do you ever experience that sweet sorrow after hooking up with someone you know (or have reason to believe) that you will never meet again?

The first time I had that experience was during my college years. I met an older guy in the cruisy campus toilets and had sex with him in the stall. He was in his late thirties, handsome, not married, and obviously not from the podunk town where I was stuck during my undergraduate years. It turned out he was indeed just passing through, and would be leaving for his home in the District of Columbia the next morning.

He invited me to his motel room to spend the night, though. That was novel for me. So I told my roommate lies about where I'd be, biked to the motel on the edge of town, knocked at his door, and found myself ushered into his room. He'd somehow bought a couple of cheap scented candles and had gone to an effort to make things nice, which is an accomplishment in a Motel 6.

He made love to me that night, over and over again. It wasn't fucking. It was lovemaking. He kept telling me how handsome I was, and how excited I made him. In fact, he was so sweet and gentle and hot that I fell in love with him that night. And even though he left at dawn the next morning and I never saw him again, I truly believed then—and now—that knowing our paths were crossing only for a short time made the coupling even sweeter.

Not to go all Pippin on you, but everything has its season. Not every person in your life is meant to be in it forever. People play cameo roles in your life and vanish, just as you do in theirs. The duration of their appearances is not necessarily what's important; what they say, and how they behave, and the intensity and flavor of what they bring determines how important they are, and will become.
There's sorrow in that, yes. But the sweetness is what matters in the end.


Have you ever hit someone hard enough to hurt them? Did you regret it immediately? Did they deserve it?

When I was in third grade, a kid named Michael Rennie was being a total dick to me (I thought . . . I don't remember on what grounds I decided it) when we were walking home from the bus stop after school. I swung up with my lunchbox and banged him on the head. The blow brought him to his knees.

It was a metal lunchbox. Snoopy, if you must know.

He wasn't seriously hurt, but it only took a few short seconds for me to learn that no matter how dickish someone is behaving, beaning them over the head with a lunchbox made me even more of a dick. I apologized profusely afterward, but never really forgave myself. I've never hit anyone since then. With or without Snoopy.

However. I have hit guys hard enough to hurt in roleplay sexual contexts. They loved it, and I didn't regret it.


You Blog is new to me. Have you an opinion on the "Why?" of last year's trial in Kennebunk, Maine? (Me, I do not.)


It took me a while to get around to this question because it required, you know, actually researching the whole trial thing. (And I'm fundamentally lazy.) But if you mean the Kennebunk, Maine trial about the Zumba teacher who was running a prostitution ring in which over 60 clients were charged as well. And my reply is . . . well, is there really anything else to do in Kennebunk?

It really seems that most of the press coverage is of a slut-shaming sort that revels in tsk-tsking at the fact that the woman involved not only enjoyed having sex, but wasn't all that ashamed about engaging it in with multiple partners, without shame or regret. Good for her. I hope that she's able to parlay her story into a book or TV movie to tell her side of the story.

Also: Zumba has never sounded so appealing.

Friday, February 21, 2014

Happy Valentine's Day #2

“I’ve only got until six,” he says the moment I’m in the door. He whirls in place and pads across the living room on bare feet. I guess he trusts me to close the front door behind myself. Around the thickly-upholstered sectional he walks and down the hallway. “Then I’ve got to. . . .” He’s still talking, but already he’s out of earshot.

“What was that?” I say, as I follow the scent of him down the hallway of the ranch-style house. At last I find him in one of the bedrooms. He’s on all fours, ass in the air, the hole squarely pointed at the doorway.

Did I forget to mention he’d answered the door completely naked?

His voice is slightly muffled from the pillow into which he’s buried his face. “I said, at six I have to jet down the Avenue and meet the wife and kids for dinner. Valentine’s day, you know.”

I know. I’d already spent a half-hour in the van with the Landscaper at lunchtime. Since then, the thought of him sucking the head of my dick for the first time has kept my meat three-quarters hard, even during the unerotic tasks of cleaning the cat litter boxes and salting the front walk. It’s been raging for a place to unload ever since, actually. I kick off my boots and start unbuttoning my shirt.

“You don’t have to worry about foreplay with me,” he says in a conversational tone as I undress. “Just drop your pants and fuck it hard if you want. I don’t need to be eaten out or anything. Just been a while since I had a good cock, and you’ve got a hell of a nice one.”

“Thanks,” I say. I’m not enjoying the prattle, exactly. And to be honest, guys who tell me to skip the foreplay aren’t usually going to get the best of my attention. I’m all about the foreplay.

Plus, my dick’s not a broomstick handle. It’s not rigid when I push down my jeans and shorts and let it flop out. Sure, it’s halfway there, but it likes a little attention before I just ram it home. I stagger over to the bedside and pull his head toward my crotch. He opens his mouth again. This time it’s to suck.

The guy’s got a good mouth on him. His hair is long enough to be styled in a kind of retro-seventies feathered way—eccentric for the area, but obviously expensively-done. He’s got the body of a daddy who manages to get in a few workouts here and there, between picking up the kiddies from gymnastics and ferrying them in the family SUV to dance class. He’s young. No more than thirty. But he sucks like he’s been doing it all his life, gobbling down to the root of me and breathing heavily enough to stir my pubes through his nostrils. I’m hard and glistening to spit within moments.

He buries his head in the pillows again. “I was hoping you wouldn’t see much of my face,” he says as I stride around to the foot of the mattress. Too late for that. I saw it in the photo he’d texted me, minutes before I showed up. I’d seen it when he’d answered the door, even though he’d walked off too quickly for me to get a good look. If total anonymity was what he needed, he should’ve backed up that ass to a gloryhole at the Bridgeport adult bookstore.

When I finger his hole, I find he’s greased-up already. I wipe a little of that lube on my cock head, letting it mix with the spit he’s left there.

“Fuck it,” he says. This time he sounds like he’s begging.

I pull him a little closer to the edge, aim at his pucker, and slide in.

He’s not tight. Fucking him feels like fucking pussy; his insides are soft and moist and warm. He offers little resistance to my stiffness as I push inside. From the time my head disappears until the moment my nuts bounce against his for the first time, he begins groaning. “Yes,” he says. “Oh god yes. Yes. This is what I needed.” I start fucking with long, deep strokes, mesmerized by how the flare of my cock head pulls out his ass lips. They roll over the edge, cling to the tip, and on the return trip glide back inside him along with my shaft. “Oh fuck yes. I knew you’d know how to fuck, with that dick.”

I don’t really care that he’s talking too much, or denying me my foreplay. After the charged lunchtime with the Landscaper, I really just need a hole to load. I close my eyes and shut out the domestic artifacts littering the bedroom around me—the eyeglasses, the basket of laundry, the novels on the bedside table—and just enjoy the sensations.

“Give it to me,” he whispers. He’s got his back arched and his forehead resting on his arms, which are clutching the pillow. “Give it all to me. Knock me up. Make me pregnant.”

My eyes open again. He’s looking back over his shoulder at me, showing that face again. Our eyes connect as I fuck him in silence. For a crystal clear moment, we measure each other and render judgment. He and I both know what we’re there for.

Maybe he can sense how his words excite me. He buries his head again and starts repeating them. “Fuck that cunt. Knock it up with your seed, man. Make me pregnant. Knock me up with your babies and make me carry ‘em for you.” My breathing intensifies. I fuck harder. The bedstead rattles from the force of it. “Plant that fucking seed, man. Make that hole yours. Spray that juice so far up me I can taste it in my fucking throat. Damn!” Now he’s beating his head against the mattress. “Do it. Seed it. Fuck me!”

I grunt. I’d already come all over the Landscaper earlier. This load is bigger, juicier, the orgasm even more intense. When I shoot, I’m holding him at the crook of his neck and shoulder, yanking him down onto me to get it in as deep as possible. Once, twice, three times my cock spurts. Then, a moment later, a fourth.

I try to pull out slowly, but he’s already hopping up and dabbing himself off with a hand towel. “Woof,” he says, passing me to get to the bathroom. “Now that was a great fuck. I bet I’m the happiest married man in town, this Valentine’s Day.”

I think of the Landscaper as I tug up my jeans. Second happiest, maybe.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine’s Day, honey.

What? Mmmmf. Mmmmmf. Honey. It’s not even six-thirty.”

C’mon, babe. Don’t you want your Valentine’s present?

The woman glares at the camera. Rolls her eyes. Opens her mouth. His cock slides between her lips.
The Landscaper and I are in the back of his van. It’s a fucking cold day, but he’s been running the engine so that we’re not freezing. Still, I’ve got my jeans pulled down below my butt, and my rock-hard meat exposed. My fist is clutching my dick as I stroke to the video he’s showing me on his smartphone.

That feels great, honey. Keep going.” First I hear his voice, tinny and hollow on the little speaker. Next I hear the live thing in my ear, deep and masculine. “She’s hot, huh? She can really suck.”

I nod. She really can suck. It’s pretty obvious the wife is doing a good job on the Landscaper’s cock. He’s nowhere as big as I. In fact, I can’t really see much of it on the little display except when she pulls out to the base of the head. Most of the time, he’s grinding his blond pubes against his wife’s chin and pulling her face down on him. The Landscaper and I have this agreement, when we meet, that I’m totally straight. I wouldn’t want to see his dick. So he makes sure she’s the one in plain view.

I can’t deny how hard his domestic scene is making me. He can see my arousal in the red tautness of my head, in the precum that’s flowing from the tip. “She’s hot, huh?” he repeats.

I nod, mesmerized by the footage he’s showing me. She’s all right, in that early-thirties Lululemon-wearing suburban mommy kind of way.

I think this is the closest we’ve ever been. When we meet, we’ve lately got our act down to a relentless routine. He gives me notice a week before asking if I’m available. We set a date. We meet in his van, in a strip mall parking lot off the freeway not far from home. He gives me cash. I stroke while he watches from between my legs. Sometimes—sometimes—I let him put his lips on my nuts when I’m close to coming. More accurately, I pretend not to notice when he sucks on my nuts as I’m ramping up to blow my load. Of course I wouldn’t let a dude lick my nuts. That’s fag stuff.

Today though. He sent me some kind of joke text in the early morning with a big ol’ photo of a vagina and a corny punchline—Cun’t wait to wish you a happy Valentine’s, or some subtle crap like that. Begged to see me that very afternoon, at lunchtime. He’d toss in an extra fifty if I’d make the time, even take me to lunch after if I wanted. And now we’re both sitting next to each other, our back against the driver’s side seat. His chest is pressed against the back of my shoulder. I can feel the warmth of his body against my right side. When he breathes, it tickles my cheek. I’ve never let him get this intimate with me. But he’s got to be there to show me the movie, see. It’s only because he’s showing me the movie.

“I like watching movies where the chick really knows how to suck, you know?” he says to me, all hearty and bluff and masculine. This is the way dudes talk to each other when they’re alone, in his head. “I mean, lookit how mine does it. She sticks those lips out so she can reach all the way to the base, you know? That way she’s taking it all. Feels real good when someone takes it all, right?”
You don’t have to be a genius to know that he wants to be the ‘someone’ taking all my dick. But you know. Real dudes just don’t think that way. I grunt, keep my eyes on the little screen, keep my hand on my knob.

“Let me show you this,” he said. He pulls the phone away for a second so he can look through his videos. His body is still close to mine, though. He rests his chin on my shoulder as he browses. I honestly don’t know whether he’s deliberately taking the liberty, or whether he’s just unaware he’s doing it. “Okay, this one. I took it just for you.”

When he sticks out the phone this time, he’s fucking pussy. She’s at a strange angle—on her back, legs lifted, I think—and he’s moving the camera around so rapidly it’s almost impossible to get a look at the fucking. But then the camera rights itself and he’s sliding in and out of that sweet pussy like a pro. Then abruptly, it cuts off.

“Too short,” he complains, then starts it over again. I get twenty seconds of crazy camera, then one good shot of his dick gliding in then out, then it stops once more. “You want to fuck her?”

“I’d fuck her,” I tell him. “I’d fuck her hard.”

“You’d fuck her with that big cock of yours?” He’s turned off the phone, now. But he’s still leaning against me, totally unselfconscious about how close we are. “That’s a fucking pussy wrecker. A hell of a lot bigger than mine.”

“Fuck, I’d fuck her real good,” I say, sticking to the limited vocabulary of my trade persona.

“She’d never want me to fuck her again after you were done fucking her,” he says. “Fuck.”

Personally, I’m wondering how many more times we can use the word ‘fuck’ in the conversation. It’s been repeated so many times at this point it’s beginning to sound like a nonsense syllable. But I can’t help adding, “Fuck yeah.”

My entire right side goes suddenly cold when the little landscaping devil over my shoulder moves to his usual spot between my legs. I re-settle myself into my usual position. “Stroke it,” he whispers, watching up close. “God damn.” I close my eyes. Lift my knees and spread my thighs a little. Soon he’ll be putting his mouth on my balls when he thinks I won’t notice.

But that moist touch on my nuts doesn’t come. I hear him rasp out instead, “Let me suck you.”
I open my eyes. Stop stroking. A real straight guy would be offended at the suggestion. My expression is leaden, but my dick is concrete and growing harder. I open my mouth as if to say no.

“Let me suck your big dick,” he pleads. “Come on. I’ll do it like she does. All the way down.”

“Dude,” I complain.

“It’ll be okay,” he says. I can tell he’s genuinely worried about offending me with the gay stuff. “It doesn’t mean shit.”

“I don’t think—“

“Just the head.” There’s a whine to his voice, a deep-seated need. I’ve known for months—years—that we’d get around to this point. To be honest, I’m getting off on his urgency, feeding from it like a vampire on someone’s essential life force. Making him want it this badly. Protracting it. Making it laaaaast. That’s what keeps me coming back, time after time.

If I’d shoved my dick down this wanna-be cocksucker’s throat the first time we’d met, I would’ve never seen his handsome mug again. It would’ve been too much, too fast. He would’ve been overwhelmed. Instead I’ve taunted him with what he wants. I’m made him think about it. Obsess about it. At the same time I’ve kept it one step out of reach. Thinking maybe next time is what keeps him coming back, time after time.

“You won’t tell,” I say. It’s more demand than question. He looks at me with surprise. Pauses. He can’t fucking believe it.

“I won’t tell, dude. Just between us.”

“Just the head,” I say, trying to sound reluctant.

“Just the head. You don’t like it, I’ll stop. Promise.” When I don’t answer right away, he wheedles some more. “Seriously. I’m just helping you out.”

He waits to see if I take the bait. After a long minute, I wrap my fist around my dick. The head is poking out of the circle made by my thumb and forefinger. It’s scarlet in hue, engorged. I point it at him.

He goes at it greedily, worshiping the bare inch of flesh. The taste of my precum must surprise him, because he almost backs right off. But he manages to swallow it down. I feel his tongue slathering the crown, trying to map every contour. My straight married dad of a Landscaper isn’t a wanna-be anymore. He’s officially a cocksucker.

I don’t last long. “Dude, move back,” I warn him, right before I shoot. The orgasm is explosive. One of those that feels less like shivery pleasure and more like an angry explosion of lava from my nuts. He’s not ready to swallow. Not yet. But I’m pumping streams of the stuff all over his face. I’m painting his mouth and lips with the sticky goo, getting it on his eyebrow and cheekbone.

He doesn’t seem to mind at all. He doesn’t even wipe it away. Then he rests the side of his head on my thigh, being careful not to get the juice on my denim.

I say nothing for a moment. It’d be pointless to deny I enjoyed it. He knows I’ve never come that hard for him. My dick’s still hard, even though it’s leaking cum still. I hold it in my hand for a minute, then pull up my shorts and stuff it in the pouch. “You promised,” I remind him.

“Yeah yeah yeah,” he says. “We’re good.”

He’s good, at least. His eyes are shining. He’s still aroused, still breathing heavily. My sperm’s still decorating his face. While I’m yanking on my jacket from the passenger seat, I can hear him playing with his phone again.

Happy Valentine’s Day, honey.”

“What? Honey. It’s not even six-thirty.”

I know that the second I step out of that vehicle, he’ll be frantically wrestling off his pants on the van floor and masturbating to a fast climax. He’ll probably be whacking off to the memory of tasting his first dick for the next six months. Maybe by that time I’ll let him go all the way down.

“Later,” I mumble with feigned embarrassment, as I stuff my shirt back into my jeans and maneuver myself back up to the front seats.

“You want to catch some lunch?” he calls.

I decline, this time. One of us has already eaten.

Friday, February 14, 2014

Monday, February 10, 2014

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Sunday Morning Questions: Little Tearoom on the Prairie Edition

I have some of the nicest readers around.

Every now and then I need to remind myself of that fact. You’d think it’d be evident all the time, right? There are days, however, when I open my mail application and find the same old shocked-granny responses to my latest blog post, all of which read as if they were written by two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old Puritans still clutching original copies of the Geneva Bible. Then there are the stern schoolmarm responses in which I get lectured up and down for one thing or another—if it’s not lectures about the kind of sex I have, it’s lectures about the the nicknames I use in my blog for guys I see regularly, or chiding about seeing married men, or a stern scolding about corrupting younger guys, or just general dunning over my scandalous, sin-filled lifestyle and its effects on the seventy-five-mile radius around me. Then there are usually a generous helping of letters from the outright crazies—the guys off their meds who foam at the mouth and make no sense whatsoever, or send me notessssss ssssssaying that Sssssssatan hassssss sssssstolen my sssssssoul (yes, just like that), the stalkers who attempt to pinpoint my home address by analyzing the geotag information on my photos, and the schizophrenics who very kindly share with me their letters to god. Or outer space. Sometimes I can’t tell which.

Add to all that the guys who just want a ride on my coattails, the people who write a couple of times a week to criticize my grammar and word choices, the come-ons from guys I’ve already ignored a half-dozen times, and you can understand why there are days when I stare at all the trashed messages and wish I’d never started a blog and kind of wished my permanent address was in a cave without internet access or mail delivery.

So then I have to remind myself: I have some of the nicest readers around.

I have readers who email me genuinely interesting stories about their lives, who share of themselves in the same way I share with them. I have readers with whom I have genuine, long-term dialogues—stimulating back-and-forth conversation about the issues I raise that are of interest to us both. I have readers I think of as long-distance friends. I have readers who started as friends and became playmates in bed. And of course I have readers who send me naked photos of themselves for my enjoyment. (I can never have too many of those!)

The sweetness outweighs the rotten by far. I’ve been particularly struck by it this week, because of the many birthday wishes I’ve gotten from you guys already—and it’s not even my birthday until the latter half of the week. It’s not even the tokens a few of you have sent so far from my Amazon wish list that touch me most (though they do touch me in the most intimate of places…more pictures will be forthcoming in a few days, I hope).





It’s that I’ve received so many personal emails from readers who’ve written to wish me a happy natal day, and who tenderly inquire if I’m okay with the impending half-century mark. They tread delicately on the big, round number, fearful it might be a sore spot (unlike my real-life friends, who are only too anxious to crow about how old I am). They write to assure me that I’ve still got it, that I’ve got many great years ahead, and other messages of inspiration and support.

I love it. How can I not be touched? Who wouldn’t be grateful for such a loving bunch of people? I mean, heck. If you’re reading me regularly, I already know you have faultless taste, right? So thank you for making my week, last week, with your many messages of love. I’m definitely buoyed by the support.

Let’s get to some reader questions. If you’re a member over at formspring.me, I’m still collecting and answering questions there. If you’re not, just submit them to me via email with Reader Questions in the subject line and I’ll answer them anonymously in future editions.

I get tested regularly for all of them and check with my partners about their status. I understand you do as well. But those exchanges haven't appeared in your posts (which makes sense) and I'm curious how that works for you.

I know the foundation is both trust and knowledge, but the trust part, particularly when on-line, can be missing, or faint. What part does all of this topic play in who you bed or don't? Or in what play you engage in with them?

I don't discuss STDs in my blog because there are too many people out there who want to turn sex blogs into blogs about The Wages Of Sin.

It's bad enough that I get a ton of comments (that I don't publish any more) that are nothing more than passive-aggressive ill-wishing—crap like "Must be NICE not ever to worry about catching anything or giving it to others, huh!" I also get a substantial number of comments (that I also don't publish) that signal to me that some guys visiting my blog repeatedly are clearly getting off to the raw fucking, but feeling super-guilty afterward. It tends to turn them into stern schoolmarms who write things like "Sex should only be had safely!" or the ridiculous "Think of the children!"

Nobody's forcing these people to read my sexcapades. They could've left without comment at the first mention of unprotected sex. But they read, they enjoy what they read (why do it, otherwise?) and then they feel compelled to lecture me about my choices.

The life stories I share in my blog are mostly erotic. There are exceptions, but the focus is on the fun sex I have. I—and I suspect my readers—would find it decidedly unerotic if every time I recorded a sexual escapade I had a little section that ran:

"My darling, may I ask you a question?" 
"Yes, of course, love," I say, gazing into his eyes. 
"I just want to know—" he looks at me shyly. "Have you been tested for all relevant sexually-transmitted diseases in a recent and timely basis by a qualified medical practitioner?" 
I give both his hands a squeeze. "I can assure you that I am utterly free of infection. Here are my papers, signed by an accredited physician belonging to the American Medical Association. Would you like to examine them while I give you a free back massage?" 
"No, my super-hung stallion. That is not necessary. Do you have the condoms for the safe sex?" 
"I do, for while sex is but a fleeting pleasure, love is for a lifetime, dear one." 
He smiles. "Please allow me to apply it to your erect penis so that the safe sex may be had with vigor."

And yet, if you read any sort of steamy romance novel, or most gay erotica (no offense, but especially that written by women, or by guys who don't actually have sex), you'll encounter these kinds of eye-rolling, anti-erotic scenes as a matter of course. I'm not ever going to include that crap just to allay the fears of a subset of readers who are offended at the notion that I don't Obey The Rules. If readers don't like how I fuck, they can easily opt out of reading about it simply by going to some other website full of fake-ass shit.

I have contracted STDs in the past. In my thirty-eight years of sexual activity, I’ve had a few mishaps. I’ve contracted two or three cases of crabs. I've caught gonorrhea once, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I’ve tested positive for syphilis once, and endured the shots. I'm not going to pretend that unprotected sex doesn't have risks, because it does.

I always advise readers to take only those risks with which they are comfortable. If they are the personality type who writhes with anguish and regret after sex because of the fears of having contracted disease, if they are going to loath themselves for days on end because they might have been exposed to something, I'd recommend using protection all the way, every time. All those days and weeks of self-hate simply aren't worth the few minutes of sex.

I expect any of the guys I see who are taking risks to be a man about it and test regularly—and then to do something about the situation if they pick up something. And you're right, basically it comes down to a matter of trust. It's impossible for me to instruct anyone in how and when to trust someone else. For me, it kind of runs along the lines of asking myself basic questions like, "Does this man seem like he has enough on the ball to recognize an STD if he had one?" or "Is he likely to have access to and use professional health care providers if something came up?"

But I tell you, in recent years the big question I ask myself is, "Does this guy PNP?" Because if the answer is yes, I'll pass. All the close calls and actual trips to the clinic I've had in the last twenty years have come from guys heavily into partying. There's a point for those gentlemen at which the need for the drugs bypasses any other consideration to their own health and safety. Either they don't screen their partners in any form at all, or they are too high to notice that something's wrong with their systems, or—as in the case of the gonorrhea I once had—they know they've got something but just don't fucking care enough about their partners to tell the multiple guys they've lined up to fuck their hungry holes.

This is why, when I see profiles in which The men posTing Them Think They're being compleTely subTle abouT signaling Their use of crysTal meTh (but aren'T), I completely ignore them.
That's just one thing of many I look for. Everyone must come up with his own guidelines for with whom he plays and with whom he won't. If he's in a situation in which he's feeling uncomfortable about his partner's health, he should be prepared to extract himself gracefully. If he does catch something, he should be prepared to deal with it in an adult manner—and accept the responsibility that it might happen, before it happens. That's really all I can advise.


Whether it’s MH & A4A or BBRT or numerous phone apps including but not limited to Grinder, Jack’d, Hornet, or Scruff is there such a thing as too much exposure when looking for sex? How long should one hang out on line trying to secure a hook up?

Yes, I absolutely believe it's possible to be overexposed on these sites.

With Manhunt or BBRT or sites one accesses through the computer in a traditional manner, usually you can estimate how long a guy's been hunting on a site by his position in one of the 'Guys Online' lists. If he's near the top, or at least on the first couple of pages, he's only been prowling for a little bit. If he's way far down in the list, he's been at it for a few hours. Or days.

I think we've all known of guys who seem to be on all these sites 24/7. Frankly, I find it a little off-putting and needy . . . and I'm certain I'm not the only one . . . if I check in on Manhunt at eight in the morning and a certain gentleman checks me out within a minute of my login, and then I discover he immediately checks me out again on A4A when I check my mail over there two hours later. If he's doing the same on BBRT when I look in mid-afternoon, and I see he's still on Manhunt, trying to get my attention still if I check my mail before midnight, I find it definitely creepy and I'm likely to ignore him.

Sure, there are days when I'll be logged into a site for a couple of hours while I cruise. But iIf you're hanging around online every waking hour of the day, I'm thinking, you're not really using your time well . . . or you're intent on wasting mine.

I'm not going to instruct guys in how long is too long. We're all adults. I'm not paying your internet bill. You do what you want. But I've noticed that after a while on any particular site, fatigue sets in. Even my profile gets so ubiquitous that men just pass over it. (I know, right? How could they, the fuckers?)

I tend to take vacations from sites on a periodic basis. It really does work to use one site for a little bit and not any others . . . just for a couple of weeks. Perhaps work up a few new photos, in the hiatus. When I come back, I'm suddenly new meat again.


Did your parents read to you or make-up stories for you when you were little?

Both my parents read to me when I was very little. My mother was fond of reading picture books, particularly Dr. Seuss. My dad enjoyed reading aloud Peanuts comic strip collections for my juvenile enjoyment.

When I learned to read for myself at the age of 5 or 6, I was able to go back to the stories I really loved the most because of them, and read them for myself. I completely ascribe my love of story-telling to my parents, because no part of the day was as exciting to me as when they'd cuddle up on the bed with me, a book in one of their laps.

One of the things we used to do in the long summers when I was a little older, when we had only three stations to choose from on the television, no internet, and no video games to play, was to read aloud to each other as well. We'd sit on the side porch in the shade and while the cicadas buzzed away, read humorous essays by Bob and Ray or Erma Bombeck to each other, or sometimes plays we'd checked out of the library, or funny satires by Nathaniel Benchley or Wodehouse.

And then Pa would go out to the Dakota territories and kill a bear and Ma and Mary and Me would go into town and barter at Olsen's Mercantile for a yard of gingham.