There’s an expression men wear on their faces in certain naked moments. It’s a look of religion; it’s the look of truth about to be told. The young man lying on his back with his legs spread apart, his ass positioned up in the air, laid bare and open for my erect cock—he wore that expression. His eyes were wide, his voice breathy and full of wonder as he spoke. “Your eyes are so intense,” he said, raising his head to meet my eyes.
I stared back at him, steeping myself in his beauty. His muscular body. The breadth of his shoulders, the supple curves of his biceps. The narrowness of his waist. The perfect globes of his ass. His white, unblemished skin. And most of all, the masculinity and boyishness of his face, from the solid squareness of its shape to the hint of a snub at the tip of his nose. Of course I’m intense, I think to myself. I’m trying to memorize every detail of this boy. The head of my dick nudges against his hole, jumping at the warmth of it.
Then his lips part again. When he speaks, his words sound like prayer. “Looking into your eyes is like . . . looking into the eyes of a wolf,” he whispers.
My own lips close. I recognize the truth of what he’s told me. In actuality, at that moment I feel like a wolf. I’m a predator, closing in on prey crippled by the chase, too weak and limp to escape my slavering jaws. Only moments before I’d had him face down on the bed with a pillow shoved roughly beneath his pelvis, clutching at the bedclothes as I slobbered and chewed at the pucker of his ass. I’d eaten him out like I was a starving thing. I’d snorted and snuffled at him, pawed and probed, taking satisfaction in the cries he’d rasped out in the quiet of his Brooklyn apartment bedroom. Each of my growls was feral. Every grunt was of pure, satiated, animal pleasure.
I give him a smile. My lips part. My fangs show. I begin to slide into him, parting soft flesh with hard. “Slow,” he begs. “Please. Slow.”
I’m already one step ahead of him. I’m pushing softly, entering only as quickly as he allows. His ass speaks to me as fluently as his lips; I know exactly how quickly I can go. His eyes close. When they open again, they’re lidded, hazed. He still sees me clearly, though. The look he’s giving me is unwavering, full of awe. It’s just as intense as anything I could muster. I’m occupying all his focus.
At that moment in his life, there’s only me. No job worries, no husband, no dog waiting for a walk, no dinner to cook or shower to take or text to which he has to respond. Just me. My raw cock. This fuck.
“You feel so good,” I tell him, when I reach the bottom. “You’re mine, now.”
“Yours,” he echoes softly. “Only yours.”
“This is my hole,” I tell him, beginning to slide in and out.
“Your hole. It belongs to you,” he says, with a look of utter and absolute love in his eyes. “Do anything you want with it.”
“I will,” I tell him. My face is a foot above his. I’ve got my fists planted in his mattress as I piston my meat in and out of his slick, smooth chute. “Because it’s mine.”
“Because it’s yours,” he agrees. His handsome face has softened, gone slack as he melts into the sensation of my cock stretching out his hole. “Please load your hole, sir,” he begs. “Load your boy’s hole.”
“I’ll get there,” I tell him. “We only have one first fuck.”
I intend to make it last.
Sex at its best strips men down to their essences. Rabid wolf. Prey. Our connection, flesh to flesh, purges all the inconsequences and bullshit of our two everyday lives. All we are, all we want to be, is happening in that moment. Sadist. Sacrifice. Engorged flesh. Soft, pliant opening. My gift to him is of his own purity. I give him the chance to be what he most truly is; I provide him moments in which he can unburden himself of himself, to become what he wants more than anything. His most authentic self. He’s my boy. My hole.
And like a miser of flesh I take it for myself. I covet that hole. I’m greedy for it, anxious to conquer it. I need to plant my seed inside it, to mark it as mine. All mine. No one else’s. Mine.
“Please,” he begs, his eyes blazing into mine. That face—so honest, so full of need. He’s so beautiful.
I’m nearly ready. But not yet. “You know why I saved this load for you?” I ask. I’d known we’d have this afternoon together a week before, when we’d made the date. I’d kept it in my pants since them.
He shakes his head slowly. I feel his ass clench down on my cock. It nearly pushes me over the edge. “Why,” he says, the desire for it naked in his expression.
In a soft voice, I explain. “Partly it was to flatter you,” I say. “Sure it was. But that’s not the real reason. I did it because I knew it belonged to you. I did it because I wanted it to be you.” Our lips meet. We kiss softly. Wetly. “I saved up a seven-day load because I knew you would be worth it.”
“Am I?” he asks. “Am I worth it?”
I nod. “Oh, son,” I sigh. “You truly are.”
He lets out a gulp of pleasure like a sob. At the sound, my load gushes inside him. I can feel it pumping out of me, molten as lava. It coats him thickly, painting itself onto the walls of his guts as I spray what feels, in that moment, like an unending stream of the gooey, sticky stuff. My cock feels the difference immediately. It’s coated by my own semen. It glides more smoothly than any bottled lube.
He’s beating his own cock. His eyes beg me for permission to blow. I nod slightly. He erupts. A spurt of his cum arcs onto his chest, splashes onto his abdomen. Another follows, its path nearly matching the length of the first. My load’s buried inside him, but I know if I’d pulled out, it would puddle onto the sheets as copious, as thick, as glistening as this.
For a long, still moment we remain where we are, he and I. We stare at each other, hearts still thudding.
Then, as the blood clears from our heads, he reaches up, and pulls me to him. “Your hole. You own it,” he whispers, as he kisses me deeply.
I recognize the embrace for what it is: a promise that we are connected forever in this moment. A recognition of how thoroughly we’ve reduced each other to our bottom lines—our alchemic essences. Cock. Hole. Giver. Receiver. Sir. Boy.
Wolf.
Willing prey.
Monday, November 24, 2014
Friday, November 14, 2014
Hole
It’s a chilly morning and my breath unfurls in frosty curlicues before me. The sun’s on my face as I walk toward the man’s apartment, however, and I’m still toasty from my car. I’m a little surprised to find him sitting on the building’s steps in gym shorts. His legs are spread, his smile broad as he recognizes me. He’s got one hand thrust into a lightweight jacket pocket. The other holds a cell phone. He lifts his chin in greeting, says something in Spanish to the person on the other end, then ends the call. “Come on inside,” he says.
This neighborhood is filled with apartment buildings like this. They look like single-family residences from the outside, once inside they’re a warren-like complex of tiny flats crammed into every available space. I let him maneuver around me in the tight stairwell once I’m inside, so that he can lead me down into the basement. There are three white wooden doors at the bottom of the steps. He opens one with his key, and escorts me in to a clean, surprisingly sunny residence. I pull off my jacket and toss it on the sofa as I glance around. There’s a tiny kitchenette, and a sofa where he’s tossed a Playstation controller, and a large television hung on the wall. Before I get a chance to look at more, though, the man puts his hands on my hips, and pulls me to him.
Our lips meet. The guy kind of looks a little bit like a brute. His shoulders and broad, his chest deep and developed. His Latin features are hewn rough on his face; his eyebrows are broad charcoal smudges. But his kisses are light. Wet. Soft. His mouth tastes sweet, like honey water.
While he holds the back of my head, refusing to let my lips pull away, his free hand unbuttons my shirt. I kick off my sneakers as he stares hard into my eyes. When I put my palm to his crotch, I feel the hardness there. For a split-second I worry that my hands are too cold from the raw morning. But he grinds forward at the pressure, and uses his wandering hand to grab the small of my back and yank me closer.
The rough treatment makes me let out the smallest of gasps. He hears me, though. He knows I like it. His hands move up to my shoulders, and push me down.
He helps me pull his shorts to his ankles, letting them and his underwear drop in one smooth, swift motion. His uncut cock is dark, chocolate-colored. The sheath covers almost the entire head; only the slit peeks out. Already it’s glistening. When I open my mouth wide and take the six inches to the root, he grunts.
Within seconds, my saliva lets my lips glide back and forth along the whole length of his shaft. I feel him shift from foot to foot as he spreads his legs and lets his balls dangle more freely. Then he seizes my skull and yanks it down, roughly, until his cock head is plugging my throat. I’d taken a deep breath at the appropriate time, though. I’m prepared to relax and let him savor the sensations as he impales me for a long moment. When I back off, though, and his cock slithers out and drops heavily from my lips to my chin to point to the floor, I’m gagging and gasping for air. My eyes sting from the tears he’s drawn with that thick, dark ramrod.
He likes the sight of those tears, too.
He enjoys watching me as I dive once more for my prize. Holding me at arm’s length, tilting my head as I suck and slobber. The man forces me to look at him as I go deep on his meat. His dark eyes bore down. Though I feel water filling mine every time he stretches my throat, I strive my hardest to keep from blinking. Only when I’m awash in my own tears do I finally squeeze my lids together. Rivulets stream down my cheeks.
When he moves me into the bedroom it’s nothing more than a rush of blur and motion—a few seconds of deprivation and an empty mouth. Then I’m lying on his high queen-sized mattress, rumpling the primly-made bedding, and he’s straddling my face. One of his big hands grabs the back of my head like a basketball, yanks it up, shoves a pillow beneath. Several times he shoves it down, craning my neck upward, until he’s satisfied. He doesn’t give a shit about my comfort. He’s just trying to get my open, begging mouth at the perfect angle for his dick. That dick is his only concern for the moment. His dick, and the wet mouth that he’s using.
And I’m not so much sucking him anymore as getting the hole fucked. I keep my jaw wide and my throat loose and my teeth wrapped with my lips. I want to stay out of his way as much as possible, basically, as he pounds my mouth. He bones it like pussy. He plants his palms into the mattress above my head and rests his weight there. His knees are splayed far to either side. The bony parts of his hips bruise my cheeks as he thrusts hard, in and out. My nose is full of the sharp, musky smell of his black pubes. It’s my responsibility to gulp breaths when I’m able—not his to facilitate it. I know what I’m there for.
I can tell he’s getting close when his precum begins to flood my mouth. It’s salty, slightly sour, slick enough to make the passage of his inches even faster and smoother. I feel his hips buckle, his legs twitch. Then he drives in to the back of my throat, smothering me with his pelvis, grinding those hairs so hard into my skin they abrade. I feel his meat swell and subside, grow and shrink, several times over until he’s finally dumped the entire load.
When finally he pulls out I’m both choking and trying to get air into my lungs, but I’m gracious enough—and proud—not to let my distress show. I swallow that thick, pungent semen and lick both it and his precum from my lips. I blink away the moisture from my eyes, and wipe my nose. He climbs off me, his mostly-hard dick swinging like a pendulum as he hops off the bed and pads into the bathroom.
I still have on my shoes, my pants, my shirt. Nothing came off. All I have to do is crawl off the bed and make sure everything’s tucked in, check my hair in the mirror. He emerges from the bathroom and tosses a lukewarm washcloth at me. While I wipe my face with it, he studies me. Taking it back, he comments, “Pretty good cocksucker for a white boy.”
I nod, grateful for the praise, then turn to go. “Hey,” he says, grabbing my forearm with a strong grip. Then he pulls me into another kiss—just as deep and passionate as before. “Come back sometime,” he whispers, looking into my eyes again. I nod again, and grin. He guides me to the door, undoes the chain locking it, and lets me out.
It’s still cold outside when I trip down his steps and onto the sidewalk. I can still see my breath on the air. But my hands are a little warmer, my face a little redder, and my throat a whole lot more sore when I make my way down the street with my long shadow dancing down the pavement before me.
This neighborhood is filled with apartment buildings like this. They look like single-family residences from the outside, once inside they’re a warren-like complex of tiny flats crammed into every available space. I let him maneuver around me in the tight stairwell once I’m inside, so that he can lead me down into the basement. There are three white wooden doors at the bottom of the steps. He opens one with his key, and escorts me in to a clean, surprisingly sunny residence. I pull off my jacket and toss it on the sofa as I glance around. There’s a tiny kitchenette, and a sofa where he’s tossed a Playstation controller, and a large television hung on the wall. Before I get a chance to look at more, though, the man puts his hands on my hips, and pulls me to him.
Our lips meet. The guy kind of looks a little bit like a brute. His shoulders and broad, his chest deep and developed. His Latin features are hewn rough on his face; his eyebrows are broad charcoal smudges. But his kisses are light. Wet. Soft. His mouth tastes sweet, like honey water.
While he holds the back of my head, refusing to let my lips pull away, his free hand unbuttons my shirt. I kick off my sneakers as he stares hard into my eyes. When I put my palm to his crotch, I feel the hardness there. For a split-second I worry that my hands are too cold from the raw morning. But he grinds forward at the pressure, and uses his wandering hand to grab the small of my back and yank me closer.
The rough treatment makes me let out the smallest of gasps. He hears me, though. He knows I like it. His hands move up to my shoulders, and push me down.
He helps me pull his shorts to his ankles, letting them and his underwear drop in one smooth, swift motion. His uncut cock is dark, chocolate-colored. The sheath covers almost the entire head; only the slit peeks out. Already it’s glistening. When I open my mouth wide and take the six inches to the root, he grunts.
Within seconds, my saliva lets my lips glide back and forth along the whole length of his shaft. I feel him shift from foot to foot as he spreads his legs and lets his balls dangle more freely. Then he seizes my skull and yanks it down, roughly, until his cock head is plugging my throat. I’d taken a deep breath at the appropriate time, though. I’m prepared to relax and let him savor the sensations as he impales me for a long moment. When I back off, though, and his cock slithers out and drops heavily from my lips to my chin to point to the floor, I’m gagging and gasping for air. My eyes sting from the tears he’s drawn with that thick, dark ramrod.
He likes the sight of those tears, too.
He enjoys watching me as I dive once more for my prize. Holding me at arm’s length, tilting my head as I suck and slobber. The man forces me to look at him as I go deep on his meat. His dark eyes bore down. Though I feel water filling mine every time he stretches my throat, I strive my hardest to keep from blinking. Only when I’m awash in my own tears do I finally squeeze my lids together. Rivulets stream down my cheeks.
When he moves me into the bedroom it’s nothing more than a rush of blur and motion—a few seconds of deprivation and an empty mouth. Then I’m lying on his high queen-sized mattress, rumpling the primly-made bedding, and he’s straddling my face. One of his big hands grabs the back of my head like a basketball, yanks it up, shoves a pillow beneath. Several times he shoves it down, craning my neck upward, until he’s satisfied. He doesn’t give a shit about my comfort. He’s just trying to get my open, begging mouth at the perfect angle for his dick. That dick is his only concern for the moment. His dick, and the wet mouth that he’s using.
And I’m not so much sucking him anymore as getting the hole fucked. I keep my jaw wide and my throat loose and my teeth wrapped with my lips. I want to stay out of his way as much as possible, basically, as he pounds my mouth. He bones it like pussy. He plants his palms into the mattress above my head and rests his weight there. His knees are splayed far to either side. The bony parts of his hips bruise my cheeks as he thrusts hard, in and out. My nose is full of the sharp, musky smell of his black pubes. It’s my responsibility to gulp breaths when I’m able—not his to facilitate it. I know what I’m there for.
I can tell he’s getting close when his precum begins to flood my mouth. It’s salty, slightly sour, slick enough to make the passage of his inches even faster and smoother. I feel his hips buckle, his legs twitch. Then he drives in to the back of my throat, smothering me with his pelvis, grinding those hairs so hard into my skin they abrade. I feel his meat swell and subside, grow and shrink, several times over until he’s finally dumped the entire load.
When finally he pulls out I’m both choking and trying to get air into my lungs, but I’m gracious enough—and proud—not to let my distress show. I swallow that thick, pungent semen and lick both it and his precum from my lips. I blink away the moisture from my eyes, and wipe my nose. He climbs off me, his mostly-hard dick swinging like a pendulum as he hops off the bed and pads into the bathroom.
I still have on my shoes, my pants, my shirt. Nothing came off. All I have to do is crawl off the bed and make sure everything’s tucked in, check my hair in the mirror. He emerges from the bathroom and tosses a lukewarm washcloth at me. While I wipe my face with it, he studies me. Taking it back, he comments, “Pretty good cocksucker for a white boy.”
I nod, grateful for the praise, then turn to go. “Hey,” he says, grabbing my forearm with a strong grip. Then he pulls me into another kiss—just as deep and passionate as before. “Come back sometime,” he whispers, looking into my eyes again. I nod again, and grin. He guides me to the door, undoes the chain locking it, and lets me out.
It’s still cold outside when I trip down his steps and onto the sidewalk. I can still see my breath on the air. But my hands are a little warmer, my face a little redder, and my throat a whole lot more sore when I make my way down the street with my long shadow dancing down the pavement before me.
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
A Long (and Relaxing) Silence
Two years ago I took my blog on hiatus for a few months because of a pretty severe encounter with a stalker, who was also one of my readers. As you can imagine, the experience left me wary for a while of sharing any details about my personal life. And it doesn’t get much more personal than a sex blog.
A year ago I took something of an enforced break from writing when my health faltered. For a couple of weeks, I couldn’t even really sit up, much less have sex or have the energy to write about it.
Recently I’ve taken a break because . . . well, to be perfectly frank, I’ve been having something of a snit. I admit it. The reason sounds childish. But there it is.
My bad mood started sometime in August, when two ominous fronts collided and created the conditions for a perfect storm of massive pique on my part. I’m not really quite sure what happened on the first front—whether Mercury went into retrograde or not, or whether there was something in the local waters, or whether all those shirtless photos Nick Jonas was flooding onto Instagram made everyone feel inadequate about themselves. But for a while there, just about everyone I was cruising for sex was being a total dick.
Without going into too much detail, in my personal life there were a couple of gentlemen I took to bed with whom I had incredibly intense and connected experiences. I would’ve been okay if they’d been one-time encounters. Honestly. But both of them, as we lay there in post-coital entanglement, made elaborate plans how how we should be seeing each other regularly. One was a young guy with a sense of sexual adventure who told me about the places and parties he wanted to take me, so we could show off our fucking to others and have them join in; the other was a more mature, more passionate lover who wanted me to spend weekends with him at his cottage in the country, screwing like rabbits. I liked both men. They appealed to the pig and the romantic in me.
Of course, I never heard from either of them again, after I drove home. I sent emails and texts that got no replies. After a couple of weeks, and with a lot of disappointment, I just gave up on them both.
Online I wasn’t encountering just the standard assholery, either—the guys who unlock their photos for a hot second and then immediately lock them again before I’ve had a chance to look at them, or the ones who commit to a date a couple of days in advance and then stand me up before 48 hours have elapsed. No, I’m used to them. I’m used to the guys who hit me up hard and horny on Scruff, who want to wheedle their way into my pants one minute, and who ignore my existence the moment they’ve jerked off. These guys went above and beyond that already-low bar of behavior.
For example, this exchange, reproduced verbatim, was pretty typical of what I encountered:
There was the guy who said You’d almost be hot if you weren’t so old. And there was the guy who gave me the back-handed compliment (I think?) of You look like the creepy pervert who hangs out at the high school stadium staring at the cheerleaders but I find that kind of hot in a way. I could go on for quite a while, but why revisit each and every affront? August was a month in which guys managed to put my ego to the rack and pillory in just about every conceivable way.
Normally I can shrug that shit off. It’s just part of the crap with which one gets spattered when one’s dredging the local waters for sex. At the same time, though, I was getting stressed out by a fairly sizable contingent of my readers.
Most of my faithful followers know that over the years I’ve been plagued by a handful of trolls, ill-wishers, and the downright psychotic. Hurtful though their responses can sometimes be, lately they’ve been nothing compared to burdens put on me—and I say this as gently as possible—by readers who would consider themselves well-meaning, upbeat, and positive. And I had a lot of those this summer.
The common theme between them all seemed to be that I owed them all something. They read my blog, was their implication, so now it was my turn to give back. For example, I had what turned into a contentious discussion with one reader who at first chided me on Manhunt for not replying to his mails there more quickly. After all, he read me all the time, so I should be responding to his messages first, and immediately. Then he asked me if I could give him the name of my blog and its URL. When I suggested that if he really were a regular reader, he should have the thing bookmarked instead of bugging me about it (I probably worded it more tactfully, but that was definitely my implication), the guy blew up. I should be more nice, he complained. I really needed to go more out of my way for my readers. I owed them that kind of courtesy. (I blocked him, and good fucking riddance.)
Then there were several readers who were going to be in my area, some quite close, some not so much. Many of the former expected—didn’t ask, just expected— me to show up and provide stud service on demand, simply because they were readers and they wanted it. Many of the latter expected—didn’t suggest, didn’t negotiate, just expected—me to drive up to two hours away to fuck them because they said so.
There was one reader who started sending me drafts of his book, a 300-plus-page memoir, for critique. At first I attempted to make some vague comments about the opening first pages while strongly suggesting that he find a local writing group or someone (not me!) who was actually willing to commit a huge chunk of time to reading the damned thing. When those hints didn’t take and I outright told him that it was tough enough finding time to read the books I wanted to read, much less the unpublished projects of aspiring writers I had no desire to slog through or critique in detail, especially when I hadn’t ever, ever asked to see said projects, I was rather huffily told that it was curious I should expect people to read my blog and never do anything in return for them.
I had a handful of readers who would send me very, verrrrry long emails. Ordinarily when a reader sends me an email, if it’s short enough, I’ll respond back relatively quickly. If it’s long, the reader usually will have to wait a longer time for a response, because it’s more of an investment of my time to do the reply justice. If it’s very, verrrrrrry fucking long, he’ll be waiting a while. A couple of these wordy readers, however, started to send me follow-up emails to their original verrrrrrrry long inquiries that were variations on the following:
Look. There are times I have lots of free moments to answer emails. And there are times when I’m busy with work and life and fucking and my time with my laptop is at a minimum. I try to answer email when I can. But the one best way to guarantee I’m going to postpone answering your email is to badger me with follow-up emails asking me why I haven’t answered your email. The one best way to guarantee I’ll never answer any of them is to send so many that I start grinding my teeth and actually feeling my blood pressure elevate whenever I see your name appear in my inbox.
I think the straw that broke the camel’s back, however, was the reader who told me he didn’t believe I was married. Nope, I was just saying that because—well, I don’t know why. Apparently he just didn’t seem to think I was a bill of goods anyone would actually buy. My word wasn’t good enough. The fact that I’m always wearing a wedding ring doesn’t matter, because anyone could wear a cheap ring. Of course I should’ve just rolled my eyes and told the guy that it was a shame he didn’t take me at my word. But no. I have a morbid curiosity that gets the worse of me. I caved and asked him what would constitute acceptable proof? A scanned copy of my marriage certificate, he informed me. Oh, and an immediate Skype tour of my bedroom, so that he could see there were two clock-radios and proof of living arrangements for two people, and not just one.
Never mind that asking someone to do such a thing is, in my opinion, horribly invasive, inappropriate, and offensive. I owed him a copy of that legal document.
I’m fully aware that anytime I complain about fans of my blog I sound like I’m some refugee from a formerly-popular-but-recently-dissolved boy band who makes a solo album that’s chock-full of songs about the pressures of stardom and how he wishes his fans would just leave him alone so he can chill, yo. But the fact is that while running a sex blog of some popularity has allowed me opportunities to meet and correspond with all kinds of fantastic people, there are nearly just as many times that fans have made my life a misery. Not all of them are bad as the time two years ago that one of my fans used my blog to stalk me in real life—but often close.
I’ve always felt that writing my blog is a gift from me to my readers. I don’t earn money from it. I rarely get presents out of it. I don’t ask readers to support advertisers or buy my T-shirts. The bargain between us is simplicity itself: I’m supposed to have fun seeking out sex and having it. I’m supposed to have fun writing about it. I’ve spent countless hours doing so over the course of several years so that I can share it with thousands of people. That investment of gas and lube and sweat and the long periods of time it takes to write about it is supposed to be a sweet giveaway from me to the strangers who are kind enough to take their time to read me.
Rather than take my gift at face value, there are a handful of readers—and again, I recognize they might think they mean well—who seem to assume that I owe them more than what I already was giving. Either their numbers surged, or I was in a bad enough mood that I allowed them to overwhelm me. Because suddenly, around summer’s end, none of it was any fun anymore.
I told a couple of close friends that I was declaring August and September to be ‘Boys R Stupid Months,’ and just withdrew. I gave myself permission to stop blogging until it felt like it would be fun again.
And you know, a couple of times it almost felt like it might be. I posted a couple of entries, hopeful that the old joy in sharing would return. Almost immediately I got reminded why it had become un-fun, as guys who’d never before commented would leave comments like Nice blog post but here is a list of typos I found EXTREMELY off-putting. . . or This doesn’t sound like the blogger I expect! or, god help me, Welcome back I guess but why haven’t you written about the Landscaper?
You know, being somewhat anonymous the past couple of months has been pleasant. I fuck, and don’t feel compelled to capture every little detail so I can recount it later. I don’t feel as if I’m having to be sexy, 24/7, in order to fulfill a reader’s expectations. An inbox full of reader emails? I’ve enjoyed seeing it as an option rather than a bundle of little obligations that add up to a prescription for anxiety and tense obligation. Being selfish has been, on the whole, a hell of a lot more relaxing than being giving.
Now, nobody can make writing fun for me again. That’s not anyone’s responsibility save my own. If I am to continue—and to be honest, I haven’t entirely decided whether that’s the case yet—the impetus for it has to come from within. It’s a decision that only I can make.
But readers, if you’ve gotten this far, there surely are a lot of ways that you can refrain from making my experience unenjoyable. It pains and even surprises me a little that I have to ask: but maybe a few of you could actually think about that, before adding to my to-do list? Maybe you could think of me as a person first, and an erection second? Perhaps you could ask yourself whether it’s appropriate to want copies of my legal documents, before making the demand?
Because that could make the going all the easier, trust me.
A year ago I took something of an enforced break from writing when my health faltered. For a couple of weeks, I couldn’t even really sit up, much less have sex or have the energy to write about it.
Recently I’ve taken a break because . . . well, to be perfectly frank, I’ve been having something of a snit. I admit it. The reason sounds childish. But there it is.
My bad mood started sometime in August, when two ominous fronts collided and created the conditions for a perfect storm of massive pique on my part. I’m not really quite sure what happened on the first front—whether Mercury went into retrograde or not, or whether there was something in the local waters, or whether all those shirtless photos Nick Jonas was flooding onto Instagram made everyone feel inadequate about themselves. But for a while there, just about everyone I was cruising for sex was being a total dick.
Without going into too much detail, in my personal life there were a couple of gentlemen I took to bed with whom I had incredibly intense and connected experiences. I would’ve been okay if they’d been one-time encounters. Honestly. But both of them, as we lay there in post-coital entanglement, made elaborate plans how how we should be seeing each other regularly. One was a young guy with a sense of sexual adventure who told me about the places and parties he wanted to take me, so we could show off our fucking to others and have them join in; the other was a more mature, more passionate lover who wanted me to spend weekends with him at his cottage in the country, screwing like rabbits. I liked both men. They appealed to the pig and the romantic in me.
Of course, I never heard from either of them again, after I drove home. I sent emails and texts that got no replies. After a couple of weeks, and with a lot of disappointment, I just gave up on them both.
Online I wasn’t encountering just the standard assholery, either—the guys who unlock their photos for a hot second and then immediately lock them again before I’ve had a chance to look at them, or the ones who commit to a date a couple of days in advance and then stand me up before 48 hours have elapsed. No, I’m used to them. I’m used to the guys who hit me up hard and horny on Scruff, who want to wheedle their way into my pants one minute, and who ignore my existence the moment they’ve jerked off. These guys went above and beyond that already-low bar of behavior.
For example, this exchange, reproduced verbatim, was pretty typical of what I encountered:
SOME GUY: You have a really great smile! And dick!
ME: I appreciate the compliments. You’re really handsome as well.
SOME GUY: I didn’t say you were handsome.
There was the guy who said You’d almost be hot if you weren’t so old. And there was the guy who gave me the back-handed compliment (I think?) of You look like the creepy pervert who hangs out at the high school stadium staring at the cheerleaders but I find that kind of hot in a way. I could go on for quite a while, but why revisit each and every affront? August was a month in which guys managed to put my ego to the rack and pillory in just about every conceivable way.
Normally I can shrug that shit off. It’s just part of the crap with which one gets spattered when one’s dredging the local waters for sex. At the same time, though, I was getting stressed out by a fairly sizable contingent of my readers.
Most of my faithful followers know that over the years I’ve been plagued by a handful of trolls, ill-wishers, and the downright psychotic. Hurtful though their responses can sometimes be, lately they’ve been nothing compared to burdens put on me—and I say this as gently as possible—by readers who would consider themselves well-meaning, upbeat, and positive. And I had a lot of those this summer.
The common theme between them all seemed to be that I owed them all something. They read my blog, was their implication, so now it was my turn to give back. For example, I had what turned into a contentious discussion with one reader who at first chided me on Manhunt for not replying to his mails there more quickly. After all, he read me all the time, so I should be responding to his messages first, and immediately. Then he asked me if I could give him the name of my blog and its URL. When I suggested that if he really were a regular reader, he should have the thing bookmarked instead of bugging me about it (I probably worded it more tactfully, but that was definitely my implication), the guy blew up. I should be more nice, he complained. I really needed to go more out of my way for my readers. I owed them that kind of courtesy. (I blocked him, and good fucking riddance.)
Then there were several readers who were going to be in my area, some quite close, some not so much. Many of the former expected—didn’t ask, just expected— me to show up and provide stud service on demand, simply because they were readers and they wanted it. Many of the latter expected—didn’t suggest, didn’t negotiate, just expected—me to drive up to two hours away to fuck them because they said so.
There was one reader who started sending me drafts of his book, a 300-plus-page memoir, for critique. At first I attempted to make some vague comments about the opening first pages while strongly suggesting that he find a local writing group or someone (not me!) who was actually willing to commit a huge chunk of time to reading the damned thing. When those hints didn’t take and I outright told him that it was tough enough finding time to read the books I wanted to read, much less the unpublished projects of aspiring writers I had no desire to slog through or critique in detail, especially when I hadn’t ever, ever asked to see said projects, I was rather huffily told that it was curious I should expect people to read my blog and never do anything in return for them.
I had a handful of readers who would send me very, verrrrry long emails. Ordinarily when a reader sends me an email, if it’s short enough, I’ll respond back relatively quickly. If it’s long, the reader usually will have to wait a longer time for a response, because it’s more of an investment of my time to do the reply justice. If it’s very, verrrrrrry fucking long, he’ll be waiting a while. A couple of these wordy readers, however, started to send me follow-up emails to their original verrrrrrrry long inquiries that were variations on the following:
1) Did I get the original email? Because they could send it again.
2) Hey, they’re just wondering, did I get the emails to check up on whether I got their original email? Because they sent an email and I never replied. Just checking!
3) I still haven’t replied to the original email or the follow-ups. Would I like a copy of the original email again? Because they could send it if I didn’t get it.
4) I hadn’t responded to their emails yet, was I dead? Or was my email not working?
5) They’ve decided they must have said something terribly wrong in one of their several emails, because I haven’t replied. They were very sorry if that’s the case. If it wasn’t, could I respond to the original email?
6) They were sorry if they was inundating me with emails. They just wanted me to read their email!
7) HELLO???? AM I GETTING THEIR EMAILS????
Look. There are times I have lots of free moments to answer emails. And there are times when I’m busy with work and life and fucking and my time with my laptop is at a minimum. I try to answer email when I can. But the one best way to guarantee I’m going to postpone answering your email is to badger me with follow-up emails asking me why I haven’t answered your email. The one best way to guarantee I’ll never answer any of them is to send so many that I start grinding my teeth and actually feeling my blood pressure elevate whenever I see your name appear in my inbox.
I think the straw that broke the camel’s back, however, was the reader who told me he didn’t believe I was married. Nope, I was just saying that because—well, I don’t know why. Apparently he just didn’t seem to think I was a bill of goods anyone would actually buy. My word wasn’t good enough. The fact that I’m always wearing a wedding ring doesn’t matter, because anyone could wear a cheap ring. Of course I should’ve just rolled my eyes and told the guy that it was a shame he didn’t take me at my word. But no. I have a morbid curiosity that gets the worse of me. I caved and asked him what would constitute acceptable proof? A scanned copy of my marriage certificate, he informed me. Oh, and an immediate Skype tour of my bedroom, so that he could see there were two clock-radios and proof of living arrangements for two people, and not just one.
Never mind that asking someone to do such a thing is, in my opinion, horribly invasive, inappropriate, and offensive. I owed him a copy of that legal document.
I’m fully aware that anytime I complain about fans of my blog I sound like I’m some refugee from a formerly-popular-but-recently-dissolved boy band who makes a solo album that’s chock-full of songs about the pressures of stardom and how he wishes his fans would just leave him alone so he can chill, yo. But the fact is that while running a sex blog of some popularity has allowed me opportunities to meet and correspond with all kinds of fantastic people, there are nearly just as many times that fans have made my life a misery. Not all of them are bad as the time two years ago that one of my fans used my blog to stalk me in real life—but often close.
I’ve always felt that writing my blog is a gift from me to my readers. I don’t earn money from it. I rarely get presents out of it. I don’t ask readers to support advertisers or buy my T-shirts. The bargain between us is simplicity itself: I’m supposed to have fun seeking out sex and having it. I’m supposed to have fun writing about it. I’ve spent countless hours doing so over the course of several years so that I can share it with thousands of people. That investment of gas and lube and sweat and the long periods of time it takes to write about it is supposed to be a sweet giveaway from me to the strangers who are kind enough to take their time to read me.
Rather than take my gift at face value, there are a handful of readers—and again, I recognize they might think they mean well—who seem to assume that I owe them more than what I already was giving. Either their numbers surged, or I was in a bad enough mood that I allowed them to overwhelm me. Because suddenly, around summer’s end, none of it was any fun anymore.
I told a couple of close friends that I was declaring August and September to be ‘Boys R Stupid Months,’ and just withdrew. I gave myself permission to stop blogging until it felt like it would be fun again.
And you know, a couple of times it almost felt like it might be. I posted a couple of entries, hopeful that the old joy in sharing would return. Almost immediately I got reminded why it had become un-fun, as guys who’d never before commented would leave comments like Nice blog post but here is a list of typos I found EXTREMELY off-putting. . . or This doesn’t sound like the blogger I expect! or, god help me, Welcome back I guess but why haven’t you written about the Landscaper?
You know, being somewhat anonymous the past couple of months has been pleasant. I fuck, and don’t feel compelled to capture every little detail so I can recount it later. I don’t feel as if I’m having to be sexy, 24/7, in order to fulfill a reader’s expectations. An inbox full of reader emails? I’ve enjoyed seeing it as an option rather than a bundle of little obligations that add up to a prescription for anxiety and tense obligation. Being selfish has been, on the whole, a hell of a lot more relaxing than being giving.
Now, nobody can make writing fun for me again. That’s not anyone’s responsibility save my own. If I am to continue—and to be honest, I haven’t entirely decided whether that’s the case yet—the impetus for it has to come from within. It’s a decision that only I can make.
But readers, if you’ve gotten this far, there surely are a lot of ways that you can refrain from making my experience unenjoyable. It pains and even surprises me a little that I have to ask: but maybe a few of you could actually think about that, before adding to my to-do list? Maybe you could think of me as a person first, and an erection second? Perhaps you could ask yourself whether it’s appropriate to want copies of my legal documents, before making the demand?
Because that could make the going all the easier, trust me.
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