Portrait of the Artist

September 1979

In the orthodontist’s mirror, for the first time in two and a half years I see a mouthful of straight teeth unencumbered by shiny metal and little rubber bands. When I run my tongue over the smooth surfaces, it’s not snagged and poked by wires or sharp edges. Sure, I’ll have to wear a retainer for a few years at night and return to this dismal little office from time to time, to ensure my teeth won’t drift and collide like wayward glaciers. For now, though, after long enduring both the uncomfortable hardware and the restless nights after each painful tightening, I’m free.

I’ve no context for what I’m supposed to be feeling. There’s Freaky Friday, the body-switching novel, in which Mary Rodgers’ juvenile heroine spends a harrowing day in her mother’s literal shoes, only at last to discover that her thirteen-year-old body’s had a glow-up, thanks to her crafty mother—braces removed, hair done, a new wardrobe courtesy of daddy’s credit card. Then there’s Freaky Friday the Disney movie, in which a butch and tomboyish Jodie Foster is shown admiring her unadorned smile in the orthodontist’s chair, followed by a montage of beauty shops and department stores in which she’s transformed into a—well, a version of Jodie Foster with the very slightest of hair waves and the faintest application of pink lipstick. Still pretty butch. Still very Jodie Foster. Not exactly a model of how I might celebrate the moment.

Out in the lobby waits my mother, back erect as she perches upon the edge of a seat, legs crossed, studying the detective novel in her hand. “Let’s see,” she says at my appearance. I bare my teeth in a grimace. She peers closely and shakes her head. “Let’s hope it takes. That’s a lot of money in that mouth.”

At home, my father makes a similar show of squinting and peering in my direction. His vision is so low, though, that he can’t distinguish any difference. “If you say so,” is all he says before returning to the pile of maps on his desk. Then, “Be careful. We paid a lot for those teeth, you know.”

I know. I’ve been reminded with every bill.

It’s not as if I can rely on peers to validate what should be a positive, life-changing rite of passage. My friends don’t notice a difference, even when I allow myself to smile more than I have in the past. And my torturers, now deprived of insults like ‘brace-face’ or ‘metal mouth,’ have plenty of other ammunition against me. There’s my beanpole frame, my freakish tallness, my spectacles, the cheap clothing that always seems to be out of style, but which I have to wear for the duration of the school year. There’s my dad’s seventeen-year-old Dart with the right side long ago bashed in and never repaired, now rusted, which is always laughed at when he drops me off at extracurriculars. And then there’s my whiteness, which in an all-Black high school is both my most obvious distinction, yet the least remarked upon.

The only congratulations I receive, that first week after my braces come off, is from my orchestra teacher. He’s startled at my sudden inability to play my school-provided instrument, so used am I to a solid quarter-inch of metal abrading the insides of my lips. “No braces! It will do wonders for your embouchure!” he exclaims, clapping his hands together.

It never does.

“Hold.”

At the base of the spine, my skin twitches and pricks. The artist’s voice arrests my hand as it begins to move, however. I return it beneath the pillow, where it relocates the indentation from nestling so long beneath my head. My naked hips wriggle in protest.

“Hold,” he warns again, his voice barely audible above the whirring locusts in the branches outside.

“I’ve got an itch,” I complain. I’ve been lying in the same position for nearly an hour at this point: prone on an unmade bed, pillow beneath the right side of my face, both arms thrust beneath. My left leg is drawn up, while the right points where the man captures me from a leather-bound chair beyond the four-poster’s foot. All the practice I’ve had exchanging my body and time for cash should have made me perfect at this particular exercise of lying on a mattress without complaint. But at fifteen, remaining motionless without fidgeting is anathema to my very nature.

“Where?” he asks. I tell him. Without a word, the nude man sets aside his tin of paints and the board upon which he works, and rises to loom over me. I sigh with relief at the sensation of his nails against my skin, right where the agony is worst. He scratches back and forth for a long and satisfying moment, then runs his fingertips down my back to leave a trail of gooseflesh in their wake. I feel the flat of his palm caress my ass. Automatically I respond with shifting legs and by arching my hips with a deep, deep sigh.

Martin doesn’t like that. His hands guide me back into position, then reposition the clothing in which he’s dressed me. This week, it’s a white basketball jersey trimmed in blue and red, aesthetically pushed from the bottom almost up to my armpits. Below, a jockstrap. Adult-sized, I think, because it hangs loose around my waist. With the excess tucked on my underside, though, it’s impossible to tell. Calf-high tube socks emblazoned with red stripes around the top hug my legs. He yanks them both so taut that the cotton fabric curls my toes, makes a few final adjustments to my positioning, and settles in his seat. I listen as he picks back up his painting board, pulls closer the tray table with his brushes and water, and returns to his work. I close my eyes and commit to remaining as still and silent as possible.

It’s not the first of Martin’s watercolors for which I’ve posed. Tall stacks of his art lie atop the many old granny tables and bureaus that line his bedroom walls, each thick sheet of cotton rag separated by a layer of tissue paper, then thick cardboard. Somewhere among them is a deft study of me clad only in a tight tee, standing planted on my left foot, right toes bent on the floor, back turned to the artist, arms crossed over my chest so that only the tips appear over my shoulders. Another, completely nude save for another pair of tube socks, sleeping on an antique love seat with enough of my face buried in a chenille pillow that only the underside of my chin and nostrils are visible. A third, again in only socks, in which I sprawl in a Victorian armchair, one of my legs crooked over its arm, with a lacrosse stick angled over my knees.

All Martin’s art is beautiful, to my eyes. A few broad washes of color, a stippling of pigment to create an illusion of texture, sparse pencilled or inked lines for delineation. Every stroke is careful and considered. The finished work, a lesson in economy.

I’m not his only subject. There are a score of other men in various states of dishabille, brandishing sports-related signifiers of masculinity in varied tableaux. Separated from his many landscapes and floral still lifes, Martin’s nudes might form some kind of reimagined tarot, the subjects of his major arcana representing the spectrum from callow youth to old age. The last is represented by his unclothed self portraits, remorseless in their gaze.

Yet, as inspiring as his work may be, it’s never appeared in galleries or public shows. Perhaps he doubts his talent. Perhaps—and I tend to think this more the truth—he shuns the scrutiny that would accompany a public appearance. Either way, his moving finger paints, and having painted, moves on.

“All right. Take a look” The words, softly spoken, awaken me from my trance. So stiff that every movement is a new experience in pain, I rise from the four-poster and grab onto one of its carved columns until I’ve regained my balance. The too-large jock falls from my slim hips onto the floor as I take my first steps. The board on which he’s been painting straddles his spread thighs, angled flat to keep the paint from running. The paper still glistens where it’s wet.

The figure illustrated with sparse lines and broad washes is undeniably me. I recognize those skinny legs, somehow lent the impression of glinting hair below the knees, those narrow hips, the thin chest. He’s given me more of an ass than I actually possess, I fear. But even without much face on display, I recognize the boy as myself.

“Well?”

I cannot stand to look at myself in the mirror, but Martin’s hands have rendered me better than I deserve. “It’s beautiful.”

“Only because you are.” He sets the board onto the floor to his side, then seizes me by the wrist. Slowly he pulls me down. Every instinct warns that he expects a kiss. That’s a hard limit I’ve set from the first, though: kissing is something I never do. It’s a lie, of course. With anyone else, I love making out.

But even for cash, I dread bringing my face that close to Martin’s.

I’m relieved when instead, he pulls my hand to his cock, now stiffening between his legs. Once he’s wrapped my fingers around its obscene thickness, he whispers into my ear, “This is what you want. Right?”

I nod, grateful not to have to look at his ruined visage up close. “Right,” I say, fixing my gaze at the painting that lies on the floor beyond. I grin in an attempt to please.

That’s when he turns my head with his hands, forcing me to regard him. Our noses are scant inches away. I try not to shudder, so close to that sightless, dead left eye, that gruesome scar that curves from eyebrow to nose to jowl, a canyon of pinks and deep reds that’s ragged around its peaks.

The left half of Martin’s face is the stuff of nightmares. My eyes water as I am forced to acknowledge those brutal remains of past misfortune. Whether they arose from accident or act of violence, I do not know. I continue smiling, even as tears well.

“Your braces. They’re gone,” he remarks. I nod, not yet trusting myself to speak. “You’re even more handsome without them.”

“Let me take care of you,” is all I croak, at last breaking from his grasp. I know where he keeps the jar of Vaseline that’s his preferred lube. I retrieve it from the bedside drawer, then kneel at his feet and rub some between my fingers. Down here, with his massive dick at eye level, is where I’m more comfortable. “Relax,” I whisper, pushing at his belly. “Let me do the work.”

He lets out a long sigh as my slick fingers grease his needy flesh, and settles into his chair. His head lolls as my fingers slide back and forth over the shaft. Even at that angle, I close my eyes, so I don’t have to see his expression, or the ravages of his face.

I’d been warned about Martin’s appearance before I’d first met him, a few months before. Earl—the man whom to me is equal parts mentor, procurer, and Fagin to my Artful Dodger—had been careful to let me know what to expect. Still, when I’d arrived at Martin’s townhouse in the Fan and rapped the imposing brass knocker on the door of stained wood, I’d recoiled when it opened to reveal the figure within. Tall though I am, Martin towered over me at six foot five; though not exactly heavy, he weighed twice or more as much. Though he couldn’t have been older than sixty, he dressed like a very old man in a droopy cardigan, with the waistband of his slacks hiked up to a height Humpty Dumpty might have appreciated. His head was smooth and egg-like as well, freckled with liver spots and decorated with the shortest fringe of hair at the temples.

Then there was the face. I dared not stare at the disfigured left half, so I had unfocused my eyes and shifted them to the dour right as I proffered Earl’s business card, upon the back of which he’d scrawled this man’s address. “Kip,” I told him, using my working alias.

Martin had handed it back with a nod. “Kip.” There was a hesitation before he’d asked, “Do you still want to come in?”

I’d looked beyond the door into the man’s hallway and living room, crowded with antiques. Not spindly, delicate valuables that increase in rarity and appeal with age, but the heavy, hulking kind of antiquities inherited from family that one is loath to discard, no matter how unattractive they might be. Still, it’s tidy within, and the man was obviously waiting.

“Of course,” I’d replied, and crossed the threshold.

Later, I’d asked Earl what had happened to Martin. He’d shrugged. He didn’t know. I didn’t dare press answers from the man himself. I was too busy maintaining the fiction that nothing was wrong, that I didn’t notice his disfigurements. With each meeting, the pretense grew easier. Martin was a quiet man. A kind man. Even before he’d begun to pose me for painting, he took his pleasure in providing outfits for me to wear during our encounters. Tube socks with stripes were his fetish; he kept a plastic-wrapped 12-pack of them in a trunk at the bottom of his bed from which he would peel a fresh white pair with every visit. While he knelt and stretched out the elastic opening, I would slip my feet into one after the other, like Cinderella stepping into her Prince’s slipper.

With shaking hands, Martin put me into my first pair of black briefs. He would tug up my hips pairs of tight, high-cut red or blue running shorts with white piping—always new, never used. He would slide over my shoulders athletic jerseys I’d never otherwise wear, then crown my head with baseball caps and turn them rakishly to the side, like a delinquent in an old Archies comic. Once he fitted me with a pair of actual blue jeans, the first I’d ever worn—Levis, no less—just for the enjoyment of admiring me in denim.

He’d urge me to take these items with me, after we were done. “What am I going to do with them?” he’d ask, entreating me to accept his gifts. “Please. Wear them home.”

“I can’t,” I’d say.

“But it would make me so happy.”

It’s always difficult for me to talk about my family’s finances, of how despite my father’s white-collar job, we have precious little money to spare—not for vacations, not for luxuries, not for new cars, not for clothing other than the few basics my mother buys from Sears at the beginning of the school year, that I have to make last no matter how many inches or shoe sizes I grow. It won’t do suddenly to have new socks and shorts appearing in the laundry basket or new shoes in my closet, I explain. My underwear drawer is a neighborhood of lily white Fruit of the Looms; I can’t integrate it without notice or comment. And my mom has never, ever bought for me a pair of jeans. Jeans are too expensive. If she had, they would have been practical, cheap Toughskins. Never an expensive indulgence like real Levis.

His gifts would arouse questions. With what I am, with what I do for men like him, I cannot afford interrogation.

I confess these things in a stutter, with reddened cheeks and a choked throat, ashamed of having to lay bare the realities of genteel poverty to someone who lives in a townhouse full of heirlooms. I’m never sure he fully agrees with my logic. I’m grateful, though, when he stops pressing me to accept his gifts, because I intensely dislike having to say no. Though he continues buying new items for me to model, without comment he begins including an extra twenty in the fold of bills he hands me when I arrive.

I know by now what this man likes best, just like I know the quirks of all my regular clients. A firm fist around his slick shaft, a steady rhythm, the heat of my face close to his thighs, light fingertips down his balls. I’m barely breaking a sweat when his knees begin to jerk and twitch and bang against my shoulders. “Can you suck?” he breathes. “Is that okay?” I keep my focus squarely on his tool when he looks down at me.

Of course I can suck. I drop my jaw and engulf him halfway, turned on by the girth even as my taste buds resent the Vaseline’s mineral tang. He begins shooting immediately, thrashing wildly in his seat while I keep my lips glued to him. The semen arrives only as he subsides, a sour quarter-sized glob on my tongue that I gulp down. Slowly, inch by quarter inch, he slides himself out.

“Thank you, Kip. You’re a very kind boy.” He’s always at his sweetest, after he comes.

Kip is not my name. It’s what I let all these men call me, however. It’s more than a nom de guerre; Kip is an identity. He’s braver than I. It’s Kip who poses in the nude without demur, who shows off his body, who kneels on command. Kip is the fearless adventurer who smiles at strangers and winnows cash from their fists. At home, myself once again, I’m merely the boy who guards Kip’s secrets.

I’m the one now anxious to make my getaway, who wipes my mouth on a nearby towel and eases back onto my knees, ready to rise. Already I’m preparing what to say to wriggle out of this man’s bedroom—something about the lateness of the hour or the long trip home. But before I can struggle to my feet, Martin has rested his hand aside my cheek. “When did your braces come off?” The week before, I tell him. “You must be happy. May I see?”

His face looms uncomfortably close to mine. Every instinct warns me to squirm from his tender grasp and run, but I close my eyes and force my lips apart.

There’s indulgence in his voice. “Come now. You can do better than that. Show me those pearly whites.” He brushes the hair from my eyes. His good humor hardens into disappointment, when I hesitate. “Kip. Am I truly that terrible to look at?”

Earl had never been able to tell me what had happened to Martin, but my imagination is always overeager to supply answers. He’d been wounded in the war. Exactly which, I never quite decide, because I’m bad at both math and historical dates and can never quite reconcile the two around a specific war. He’d been a notorious criminal—though those of that bent perhaps didn’t live in swanky townhouses in this exclusive part of town. He’d suffered an accident as a child, or had been in a car crash.

Or—and this is the possibility that haunts me late at night, when I’m alone in the dark—he could have been attacked. There are men out there who delight in preying upon people like us. Who would happily pull out a knife to assault and mutilate, just because of a wayward glance or the wrong word or tone from another man. Since the second grade I’ve been subjected to words like pansy, queer, and faggot. I’d been lucky to avoid violence, so far. One day, my luck might run out. Maybe it had with him.

To imagine that what might have happened to Martin could easily be my fate, with bad luck, at the wrong time, in an unfortunate place…well. That frightens me more than his face ever could.

His question has awakened my guilt. This is a man living with a disfigurement, secluding himself away from the world and hiring companionship because of his appearance. But he’s no monster, no B-movie Lon Chaney lurking around opera houses. This is Martin. The man who sees me in ways I cannot envision myself. The man who dresses me and calls me beautiful. The artist. Martin, the one person who has noticed what’s changed in me this week, without having to be told.

It’s Kip, the more courageous of us, who opens his eyes to meet the older man’s gaze, full on. “No,” Kip says. Martin’s palm still cups my jaw. I return in the gesture, resting my right hand against the left side of his face, in mirror image. My long thumb crosses the jagged crevice at an angle. “You’re not.”

We gaze at each other for an extended moment. The longer our eyes lock, the easier it becomes. It’s just a scar. It’s just a stupid, unfortunate scar, and too long have I allowed it to frighten me. To prove my sincerity, I lean forward, and press my soft lips against his.

“Oh, Kip,” he breathes.

I’ve agreed to stay for another hour. I’ve spent it curled in a hollow upon his mattress, still wearing the basketball jersey and socks. “Hold,” commands the artist, who sits crossed-legged and naked next to me, drawing board upon his lap.

I reach out and squeeze his flaccid dick.

He swats away my hand with a laugh. “Don’t hold that. Come on, now. I’m nearly done.”

“Let me see.”

“Let me finish.” He pushes me back down. “Smile?” My face is nearly numb from holding the same expression for long minutes, but he gently strokes and tickles my legs until once more I let loose another oblique beam. I’m rewarded by the scratching of his pencil. “Take a look,” he says at last.

It’s only a sketch, this time. Again, it’s composed so sparingly that I marvel I can recognize my half-closed eyes, my bulbous nose, the sharp jut of my chin. That unmistakable grin of mine, pulled to one side, as if someone has shared a private joke. Beneath the representation he’s scrawled a title.

Kip, it reads, in quotation marks.

“I wish you could take it with you,” he whispers, tracing the very jaw he’s just committed to paper. “But I understand.”

He’s reading my mind. I nod, agreeing. I wish that, too.

This is celebration enough for my transformation, this intimate moment between the artist and his model. I watch as he rises, retrieves a clean sheet of tissue and a new length of cardboard from a stack in a cupboard, and places his latest drawing atop one of the piles. Already it’s fading into memory, soon to be buried beneath the floral paintings and figure studies of men in tube socks and athletic gear that surely will follow. Who knows when it might be appreciated again, or who might one day sift through all this unseen work and happen upon a portrait of a smiling youth named Kip, sketched from above where he once lay and smiled, one early autumn evening long ago?

Let them think kindly of it, I wish, as I watch it disappear.

Dear Sir

18, 5’6”, 160#, bottom.

The profile text is splayed across a photo of a bubble butt hugged by skimpy black cotton.

Fetishes: Hung cocks, hard cocks, cum, daddies.

Into: Oral (give only), fucking.

I absorb the slight information. It’s the sight of that ass that makes me click on the dialog bubble, where a red dot indicates a message. Very little gets my attention more quickly than a pretty ass, particularly this early in the morning. My hunch is that this kid knows how to show off the goods. It’s a suspicion corroborated by the series of photos with which he’s chosen to kick off our interaction: another of his butt and lower back, this time displayed in a pair of tight gray trunks that fall lower and lower around his thighs until they disappear altogether. The final pic is of the lower half of his face. The boy’s mouth is open, tongue out. His skin is pale as bone china; his lips, the prettiest shade of pink.

My juices are already flowing. I love what I see, so far. Then I read the message beneath the several photos he’s sent. Interested in a tight virgin ass…?

Ugh.

No, I’m rarely interested in a virgin ass, especially the tight ones. I know some men salivate at the thought of a young cherry, ripe for plucking. The thought of it makes me deflate. I’ve had my share—and then some—of first-timers. I know how quickly downhill that scenario often goes. It’s all giddy anticipation and pleasure on both sides until the moment comes to slide into that unused hole. Then, no matter how gentle and solicitous a lover I am, it’s complaints and whining. Kids these days have been watching internet porn before they even figure out masturbation; they imprint on experienced models who take monster rods without so much as a change of expression. They see holes opening to accommodate tops with horse-sized dicks, and assume their own puckers will magically blossom the first time they’re opened.

And the thing is, holes usually don’t work that way. They can, certainly. Over time and with practice, they will. But with virgins, the one thing that attracts them to me—the size of my dick—is usually the biggest impediment to anyone’s pleasure. Admiring sighs of It’s so huge! turn quickly into whines and complaints of It’s too huge! 

I don’t get off on inflicting pain. Deflowering virgins is very low on my list of enjoyments.

Listen, I tap back to the kid. You’ve got an amazing butt, but I’m usually too large for inexperienced hole.

His reply arrives in seconds. Thanks!! Hmm, I’m down to suck you and try fitting it in and if it does I’m sure it’ll feel great! I wish I had his confidence. I’m sure he’ll be howling once I’m in past the head. But before I can reply, he sends me another photo. This one’s of him completely in the nude, shot from behind. He’s kneeling on a mattress, legs spread, ass prominently on display, balls hanging heavy on the coverlet. Above the smooth cheeks rises his torso, back arched, his narrow waist rising to broad shoulders.

I feel my breath catch, a little. You truly are beautiful, son.

Thank you!!! Love that big cock, too. Don’t you want to be my first?

I’m a weak man. The triumph of that ass, so artfully on exhibit, has eroded my good judgment. Or nearly has, at least.

I do, I concede. But I really don’t want to hurt you. Sorry.

He doesn’t reply immediately. That’s okay. I almost expect no reply at all. A few minutes later, though, I check back to see another message. I got it. Can I ask something, though?

Sure, I tell him.

I would like you to reconsider your decision, sir. Can I file a formal appeal, with your permission?

My lips quirk upward on one side to the unexpected response. He’s managed to disarm me. I’d been so ready to dismiss the kid before, to shunt him into the expansive bin where mentally I toss all men whose appetites outsize their actual capacity to follow through. With this single twist, though, he’s made me curious to know more. What did you have in mind?

If you share with me your email, you’ll see. I hesitate long enough that he follows up with the promise, I won’t abuse it, sir.

It’s pledge enough that I take the chance and send him the address.

You won’t regret it. You’ll see.

Hours pass. By noon, I stop expecting an email. What would it have contained, anyway? More photos of that round little bubble butt? Maybe a video of the kid jiggling the jelly for the camera? I don’t know. I’ve forgotten completely about it until the late evening, when I crawl into bed and try to settle down for the night. I make one last check of my email. Only one subject line leaps out: I hope this is you. I read it through, several times in succession, clearing my throat repeatedly.

Dear Sir,

I hope you will consider this my formal appeal to your decision not to take my virginity. My reasons are as follows.

1. You are hot af and basically my dream daddy. Looking at your pics makes my insides gooey and I really want to look in your sexy blue eyes when you open me up for the first time. I don’t want to settle for anyone less and that’s a fact.

2. I know you are SO BIG and I am a virgin but I have a dildo that I’ve been working on myself with, so it won’t be exactly like I’ve never had anything up me before. I have been wanting big dicks in my hole for a few years and I finally am ready to do it, and I want to do it with you. (See #1.) Also I have watched videos and know how to get everything clean so don’t worry about that.

3. I promise to be obedient and do everything you say.

4. If I cry or complain and get on your nerves, I give you permission to slap it out of me if you’re into that.

5. I know you must get a lot of guys hot for you and your big dick (see #1 again) but I will be worth your time. I will focus on you and your big dick and what it wants and needs and not worried about mine. In fact I don’t care if I get off at all. I just want to make sure daddy enjoys himself in my hole.

6. I know that I have picked the right man to do the job. You look like you know what you’re doing (which is important!!) and I am guessing that you’re really a decent man as well. I am not looking to marry you (yet, lol!) but it would be really nice to have my first time with a guy who is going to treat me okay and I think that will be you.

7. By the way I am not a total virgin, I have sucked two dicks before and think I am pretty good at it, it’s my hole that’s virgin. Hopefully not for long.

8. If you don’t like me when you show up, you can just walk out.

9. I don’t intend for you to have to go to any trouble or expense to make this happen, because that’s not right, so I will schedule it to your convenience and pay for a room to meet. I would even pay for an Uber for you so all you will have to do is show up and fuck.

If you have any questions just ask me and I will tell you anything. I hope that I have eliminated any doubts about my qualifications and sincerity to serve. I am happy to submit any supplemental materials you require but mostly I just want to submit.

Thank you, Sir. I the undersigned attest to the best of my ability that all the above information is true and I anxiously await your response.

Please reconsider.

Jason

The kid has made only one miscalculation: I never merely show up and fuck. I’m in a darkened room of a mid-grade hotel chain adjacent to the freeway, my ass squeaking across the faux leather of its single armchair. Legs spread, my chin rests on the back of one crooked index finger. My free hand drapes across the denim of my jeans. This boy stands a few feet away from me, shyly twisting his naked torso, waiting for instruction.

I remove my finger from under my chin, point it to the ceiling, “Turn.” The soft syllable shatters the silence. “Show me.”

The boy obeys. From the moment he opened the hotel room door, a few minutes before, his sole instinct was to hurry. He needs to be taught restraint. When he’s lunged, I’ve pulled back. If we’re doing this, we’re doing it at my pace. He’s picking up on my cues, though. Now, at my whispered command, he hesitates. A hint of smile crosses his lips. His shoulders twist first, as his puppy brown eyes continue to watch me. Then his hips follow. When he faces completely away from me, he turns his head to look at me once more.

I nod. Slowly. Deliberately. Signal my approval with a lick of my lips. I’d already made up my mind to stay, the moment the kid had greeted me at the door. He’s got the All-American looks of a small town athlete—the tousled, sun-kissed hair, the square jaw, the Clearasil complexion. He’s short, but with a wrestler's build. I make it clear to him that I won’t be up and leaving, by kicking off both my sneakers. They join his t-shirt on the carpeted floor, near the dresser. “That’s a good boy.”

“Thank you, sir.” His voice is deep. Husky with desire.

I can sense he wants to lunge at me again, but it’s not yet time. “Socks.” He’s in such a hurry to hook them with a finger and rip them off that he hops on one foot and nearly topples over. “Slow,” I remind him.

He understands. He props his behind on the mattress. Leaning over, maintaining eye contact, he removes them one after the other, waiting for my approval. I nod at last, then signal for him to stand once more.

Around his narrow waist hug a pair of ridiculous boxer shorts imprinted with anime characters I don’t recognize. They’re the only article of clothing he has left. “You want to take those off, don’t you?”

The boy has his thumbs hooked beneath the band, ready to plunge them to the floor, before he remembers our unspoken game of Simon Says. “Do you want me to?”

I don’t answer. I signal he should turn again, then fold down my fingers. He bends to show me his ass from this new angle, supporting himself with his hands on the mattress. “You understand what’s going to happen, if you do.”

His catch of breath is unmistakable, in the room’s quiet. “Yes sir.”

“What?” I ask. “What’s going to happen. Say it.”

Looking at me from beneath his armpit, he rasps out, “You’re going to take my virginity.”

“I might.” Boys work harder when they’re given a carrot on a stick as guidance. “You know what that means, though?”

He hesitates, so badly wanting to provide the correct answer. “Tell me, sir?”

“Stand.” He obeys. When his arms unconsciously cross his body, it’s as if he’s ashamed of his nakedness. The real nakedness on display, though is his desire for me. I can see it in the way he hungrily looks me over, up and down, as I sprawl, relaxed in my chair. I can see it in the way his lips waver, in his posture, in the tent of his shorts. My own pants are becoming tighter at the sight.“Very nice, son.”

“What does it mean, sir?”

I crook a finger and beckon him closer. My hands grasp onto his hips and turn him around. I cup one of his cheeks; it’s a meaty handful. “If I decide to fuck you,” I say in a voice so low that he bends to hear, “if I decide, it means that you are going to do everything I say without question. If I decide to fuck you, you will listen, and speak when told to.” 

“Of course.” His hand flies to his mouth as he realizes he’s already made a mistake.

“If I decide to fuck you.” Repetition of the conditional sentence has hypnotized him into a glassy-eyed state. “It means you’ll have my big, fat cock shoved deep in your guts. It means I intend to fuck you until I shoot deep inside you. It means that you’ll be giving up your hole for my use. My enjoyment. You understand?”

“Yes, sir.” He can barely whisper his response.

“I didn’t hear you.”

The second attempt is stronger. “Yes, sir.”

Our eyes lock. I wait for a very long time before saying, “Take down your shorts. Slowly.”

He steps back, eyes watering and full of adoration. In this moment, the boy wants nothing more than to please. Head turned to observe my reaction, he lowers his boxers, inch by inch. There’s a moment when the elastic can no longer contain the restrained flesh; his bubble butt pops out over it, cheek by cheek. My gasp at the sight is genuine.

Our eyes lock again. He’s pleased at my reaction. “Spread your legs.”

His thick thighs spread apart as he separates his feet. Once again he grabs the bed’s edge, this time arching his back to show off the goods.

A soft sigh escapes my lips. “Beautiful.” I haven’t given him permission to speak, but mute gratitude fills his eyes. Every boy wants to hope he’s pretty, and this one truly is. I want to remember forever this moment, this perfect symmetry, this ideal application of the Euclidian geometry of globes. “Show me.”

He understands the command. His hands reach back and pull apart his cheeks. I see a whorl of sandy hair protecting his pink little hole. This time, I grunt. My mind might have been made up, minutes before, but from this point on, there will be no stopping me.

He doesn’t expect my hand on his naked flesh when I kneel on the floor behind him. “You have a perfect butt,” I whisper. My lips graze the porcelain-smooth skin; where it traces, my breath leaves in its wake a trail of goose flesh.

“Thank you,” he gasps, falling onto his elbows.

I cup his balls in my long fingers. He doesn’t shave them, but he’s fair-haired and smooth enough that they seem almost hairless. At my touch, the boy’s thick stub of a cock, rock hard, jolts into the air then flops back down to rap my knuckles. My nose nuzzles between his cheeks. Deeply I inhale, relishing the scent of the soap he’s used not too long ago. His thighs tremble as I pull apart those thick handfuls. Once his ass is open and the hole exposed, I lap out with my tongue, teasing the tip against the wrinkled pinch of flesh that aches for attention.

It’s not long before he’s prone on the strange mattress, ass high in the air, legs spread wide. His hands clench the hotel pillows and pummel them into submission; he bites hard into their foam depths to silence his roar. I know it must feel good, this first-ever phenomenon of mouth against hole. Never will he forget the sensations of wet tongue, of soft lips and the curious incursion of my fingertips, nor the abrasion of my beard against his butt, the scrape it between his thighs, as I lick and kiss and chew on his sweet pussy lips. I grind against the bed’s corner, uncomfortable in my jeans. I like this contrast, though, of his nakedness and of me in full attire—if anything might reinforce his vulnerability, it’s the fact that I could rise and walk out of this hotel room right now, and abandon him in this state of confusion and sheer need.

I have no intention of going, though. I stand and remove my socks. Undo my belt. Unzip slowly, letting the sound fill the room. Let my pants drop to the floor. I’m wearing a short-sleeved camp shirt that I unbutton slowly. He’s not watching, but he can hear the sounds as I disrobe. It excites me, knowing he’s picturing the scene in his mind and anticipating what’s to follow.

By the time I wrench down my trunks, I’m already hard and wet around the tip. My knees separate his thighs as I crawl up on the bed. The big head of my cock is already oozing precum when nudges his cheeks. “Oh fuck,” he says aloud, in a shocked voice. Clearly, the reality of the situation is dawning upon him. It’s one thing to dream about a big dick snaking open your tight hole. Being poised moments away from it actually happening is something else entirely.

“You understand,” I say, perched above him, “what I’m going to do to you.”

I’ve got my serious face on. My eyebrows stay in a raised position as he pulls himself up onto his elbows and looks at me over his shoulder. The kid is damned fine. Those slightly pouty lips, that pert nose, those liquid brown eyes framed by the longest lashes I’ve seen on a boy in some time—he’s a Renaissance sculpture come to life. “I’m worried it’s going to hurt,” he says in a soft voice.

I nod. It may. “This is what you wanted, though,” I remind him. “You still want it. Don’t you.”

It’s less question than confirmation. He nods. Eyes locked with his, I stick my thumb between my lips. Swirl it around. Get it good and wet. Pull it back out again, glistening, and apply it to his ass. The hole parts to accommodate it as he lets out a little gasp. “Are you going to fuck me now?”

I continue staring. Rotating my wrist, so that the top half of my thumb palpitates his hole. I allow myself to crack a smile. “You really need it, huh?”

He grins, then exhales a column of air when I push in a little deeper. “Yes sir. I really do.” I nod, still staring into those eyes. “So, are you going to fuck me now?”

“You will know when I’m about to fuck you.”

Because now is not the time. My plan is this: to draw out the build-up to the deed as long as possible, before consummating the act. That part will come. Oh yes. But this is what he’ll remember for the rest of his life: being told to strip, to show off his beautiful body. Being touched. Licked. Admired. Savored and appreciated. When in the future he masturbates, thinking of his first time, he’ll remember how deliberately paced was my deflowering. In another forty years, when he’s my age, maybe he’ll be thinking about the man who made it good for him, that first time.

That’s what he deserves, this trembling boy, whose hips gyrate with need, whose dry lips try to work out words as he experiences all these new sensations for the first time. A good memory. A good story to tell, even if he’s only repeating it to himself for years to come. He could’ve chosen some big-dicked asshole to pop that cherry, someone to spit and shove and stumble out into the night ten minutes later. He’s chosen me, though. To reward him for his exceptional taste, I’ll treat him right.

Which means that soon he’s ass-high again, with my mouth gnawing at his pucker. I stroke his boy dick, slick with what leaks from its tip, while he thrashes and bucks on my face. I seize his balls and tug to make him gasp; I spank his butt, just to see the reddening print of my hand across its white expanse. When he’s beyond words and the only sounds erupting from his chest are instinctive groans, I flip him over, hang his head from the bedside, and slide my monster into his mouth. He might have sucked two dicks before mine, but clearly no one’s taught him how to do it correctly. A little coaching, though, and I’ve got his lips wrapped around his teeth, his hands on my ass, and his throat opening to take me.

The kid loves it, too. Soon he’s deep-throating me like a pro, not even choking much. Feral snarls punctuate his efforts. Already he wants it harder. Deeper. More. I let him worship my dick. He holds it between prayerful hands, pulling me into him whenever I tease at depriving his young mouth.

But eventually, once I’m assured he’s worked himself into a cock-hungry frenzy, I step back. Tug him up onto the bed. Rest his head on the pillows. Once more I position myself between his legs and bring my face close to his own. The boy’s eyes are watery from the prolonged deep-throating. There’s slobber all over his face and chin. Hell, there’s probably liquid snot from his nose there, too. His bee-stung lips quiver, wanting to be put to use. “I am going to get your hole all slick with lube,” I tell him, low and slow. “We are going to make sure you are so, so wet and ready. Once you are, I’m going to take this big cock. I’m going to rub lube all over it until it’s pretty and shiny. Then I’m going to slide it deep into your boy hole. Understand?”

The kid takes a giant sniff and tries to collect himself. “Yes sir,” he says. There’s love in those eyes. This is the moment he’s wanted for—well, who knows how long.

I don’t often use the colorful plastic lube injectors I keep in my collection, but they’re handy for cases like this. They’re shaped like syringes, but with a nozzle at the tip where a needle might go. While he watches, I pull out the plunger to fill the pink tube with goo from a bottle by the bed, then use my thumb to prepare his hole for the invasion. He must have been telling the truth about using a dildo on himself, because he takes the few inches of narrow plastic into his hole without so much as a complaint. The lube is cool from sitting out on the bedside table, though, so he hisses when I inject it deep inside his guts.

“Hey.” I’ve positioned myself atop him. The snout of my dick knocks against his ass, requesting entry. The kid has his face buried in the pillow. He’s even pulled the sides up around his ears. It won’t do. He’s not going to get knocked up while blind and deaf. “Hey,” I repeat. “Look at me.” His jaws is slack and his eyes mere slits when he obeys. “It’s time, son.”

Now, I kiss him.

It’s the first time our lips meet. Not once had he expressed an interest in making out with me, but once our mouths connect, he turns over and wraps his arms around my neck as if he intends never to let go. Hungrily he opens for me. I expand my embouchure until my mouth surrounds his entirely. My tongue probes, unlocking flesh with flesh, inserting itself deep.

As above, so below. He doesn’t even realize my cock’s inside him until the halfway point, when suddenly he clamps down with a cry.

“Sssshhh,” I tell him, kissing his sweet face. “You’re doing great.”

“You’re inside me.” It’s equal parts terror and boast. “Oh my god,” he whispers, relaxing slightly. “You’re inside me.”

“Yeah,” I say, grinning. I laugh a little. “I’m inside you.”

“Oh, fuck! You’re inside me.” Just when I think that maybe, maybe, we’ve established that I’m inside him, his head lolls back. “Fuck me,” he whispers. I can feel from the way I’m already sliding deeper that he’s loosening up once more. “Sir, fuck me.”

We’ve somehow gotten ourselves into an awkward position, during our tussle; he’s got one leg pinned to my chest and the other against the mattress, halfway between lying sideways and on his back. Without pulling out, I maneuver us until we’re both spooned and on our left sides. I’m all the way in, now. When I make an experimental gyration, then a slight thrust, he responds with a soft, happy murmur.

This is how his first fuck goes, then, with my arms around him and my chin nestled on his shoulder, peppering his neck with kisses. “Does it feel good?” I whisper in his ear, from time to time.

Always, his answer is, “It feels amazing.”

“Do you love it?” I ask.

“I love it, sir,” he’ll respond each time, shivering as my hands slide softly up and town his torso, across his tender nipples, down his hips.

Most important, when finally I ask, “Are you happy?” his response is a purr of contentment. He reaches behind, over his head, to pull me in for another kiss.

I take my time in my hole. When he’s ready, I make my strokes longer, so that he might relish the sensations. At several points, I take his smaller hand in my big one, to draw it back so can feel how hard he’s made me. His fingers dance along the length of my shaft and even probe the point of connection at which it plunges into his own hole. “It’s so big,” he marvels, more than once.

There’s a dreamlike quality to the entire encounter. It transcends the squalid setting of the hotel and the steady drone of traffic on the highway just beyond. We are both in this humid room yet also nowhere on earth, so completely wrapped up in each other are we. There’s no world beyond the horizons of our merged flesh, no sensations not aroused by our hands, mouth, and my relentless dick. He dances to the rhythm of my thrusting, hips moving with mine; I set my pace to the small, animal noises emanating from his parted lips.

“You’re not a virgin any more,” I tell him as I come closer to my climax. His response is a loud groan as statement’s truth hits home. “And you know what?” To a response that’s one elongated vowel, I whisper in his ear, “I’m going to reward you by shooting my load deep into that tight little hole.”

The hole in question tightens for a second, but I’ve anticipated his response and driven in deep. “Pwee,” he blurts.

It’s close enough a sound to please that I assume he’s asking for it. “Is that what you want? My cum in your guts?” He attempts to nod. “Dad’s load, knocking you up? That’s what you want?”

“Oh please.” I’d been correct. His eyes gloss over as he gazes into mine. He manages to moisten his lips. Sighs. “Make my hole yours.”

“This is what you wanted,” I say, shifting him so I can drive home with more vigor. “You wrote me the sweetest letter, asking for it.” I’m excited now. My cock is a poker left too long in the fire, and I can scarcely tolerate how it burns. “I don’t like disappointing a pretty boy like you.”

“No,” he says, seeming to agree. He can’t summon a coherent thought to save his life.

“You want it,” I remind him.

“…want…”

“You want it bad.”

“…bad…” he echoes.

Once again I kiss the back of his neck. “Here it comes, son.”

I don’t so much pound his butt as lunge into it. Great long thrusts, punctuated with strains and pauses, until at last the pressure builds beyond bearing. I flood him with my load, searing his insides with what feels like lava. I hear him call out, am aware of his hands pulling me deeper into him, holding me there. Together we buck, and thrash, and cry. I hold onto him for dear life, and find myself squeezing him hard when the sensations recede. For a long time we lie there, until the ringing in our ears dims, and the sounds of the highway and footsteps in the hallways outside ebb back into consciousness. His hands still clutch at mine, where I hold him around the ribs.

And then he bursts into tears.

I’m horrified. In my post-ejaculatory low, I run through all the terrible things I might have done. I’ve hurt him. I’ve made him bleed. I ignored cues, pushed forward when he wanted me to wait. Maybe he’d wanted a six-packed muscle porn star for his first time, but he’d had to make do with my sorry dad bod, and only now is the gravity of that poor choice sinking in. I hadn’t expected tears. I don’t like hearing them.

But I don’t leap from the bed in horror. I don’t shove him away. He’s still holding my hands, after all. I hug him close, and kiss his shoulders. “Hey,” I say, in the consoling voice of a puzzled father. “Hey, now.”

A sob catches in his throat. He sounds inconsolable. Though I worry, I hang on through the storm.

My forearm is soaked when at last he subsides a little. Then, he hiccups. It’s a comic enough conclusion to the episode that I chuckle a little and try again. “What’s wrong, kiddo?”

“NOTHING!” The word erupts from deep in his chest, so loud that it makes my ears ring.

“Okay?” I don’t understand.

“It was AMAZING!” On a dime he’s turned, from sorrow to—I’m not sure what this emotion could be. Relief? Astonishment? He sniffs deeply to clear his nose, then frees himself to wipe the tears from his face. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

“Talk to me,” I urge.

My cock is slopping out of his hole with a wet squelch. He waits until it hits the sheets with a thud before flopping onto his back. “I thought it was going to hurt bad,” he says in his everyday voice. “I thought I’d have to beg you to take it easy. I was gonna buy this stuff that numbs your hole, but then I thought that if it numbs my hole it’d probably numb your dick too, and I didn’t want that, so I was just going to put up with the hurt, but—fuck!” He’s all adolescent energy, now, ready to bound to his feet or bounce on the bed or run in wild circles to work off his excess energy. “It’s like I didn’t even feel it.”

“Sooooo, you’re saying I've got a tiny, toy-sized cock,” I drawl, with good humor. “Well, I’m sorry I don’t have a baseball bat-sized dong for a bottomless hole like yours, now that you’re a seasoned pro and everything…”

He gives me a light punch to the chest, then snuggles into my embrace. “No, seriously. You just made it feel…”

“Good,” I supply. He nods. “Well, I’m glad of that.”

He’s managed to defuse my worst apprehensions. I smile, happy at his mood. I can once again relax with the boy in my arms. “But why,” he asks, sniffing as he snuggles close. I shake my head, not understanding the question. “Why’d you make it so good?”

What's he betraying, with that question? That for years he'd anticipated nothing but the worst from his first fuck? That interactions with other men had left him expecting no more than the bare minimum—and maybe not even that? The answer is simple, though. “Because you deserve it.” My eyes close as I speak in a low voice. I hope he understands I'm being honest. “First time or not—you deserve it.”

Let him take that away, as the lesson.

“Thank you,” he says in a very small voice.

“Besides,” I say with wry candor. “That letter you wrote was fucking charming. That’s why.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I chuckle. Then I recite, in tones that are only slightly mocking, “Dear Sir. I, the undersigned…”

He interrupts my teasing by digging his fingers into my rib cage, forcing me to break out into defensive laughter. “It worked, though,” he grouses, before slinking down between the sheets to encircle my cock once again with his mouth.

“Oh, it truly did,” I sigh, as my cock stiffens once again.

Soon, neither of us are thinking about that letter at all.

A Pornographer's Manifesto

Author’s note: I talk throughout this essay specifically about pornographic writing. I’m a professional writer, after all. Know, however, my comments apply to all the adult creative arts—erotic charcoals, sexy scenarios you paint on your tablet, explicit filmmaking, and especially that naughty piano sonata for four sexy hands you’re composing as the centerpiece of your Sunday Afternoon Fine Arts Orgy.

I also speak as a cis gay man. Reader, that might not be your perspective nor your audience. I hope you find the philosophies herein malleable enough to adapt into your own. I encourage you to customize them at whim.

If you’re expending your creative efforts in the service of the carnal, or if you’re allowing other adults to enjoy adult content from the fruits of your imagination, you’re my kind of craftsperson.

Sometime during the pandemic, I began listening to podcasts. Yes, I know podcasts have been around forever. Not even when everyone was talking about Serial, though, had I ever been tempted to listen. I never understood the appeal of spending a dozen hours across as many weeks, passively allowing someone to drone out the same information I could cull from a quick one-minute browse on Wikipedia.

Then, in 2020, I found myself trapped in my home for weeks on end with nothing to do but fret. Narrated audio experiences filled a new kind of void. I could kick up my feet in my living room, game controller in hand and something relaxing like Minecraft on the TV screen while a podcast played. The hours wouldn’t exactly fly by, at least they ambled along more amiably than had I tuned into the 24-hour doomcasts on every news channel.

Quickly I accumulated a playlist of favorites. Shows about television and movie history appealed to me, as did programs diving deep into my favorite recording artists. I’ve never been big on true crime—I think it tends toward exploitation and poor handling of victims and bystanders alike—but I did find a couple of investigators who approached their subjects with sensitivity and compassion. Over time, I looked forward to certain shows and began supporting a few on Patreon. When restrictions eased, I continued listening. If I have to make a long car trip these days, I’m more inclined to turn on podcasts than music.

Then came an incident that shook me.

One of my favorite shows that I discovered right at the beginning of my podcast journey shines a light onto a certain type of pop culture specifically through an LGBTQ lens. I clicked with it immediately because of the genial hosts and their clever analysis of a genre many consider to be trivial or disposable. I was so entertained by the enterprise that I started working my way through several years’ worth of their old programs. Every long, isolated afternoon, when I’d unwind with the Playstation, for a couple of hours I wouldn’t miss my pre-pandemic life at all.

In one particular episode, these hosts got onto a tangent involving limericks. They were trying, and failing, to construct a dirty limerick from a specific first line that ended with a tricky-to-rhyme word. After a minute or two, the pair gave up and instead invited listeners to send in their best attempts from that first line. Well. When I was a fifth grader, limericks were my nerdy little thing. I grew up steeped in Edward Lear and fancied myself a real 11-year-old limerick connoisseur. My alarming output of the five-line, anapestic little poems prompted my homeroom teacher to sign me up for a citywide creative writing workshop that set me on a lifelong creative journey.

Plus, I like a challenge.

It was but the work of a few minutes to accomplish what the hosts could not: a perfectly-formed, absolutely filthy little masterpiece of such turpitude that once I’d finished, all I could do was rub my hands together and cackle in glee. After a bit of polishing, I tweeted the thing to one of the hosts and promptly went back to my much grayer, limerick-free life.

I’d actually forgotten about the challenge until a couple of weeks later, when during an ad break to thank their new patrons, the podcasters announced they’d received several limerick submissions. Immediately, I grew excited. My dirty poem was going to make my two favorite podcast hosts laugh! I turned up the volume to hear.

The first few listener limericks they read—well, they sucked. They suuuuuuuucked. The rhymes were terrible, the scansion just plain bad. One wasn’t even a limerick. Inwardly I gloated. I was winning this thing for sure. Okay, it wasn’t and had never been intended as a contest, but I have an unfortunate competitive spirit that manifests itself with obnoxious intensity, if I don’t tamp it down. And on that day, I wasn’t attempting to tamp. I was totally tampless and jittering with anticipation.

Finally it was my turn. The primary host paused slightly before reading off my Twitter handle, then launched into a diatribe that left me hot and flushed with shame. My social media profile, he warned all the listeners, was sexually explicit pornography. It was shocking. He launched into a description of all the things a hapless innocent might find if they were so naive as to dare stumble into my little den of depravity. Nude photos! Graphic depictions of homosexual sex! Licentious behavior! A corruption so absolute that no righteous soul should dare approach! In fact, they didn’t recommend listeners look me up at all, but since I’d sent in a submission, I’d forced their hand.

After what felt like an hour of these preliminary warnings, I think they finally read my limerick. I was in such a state of shock, though, that their reaction swept over me without registering. I felt humiliated at being called out in such a way, by two of my favorite voices, no less—two gay men who’d never spoken ill of anyone save for the LGBTQ population’s conservative foes. It felt like being spit on in passing by Oprah, or having Mother Teresa pick me out in a crowd, point a gnarled finger, and shout, “FAGGOT!”

Still licking my wounds, I visited my Twitter account to survey the broad swath of vice and debauchery I apparently was leaving in my wake. Sure, there were a couple of posts of naked dudes with erections. Many of my Twitter friends—and I choose the word friends here with deliberation—are sex workers. If I’m proud of someone with whom I have a relationship, I’ll spread the word about their accomplishments. Doesn’t matter to me if it’s an academic presenting a talk, a writer with a new article out, or yes, a sex worker promoting erotic videos or a website.

Overall, though? The amount of male nudity on my timeline that day was pretty minimal. Compared to the amount of shitposting I do on Twitter—tweets about campy movies I watch, links to my blog, comments about music I listen to, or reconstructed dialogs I’d had with my dad, or those bizarre conversations I have on the apps in which men approach me with unfathomable rudeness or ignorance—the number of nudes were insignificant. One had to scroll and scroll back weeks’ worth of microblogging to find even one.

At the time, I was confused anyone might feel my cheeky little Twitter profile merited the same neon yellow CAUTION! tape, hazmat suits, and flashing sirens as a nuclear waste spill. And that kind of treatment from gay men? Gay men whose very internet presences were poised on being perceived as thoughtful about LGBTQ culture? It hurt. I didn’t quit listening to their podcast. I was tempted, sure, but I still enjoyed the discussions enough that I thought my life would be the poorer for quitting out of embarrassment and spite.

What happened immediately after, though, is that I caught myself second-guessing everything I posted on Twitter. Was retweeting the glistening torso of my favorite, sweet-hearted, smiling Chaturbate model dragging my timeline into the gutter? Would using the word fuck in a post tip the balance of my tweets from an R rating into NC-17? Should I skip all mention of my own past and present sex work altogether, so I didn’t offend the sensibilities of the more sensitive gays?

For about a month, I began overthinking all my social media interactions. Was I being too filthy? Were people going to perceive me as vulgar? Should I remove any old retweets featuring naked flesh? Should I try in the future to be nice and safe?

The moment I found myself contemplating that word, though—safe—I knew I’d stumbled down the wrong path. Safe is not a word I’ve ever wanted associated with my blog, my craft, or my process. I’m always encouraging my writing students to step outside what’s safe. Their work is stronger when they venture into territory that’s uncertain, even scary. Safe is for the timid. Safe is the unlived life, the long nights spent sitting on the sidelines, the uncorked bottle of wine saved for that never-arriving special occasion, the fruit that withers on the vine. Safe has never been anything that inspired me, nor should it appeal to anyone.

Fuck safe. Remember in the Narnia stories, how everyone always says about Aslan that he’s not a tame lion? I’m not a tame lion, either. I don’t want tame lions for students. I want my aspiring writers to roar.

What I am is a pornographer. I chronicle my sexual history. For thirteen years I’ve kept this blog with zero attempts at monetization. I’ve composed hundreds of essays about my erotic experiences, past and present, for the joy of writing and sharing. That’s how I roar. If pressed, I prefer calling my output sexual memoir: my goal has always been to create prose that’s evocative and textured. Fancy literary terms don’t disguise, though, that I write to heighten the senses, to set the blood racing—I write to arouse.

There’s a conservative world view in which any book containing sexual acts is porn and therefore deserving condemnation, if not outright consignment to a bonfire. Whether written by Nobel Prize Award-Winning author Toni Morrison or by some unknown in the sticky pages of a titty magazine doesn’t matter. Filth is filth. Under that eye, I am that toxic spill of nuclear waste. I’m dangerous to one and all. I’m a moral threat.

Yeah. I write about fucking. I am a pornographer. And you know what? I think you should be a fuckin’ pornographer, like me. Here’s why.

1. Writing Pornography Makes You Better at Sex

Writing about sex requires a specific skill set, whether you’re writing sexual memoir, crafting literary erotica, or tapping out dirty little crossover stories for your favorite fandom about Spock (the hot Strange New Worlds incarnation, not Nimoy) boinking Bucky Barnes.

At the most fundamental, it’s essential to know the mechanics of sex: how the basic acts play out, how foreplay progresses to greater intimacy, the myriad things people find to do with their parts, what happens (or doesn’t) at climax. You might take for granted that in this age of Pornhub and instantly-downloadable depictions of every sexual depravity known to man, animals, and tentacled aliens, that every adult grasps what fits where. I am here to vouch, however, that you are mistaken.

For the better part of a decade, not that long ago, I was a judge of an annual nationwide contest for the hottest sex scenes in unpublished romance manuscripts. The entries were 100% heterosexual and largely (yet not exclusively) written by women. The contest was a big deal for aspiring writers. Winning guaranteed the author an evaluation by the editor of a major publishing house; their manuscript would avoid the slush piles.

Every year, though, I was astonished by the sheer number of entries that showed a shocking and often comical lack of understanding of both male and female anatomy and the sex act itself. It often was as if the authors had not only never engaged in sex, but had never seen or read simulations of it in media, enjoyed a lecture in sex education, or even known anyone who’d gotten past first base. There’s a whole population of adult women out there under the impression that coitus is when a man kisses a woman with an open mouth—and that such s’embrasser can actually lead to pregnancy. It gets worse. In the wee hours of the morning, I am still haunted by the number of scenes I had to endure in which a heroine accidentally had sex to completion with a Toblerone box she mistakes for the rigid member of her slumbering lover.

(How? I hear you ask. A Toblerone box is triangular, with sharp corners, and bears no resemblance to a human penis at all! Why are a man and woman sleeping in a bed with a candy bar? Wouldn’t it get messy, once all that chocolate began to melt? Who explains the stains to the launderer? Reader, your still-traumatized narrator has no easy answers for you.)

But I digress. Writing about sex requires understanding the chemistry of attraction, the ways in which people gaze upon each other, the ways in which their breathing changes as they move close, how they touch and undress and merge. Writing about sex requires knowing its rhythms and having proficiency in its intimacies, being aware of its comical pitfalls and of the potential disappointments a skilled lover strives to avoid.

Knowing what makes a scene erotic, then elevating it above mere mechanics and into something special, heightens the writer’s perceptions and insights. Those color one’s bedroom adventures. Writing about sex makes one aware that every encounter isn’t merely a discrete occurrence or misdeed. Fucking is not something disconnected from the everyday, to be shoved in a hidden cubbyhole. Sex is the merging of two (or more) people’s stories—stories that began long before the rendezvous and continue past it into the future. Time spent with someone else is the ultimate act of authorial collaboration.

Realizing those things, and honoring them in writing, has made me a better lover. It’s given me insight into what motivates many men, and into how, together, we might fulfill our desires and fantasies. It’s made me more forgiving of fault in others—too forgiving, sometimes. Exploring my older stories has helped me to honor parts of my past I used to find overwhelming or shameful, and to recognize what still makes me vulnerable or frightened. And it’s left me with little patience for men who refuse to search themselves or to grow.

Of course, these points are all a subset of an ideal I uphold to all my writing students at the beginning of any given semester: that being aware and observant of the world makes one both a better writer and a better person in general. It’s something I’ve always believed. However, as even the briefest perusal of the literary biographies at your local library will prove, plenty of authors are terrible people who use and spit out the ones closest to them. I’m often not a prize to be around, myself. But I believe writing—and yes, writing pornography—to be a valuable tool for personal growth.

2. Writing Good Pornography Sets the Example for Your Audience

Allow me to discuss, for a moment, the obverse of my previous point.

I’m enough of a dinosaur to remember when pornography was an event. It was planned on the calendar. It took place at a destination to which one traveled. In the olden days, porn wasn’t something pulled up on a smartphone while sitting on the toilet at work. (I’m referring to the early days of porn films, not daguerreotypes with brazen hussies hoisting bustles to reveal their stockings. I’m not that old.)

It was in the early 1970s when my mom applied her lipstick and dabbed herself with Chanel No. 5 while my dad donned his best sports jacket and a clean work shirt for a Friday night out at the movies. The theater was the Biograph, a newly opened art house near the campus where they taught; the movie was the pornographic The Devil in Miss Jones. Yes, once upon a time, pornography was shown in mainstream places to nice middle-class married couples who would dress up to attend. They’d hire babysitters, perhaps have a nice dinner out beforehand, and make a night of it. Once at the sold-out theater, they’d sit quietly with their hands resting on the arms of their seats, observe the widescreen images of people fucking, eat their popcorn, then presumably head home to do something about those uncomfortably tight clothes.

I saw the ticket stubs for The Devil in Miss Jones on my mom’s dresser the next day. Even as a kid, I instantly knew what it was. Pornography was openly discussed in the seventies. New titles were infrequent and well publicized. People swapped opinions on I Am Curious, Yellow and The Opening of Misty Beethoven over meatloaf and spring peas at polite dinner parties. Late-night comedians fashioned monologues around the latest pornographic release, then men and women would repeat their best jokes around the water cooler. Comics like Mad Magazine, though their audience skewed heavily to teens and pre-adolescents, made frequent, uncensored references to Deep Throat.

Not everyone would see these films, of course, in the same way not everyone flocked to see Herbie, the Love Bug. Attending an X-rated movie was perceived as hip and chic, though most still regarded the genre as dirty. For a good decade, if nice couples desired to view pornography, they would do so in front of other nice people, in nice venues, in nice dress-up clothes and with their pants pulled up and the fly zipped shut.

Pornography didn’t become anyone’s filthy secret until the 1980s, when the volume of cheap porn flicks exploded and what had been mainstream entertainment transformed into sticky cassettes that lurked in the home VCR. I was firmly in my twenties before I saw my first porn flick—a William Higgins film with a dubious soundtrack I selected from a dirty printed catalog that appeared in my graduate school apartment mailbox. To purchase the tape, I had to write a check, send it through the U.S. Mail, then wait six weeks a plain brown package to be delivered. And wow. Was I convinced that transaction was a privilege and a convenience!

I cannot exaggerate how much sex changed, once adult movies could be (more or less) easily purchased via mail order, or rented for private viewing from behind a beige curtain at a mom and pop video store. I’m not referring merely to the frequency one might masturbate to the stuff—though taped porn and the technologies that succeeded it have spawned generations of young people who cannot conceive of self-pleasure without a movie playing. No, what changed were the very acts themselves.

For example: despite having a wildly active sex life during my teens and early twenties, and despite having been a sex worker during that time with hundreds of clients, never once did anyone attempt any rimming. I remember shouting, “Whoa! WHOA!” the first time someone flipped me over and started licking my butt in the late eighties. It was so outré and unimagined an act that I panicked.

“Relax,” said the guy performing this debauched new undertaking on my quivering hole. “I saw it in a porno.”

Now, I’m not saying that prior to 1987, nobody had ever attempted anilingus. My experience tells me that it wasn’t common, however, until we started seeing it on our VCRs. Porn educates its audience. Douching before anal sex was neither widely performed nor expected until 80s films showed us acres of sparkling clean California Blond butts, or until bottom porn stars started sharing their preparation tips. Watersports and double penetration? In my experience, rare before home porn, but much more common after. Straight men wanting women to do butt stuff? You can bet it’s because they’ve seen it in a video. The many straight men these days wanting women to do butt stuff to them? You know know their browser search history contains multiple variations on pornhub milf pegging scenes.

For better or worse, a society’s porn consumption educates and broadens its desires—and you have the opportunity, as a responsible and thoughtful pornographer, to contribute to the tone. Do you want to advertise your sexual hypnotism fetish and normalize it as an outlet for play? Here’s your chance to create a series of hypnotism stories so erotic and compelling that they’ll make a lasting impression on readers encountering it for the first time. What’s your kink? Alien cocoons? Nasty Friends roleplay? Fingerpainting a naked body? As long as it’s between consenting adults, enjoy the fuck out of it and share that love with others. They’ll respond. Think of how much better all those erotic chapter contest submissions would have been, had the writers been inspired by your amazing written or filmed pornography, rather than by Toblerone ads.

I’ve always maintained what I hope is a clear ethic in my erotic writing. I believe it’s important for individuals to explore and enjoy their sexuality. I believe in respecting my partners and their fantasies and in creating a safe space in which they might enact them. I believe in the importance of educating oneself about risk and behaving responsibly when mistakes happens. I believe in making the best with what I’ve been given, of saying yes to opportunities, of opening myself to the bounty the universe presents. I don’t wedge all those themes into every individual essay, but regular blog readers recognize my themes.

Often, my beliefs strike a chord with my audience. If I had a dime for every reader who, over the last thirteen years, told me I’ve changed the ways they think of and approach sex, or who’s slid into my DMs to thank me for helping them learn to say yes to opportunity—well. I don’t want to exaggerate. I’d have enough money for a couple of meals at Taco Bell. But it wouldn’t be a cheap burrito from the value menu. Oh, no. It would at least cover that Mexican Pizza combo, god damn it.

3. Writing Pornography Pisses Off All the Best People

Writing truthfully and honestly about sex and sexual culture, and particularly about queer sex, is one of the most dangerous things a person can do these days. By sharing your work—whether online, or through traditional publishing, or through social media—you are inviting anyone, anyone, to fling your way hurtful comments on your sexual tastes and preferences. Are you a young man in his twenties primarily attracted to daddies? Be prepared to have unknown commenters question your perverted desires and to recommend therapy, prison, or worse. Are you writing sensitive essays involving consensual scenarios of dominance, perhaps with physical, financial, or racial components? It’s best to brace yourself for comments about how sick are your partners and how vile you are for indulging them. Are you writing with flowery euphemisms about the sweet, vanilla sessions of kissing and hand jobs in which you engage with your legally wedded husband? More power to you, but it doesn’t matter. Haters are still going to pop out of woodwork to call you a groomer.

We survive in a culture in which the extreme right wing that doesn’t want the word gay spoken aloud at all. The LGBTQ population lives in fear, in many of my country’s fifty states. They have ample reason. Right-wing rhetoric has stirred up countless hate crimes. Twitter itself has become a cesspool of untrammeled conservative hatred, worse every day, laser-focused upon anyone perceived as vulnerable.

And when you, the artist, write pornography, when you create art from your life and your experiences and do so with sincerity and the desire to share, you are making yourself vulnerable. I have always considered that willingness to be vulnerable, that risky leap of faith an artist takes in releasing his work into the world, as the sweetest of gifts. It’s a beautiful thing, trusting strangers to witness art in its fledgling state, and to have that audience respond to your gift of vulnerability in kind, with generosity of spirit.

It’s soul-crushing when bad actors with worse intentions dogpile upon you to assert their own destructive impulses—particularly when they’re online trolls looking to score invisible points with oligarchs who don’t give a shit.

Don’t expect much of a better reception from many on the left. Your pornography will arouse hand-wringing and concern trolling. If you talk about sex, the other side will think that’s all we’re about! Why can’t you keep things family friendly? I know for a fact that you—yes, you—are acquainted with liberal LGBTQ folk who recoil in horror from drag queens or discussions of trans rights, or who think that men in harnesses, jocks, and chaps are too racy, too much for a big-city Pride event. Sure, a lot of those people might have an alt or a Grindr account where they post naughty photos from the neck down, yet won’t show face or admit to slutting around when no one’s looking. Being honest about their sexual life and desire? It’s not safe.

Hell, even some allegedly progressive gay guys like those podcast hosts, intelligent and articulate as they might be, don’t want to admit that gay men engage in, you know…gay sex. They talk about a gay topic to probably a mostly-gay audience, yet react in abject horror to a fairly mild Twitter feed with a bare modicum of full-frontal male nudity.

As an artist confronted with anger and disgust, you might start editing yourself bit by bit. Like I did for a while, after being called out on that podcast, you can second-guess every word that flows from your brain. You can censor your own work, chip away at your authenticity truth after tiny truth in an attempt to make your art as unobjectionable as possible. Know, though, that every compromise you make, every tiny concession to your invisible enemies, will begin to obstruct your creative flow until one day, it may not flow at all. What you create in the meantime won’t resemble your real, fearless self. It will be a cramped and sorry simulacrum, a duplication sent through the copier too many times until it’s unrecognizable. It might be more innocuous. It won’t be you.

Yet the process of playing it safe and murdering your very soul, frankly, will not win you any converts. It won’t lessen the foaming mouths from the right, nor will it remove the doubts of the tut-tutting left. If an outright masterpiece like The Color Purple can be banned as pornographic, editing a couple of cocks from your sketches or your stories has a snowball’s chance in hell to escape censure.

Don’t be a tame lion. Write to piss off anyone frightened of adult sexual content. Write to make your mommy and daddy cry. Be faithful to your experiences. Nothing created from a stance of integrity is shameful. Do not allow yourself to be shamed.

Roar.

4. Pornography Is an Act of Historical Preservation

No work of art—and I’m including artful pornography in my sweeping statement—is utterly divorced from its time. As someone who writes sexual memoir, I can look back on my body of work and see trends across broad eras. Pre-PrEP vs. the wild explosion of sexual energy after gay men widely started taking Truvada. The carefree social days before 2020 vs. the post-pandemic landscape. It’s wild, looking back on my Twitter feed around the time of the monkeypox epidemic—was it really only last year?—and I was tweeting out like crazy resources and databases for men in the New York City area seeking inoculations.

I spent the better part of two years adapting essays from my blog into full-length memoir that focuses on my teen years as a sex worker during the 1970s. I was really struck, both while doing the research and later while trying to find a new literary agent for this beautifully-written and fucked-up work of art (Hi…still looking for someone unafraid of the subject matter! If you know of an LGBTQ-friendly agent or publisher who’d be interested, slip them my digits, would you?) how uniformly shocked my contemporaries were over how casually and successfully I got into hustling in a decade tucked between Stonewall and HIV. But they shouldn’t be. There’s a reason movies got made with Jodie Foster and Brooke Shields as 12-year-old sex workers in 1976’s Taxi Driver, and 1978’s Pretty Baby. Teen sex work was rampant and ignored in that weird era. Everyone’s darling, Eve Plumb, was selling her body in Dawn, Portrait of a Teenage Runaway, which then spawned Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn, a sequel about her bisexual, teen male counterpart. And these last two movies were made for prime-time TV!

Now, no school guidance counselors in the seventies were advising sex work as a worthwhile career. Parents weren’t saying, “Why can’t you hit the streets, like that nice Jan Brady?” Things weren’t that lackadaisical. But it’s wild, the difference between the swinging seventies and this post-Epstein era. Teen sex work would now never be portrayed with such nonchalance. Nor, as in Pretty Baby, would it be so unwisely romanticized. The work I put into my memoir, uncovering a decade both remote and unfathomable, often felt more like archaeology than writing. I wasn’t striving to defend the customs of that lost era, mind you. But I did work to capture its nuances and unspoken rules, so that others might understand how kids like me could’ve slipped through the cracks.

Every time you craft pornography, you too write as a historian, chronicling the world around you. You’re possibly an anthropologist, recording the cruising spots of your locale, their customs, their clientele. You might be a sociological expert on the dwindling bar culture of today, or the ephemeral customs and rituals of apps like Grindr and Scruff. Or you could take the perspective of a reporter, encapsulating the angst and terror of a gay man living in a red state, or who documents the sexual mores of lesser-known underground movements, like that of competitive leather or a polycule making its own rules.

Even wholly-imagined stories that are way out there speak of our contemporary obsessions. Whether you’re creating fiction or memoir, every tale reflects the time in which it was written.

The simple fact is: we don’t know what’s coming down the road. When I turned 17, the AIDS epidemic descended to decimate the entire tapestry of tearooms, park cruising, and street hustling that had been the only gay fellowship I’d known. I’d foolishly thought that world would last forever. It was never to return. Queer bars might vanish in the next ten years, the very same way. That red state could turn blue. Twitter has had the joy squeezed from it for a long time, and now has devolved into X; similar advances in technology and the companies behind it could render the apps a quaint footnote in future LGBTQ e-textbooks.

“Grindr?” some young future scholar will say, thinking the spelling is a misprint. “What the nanofuck was that?” Then he’ll clear his VR desktop with a blink and twitch his nose to fire up Pervertigo 3000, the latest visual cortex overlay that automatically scans nearby male DNA, extrapolates and projects probable penile length, filters anything less than 20.32 centimeters, and places a red highlight on an eligible subject’s crotch, while displaying all the naked simulated holofantasies his subjects have neural uplinked with the tetraweb.

Help that young scholar, pornographers. Write all the nasty stories about your Grindr hookups that you can, so he can finish his dissertation. Now, while you’ve still got time.

5. Pornography Is Great at Getting People Off

You might even say that’s its primary purpose. The best way to celebrate sex is to share it. When you write an especially steamy story, you’re quickening your reader’s heartbeat. Making skin prickle with sweat. You’re increasing the blood flow to private parts. Causing things to twitch and swell. Maximizing moisture.

Your words, artfully arranged, have the power to persuade your reader to reach down, to unzip, to thrust upwards, to grab what needs attention, to squeeze and pulse and rub. The images you paint will elicit gasps and moans. Hips will gyrate; nipples will ache and beg for attention. Your reader will close his eyes—but then force them open once again because he needs to continue reading. You have snared someone with mere words, and he will follow where you lead.

If you’re lucky, if you’re skillful, you’ll coax him toward a precipice from which he will not shy. Nearer, you’ll inch. With greater speed, his mind will race. He’ll time his strokes to your words, stepping closer and closer until over the edge he plummets, body shaking, semen pouring from his red and stubborn cock. This stranger, someone you have never met or seen, will thrash and rasp and pant to your words. Eventually, as his climax recedes, he will laugh at himself and at the shock of the pleasure you have brought him.

Now, pornography does not have to arouse. It can dumbfound, or disturb, or make its audience chuckle or cry. It can convey multitudes. But I ask you: is there anything more gratifying that bringing someone that pleasure?

I say the following to my students, every semester. Every written word—every work of art—is a declaration of war.

An artist does not stoop to half measures. He writes to stake his claim, to make a stance. To conquer. To persuade. To sway both hearts and minds. Some writers are so skillful they evangelize rivals into followers. Others seek only to lay waste to their foes.

There are all manner of wars. Many are loud and bombastic, sounding of drums and cannon. Other hostilities are settled more stealthily, through the sly insinuation, the gentle innuendo, the poison pill. Some commanders wheedle; some flatter and humor their adversaries into submission.

Make no mistake, though: every artist writes to win.

Pornography can be a weapon in your war. If it is composed from a place of truth and experience, if it is deliberate in its aim, pornography illuminates. Its brilliant light throws into sharp relief what the sanctimonious most fear about themselves; it spotlights hypocrisy and blinds those who would not recognize its virtues. In the hands of an artist, pornography is an incendiary, ready to explode targets of religious and political oppression.

No wonder it frightens those accustomed to staying safe.

This is why I write pornography. Not because it’s easy. Not for fame or quick cash. I write pornography because sexuality is our gift from the universe. I write because it’s important to record, to preserve, to teach, to anger, to arouse. I make pornography, because pornography matters.

And that’s why I think you should make pornography, too.

Three and a Quarter Boxes

A note from the author: This essay is neither sexual nor administrative in nature. I won't be offended if, based on that information, you decline to read it. 

I've been going through a lot with my father, lately, and this last month it's culminated into a crisis. Writing about it helps alleviate my anxiety. If you do take the time to read the piece, thank you, and know that I'm well, and coping.

My elderly father’s home holds thousands of books. Many were my late mother’s; she was an avid reader who collected paperback mysteries, Georgette Heyer romances, Holocaust memoirs, and editions on natural history by the score, who picked up old copies of Dickens and Austen and all her favorite British authors from library used book sales. She squirreled away her treasures two or three stacks deep in her bookcases, packed so densely they had to be extracted with delicacy, like sticks from a Jenga tower, lest the contents detonate. My father’s library is at least as extensive, though it’s mostly composed of dry, historical volumes about the Revolutionary War. His volumes occupy bookcases of their own—hefty, heavy, hand-crafted creations of oak that stretch from floor to ceiling.

Decades ago, when he retired, thousands more editions that had occupied his academic office came home to roost in my childhood bedroom. On a visit, I managed to persuade him to donate two or three hundred back to the university. Stunned archivists watched in horror as I single-handedly unloaded box after box of the dusty, super-specialized tomes onto their loading dock. Former students and a couple of specialized libraries have taken a few more off his hands. But his floors still bow from the weight of the combined library that remains, stacked and packed in their high, high piles in every case, on every table, on chairs and tables and dressers and in corners, alike.

Over the decades, I’ve begged my father to divest himself of more, but he’s always dismissed the notion. Our family loves books, he tells me. We never throw them away.

And out of all these books, these thousands of heavy, uncatalogued constructions made of cheap pulp or fine linen stock, of ink, of glue and cardboard and fabric, my father has chosen to salvage less than a dozen—his collection of Horatio Hornblower novels, from his boyhood. When I pry them from the shelf where for years they’ve been moldering for half a century, I become apprehensive at the creaking noises made by the living room wall into which it’s built. At the end of Little Dorrit, a neglected house collapses upon itself. I can so easily see that happening here.

Lined them against the bottom of this small cardboard box, the Forester novels seem like a meager selection. “Are you sure there aren’t any other books you want to take, when you move? Or are you not reading any more?”

“I can read,” snaps my father, from where he lies on the living room sofa. “My cam reads for me.” His vision is so poor and uncorrectable that he nearly qualifies as legally blind; he owns a device that takes a photo of a printed page and reads it aloud in a robotic voice. But no, he doesn’t read, not often. Mostly he watches movies on his iPad, held at the tip of his nose, or listens to the endless stream of Trump indictment news that plays on MSNBC. “I’m allowed to take what I like with me, you know.”

“I agree.” My tone is conciliatory. My father has decided—conceded, really—to agree with my sister’s insistence he move into her home. As fiercely as he desires his independence, it’s obvious that he cannot live on his own any longer. Although he was ambulatory in March after I nursed him through his strokes, he’s deteriorated since. “I think you absolutely should take whatever your heart desires. That’s why I’m trying to make sure these are the only books you want, out of—” I wave my arms, indicating the enormity of the house and its contents.

We have spent the last few hours taking an inventory of his possessions, in order to decide what should go with him. Not an easy task: my father is a hoarder. Not only of books, but anything else his Depression-childhood brain thinks might be of use. He has never thrown away a plastic cat sand tub, for example. As they empty, he fills them with water and stores them in the basement, in case of…I don’t know what. Drought? Famine? Nuclear war? During his hospitalization, I divested the kitchen of the literal hundreds of glass salsa and peanut butter jars he’d accumulated over the years, as well as stacks of plastic trays, several feet high, from Le Menu frozen meals from the 1980s. He buys cat food by the case and keeps it piled on what once was a piano; the dining room table is mostly taken up by three non-operational microwave ovens with which he can’t bear to part.

Every time I open a cupboard, out spill hundreds—literal hundreds!—of old margarine tubs and their plastic lids, warped with time. Baggies everywhere are stuffed with thousands of twist-ties so old that their paper has rotted away and the wire beneath corroded. It’s impossible to access his flatware because the drawer in which it lies is packed with plastic forks and spoons from decades of takeout, never thrown away, but lovingly hand-washed and stockpiled for an oncoming cutlery emergency. Dirty packets of ketchup and soy and duck sauce, cloudy with age, occupy their own shelf in what’s supposed to be a china cabinet.

He won’t throw out anything, even it doesn’t work. An old electric can opener that he received as a wedding present when Kennedy was President hasn’t functioned since Ford was in office, but it makes a fine stand for the 4-decade-old ceramic mugs packed with dried-out felt-tip pens he can’t bring himself to discard. I seriously upset him on this trip when I reclaim for recycling a first-generation, 13-year-old original iPad. It no longer works, mind you, but placed crosswise atop a metal trash can next to his bed, it’s a perfect little table for his nighttime cup of Pepsi. When I haul an actual little table from another part of the house to his bedside instead, he decides to use it as his upstairs walker, though it’s unstable and low and in no way designed to support his considerable weight.

The house is stuffed with stuff. I’ve made attempts in the past to spring clean, to expunge all the items in his pantry with expiration dates from the mid-1990s, to divest him of the twist-ties and Tostitos salsa jars and the foil trays from ancient TV dinners, to trash the stacks of Halloween candy bought, but never distributed, that have aggregated on the table by the front door for nigh on thirty years. Months later, somehow it’s all returned, or been replaced. My dad abhors a vacuum more than nature ever might.

It saddens me that, after an adult lifetime of accumulation, of amassing so much trivial and unused junk, of outwitting calamity by caching hundreds of gallons of stale water in his basement, that this old and frail man is suddenly willing to walk away from it all, carrying only a small suitcase of clothing and three—three and a quarter, now—small cardboard boxes. All he wants to take with him to my sister’s house are his most recent tax returns, his diplomas, a winter coat, a few framed photographs of his parents and of my mother, the Horatio Hornblowers, and his cats’ rabies certificates. How fucking sad is that? I look around the living room, trying to find something else that might be of meaning. “What about your book?” I finally ask, inspired.

“You packed the only books I want.”

“What about your book, though?” In the late eighties, my father produced his only academic monograph, a product of deep research into an obscure area of colonial history. When I google it today, the title only elicits a handful of citations before trailing off into unrelated websites. “The book you wrote.”

“Of course I want my book!” he thunders. “Why would you try to take away my book?”

“I’m not trying to take away your book!” I point out, affronted. I’ve already put a shrink-wrapped copy into the box. The slender volume barely adds any weight. “Just now, I suggested you take it.”

“I want my book!” He grumbles to himself. “You’d understand, if you had written any books of your own.”

I have to seal my lips shut, so that I don’t betray how deeply he’s wounded me. In better times, he might have remembered I’ve had sixteen novels published.

Earlier this year, after a week in the hospital’s neurology wing and then two more in a rehab hospital, my dad’s healthcare network set up a month’s worth of regular home visits from clinicians. One was a handsome male nurse who’d show up several times a week to check his blood pressure and other vitals. Another was the physical therapist who assigned him exercises to regain full mobility. A third was an occupational therapist who recommended home changes and made sure he could do the tasks necessary to take care of himself. If he followed their recommendations, they all told him, he’d surely make a full recovery, and have even more mobility than before the event.

After a full week of home visits, I took my father to a follow-up appointment with his general practitioner. “So,” said the doctor, a white, silver-haired older man like my father. “How’re you doing?”

Immediately my father began complaining. “I’d be a hell of a lot better if you gave me tips to get these god-damned therapists off my back.”

The doctor looked at him and replied, “How about you be nice to them and do what they ask?”

I knew that wasn’t going to happen. My father doesn’t just neglect his health—he rolls his eyes, says what he thinks the professionals want to hear, then promptly discards all their advice. He’d spent that entire month being the worst patient in every way imaginable. In the hospital, he threw actual screaming, kicking tantrums with his team of multiple doctors when they gave him news he didn’t like or refused to release him. He never understood that the staff were attempting to navigate him back to independence. Instead, he felt they were inconveniencing him, keeping him from the nest of filth and decay where he wanted to curl up and spend the rest of his days.

There was a point toward the end of my month-long stay with him it hit home that despite all the expense, all the exercises, all the schedules and his promises of change, all this gargantuan effort on his behalf, none of it was going to take. The occupational therapist had visited one afternoon to point out rug after little rug that needed to be removed. Each posed a walking hazard to an old man with a cane. Most of these rugs were former bathmats and even U-shaped toilet rugs with which my father couldn’t bear to part. Their fuzzy surfaces threadbare and so ancient that the rubber backings had disintegrated into dust, dozens covered every bare expanse of wood. A score more, hanging in a thick pile like a horde of trapper’s furs, lay over a second-floor banister.

So, trying to be a good son who didn’t want his father to slip on a rug and give himself a concussion on a pile of microwave ovens, I’d collected all the rugs, wheezing as each released its grime and must. I was heading to toss them in the trash in his alley when he barked, “Don’t throw those out!”

“Why?” I wanted to know.

“They’re perfectly good rugs!”

They’re not good rugs at all. “They pose a hazard,” I reminded him. “Your occupational therapist told you to remove them.”

“Well, once she’s out of here, I’m putting ‘em back!” he said.

That’s the moment I realized he wasn’t taking seriously any of what had happened. The rugs would be spirited away from the eagle eye of the OT, but only for as long as she visited. It wasn’t just these stupid little throw rugs, though. It was everything. The exercises that I’d carefully recorded for him in his own words, to ensure he’d be able to understand what he needed to do—he intended to disregard them. The talking blood pressure machine his doctor insisted he purchase and run twice daily, and which I’d made so simple for him to use—it would molder away beneath a layer of dust and discarded plastic bags.

Once I left, he was going to abandon the simple-as-pie system I’d instituted for getting rid of expired foods. He’d only use the dual pillbox system the rehab nurses had insisted upon until my back was turned, and then he’d go back to twisting lids and scrabbling for pills from the chaos of bottles, old and new, overflowing the upstairs hallway. I’d bought new sheets and blankets for his bed to replace the 40-year-old grimy tatters I found him sleeping upon—and I’d thrown those out—but once I was gone, he’d decree they were too fancy for every-night use, hide them away in the linen cupboard, and replace them with something worn and uncomfortable and long past its prime. I’d bought him a whole new wardrobe of easy-to-wear clothing, warm and clean with elastic waistbands, and shoes that he could slip on without having to fumble with laces—but although he claimed to love them, in my absence he’d be pulling on the same decrepit professorwear he’s worn since the 1960s with the tattered hems, the fabric ridden with holes and pee stains, the fussy buttons he no longer can navigate.

Despite surviving a life-changing event that could have left him disabled or dead, my father, the professor, had learned nothing. None of it had sunk in. He had zero intention of making any significant changes to his life. That’s what seemed suddenly so clear, as he defied me to take those stupid rugs to the trash. All the work I’d done that previous month, all the backbreaking labor, the worry, the consultations, the phone calls, the trips to hardware and medical supply stores, the entire nauseating afternoon it had taken to clean from his refrigerator foods so expired they had fossilized. I’d done it out of duty and love, but he didn’t give a fuck. I’d only wasted my time.

A little earlier that March, the day my father came home from the rehabilitation hospital, I made a sweep through the house to clear up some of the most egregious downstairs trash. To be frank, I didn’t want the at-home nurse to arrive and stagger at the sight of all the deterioration and hoarding, then instantly call social services. So I grabbed several plastic grocery bags from his collection of thousands and made a circuit around the living room.

Gone, the dozens of wadded-up used Kleenex lying on every surface that ‘still have one more blow’ in them. Into the bags, all the used Q-tips set onto the mantel and end tables that ‘could still be useful.’ Charities mail my dad all kinds of crap as an enticement to giving. From these vultures, he’d collected on his coffee table no less than forty-two free manicure sets—the flimsy miniature kind suitable for giving the residents of a dollhouse a nail trim, not fit for human use—and set them out for display. I left him one and cleared off the rest. From the bookcases I snatched his piles of old wall calendars, many of which date back to the seventies (“You can reuse them again when the right year rolls around, you know!”) and the sacks filled with empty prescription bottles.

The real scourge of the charities are the return address labels. They’re cheap to make and send, and my father has never discarded a single one. The thick packets of peel-and-stick labels portray gentle scenes of winter snow and spring meadows, of fauns frolicking among wildflowers, of nighttime city skylines and jolly holiday figures. Thousands upon thousands of these return address labels can be found in every room of my father’s house. In the living room alone, I collect enough from the TV stand and the entertainment center (why have one when you can have both, in my father’s opinion), the coffee table, the sofa, both chairs, the bookcases, and from the interior of a carpeted cat tower. They filled no less than five supermarket bags.

I was heading through the kitchen on my way out to the trash can when my dad grabbed one of the bags from my hands. “Who said you could throw anything away?” I explained that I was trying to clean up before his nurse arrived, but he erupted angrily, “You are throwing my life in the trash!”

This, more than any other experience of the previous month, galvanized me into an ice-cold rage. “You know,” I intoned in the clipped, perfect diction I adopt only when furious. “Many people your age might look at their children and see what capable and competent adults they’ve become and consider that a life well spent. Others might reflect upon their career and personal accomplishments or upon their happy memories and consider those their life. If you think—” and here I brandished one of the bag beneath his face and shook it. “If you think that five trash bags filled with cheap manicure sets and eleven thousand return address labels are your life, then I say you’ve had a pretty fucking lousy life. How about you think about the things that matter, from now on, and be happy those aren’t being taken away from you?” Then I stomped out to the alley, slamming the door behind me.

Five months after that confrontation, I’m standing in my dad’s living room, having stowed everything he wants to take to my sister’s. In a few weeks, if all goes to plan, a hired crew will invade the house and do a complete cleanout of everything under the roof. There’s nothing here that I want. I’ll pack up what photographs my dad leaves behind, but I won’t be taking home anything else. Save for that small suitcase of clothing and the three-and-a-quarter boxes I’ve collected for him, my dad is simply walking away from everything he’s spent a lifetime hoarding.

So what’s been his end game, then? What’s been the point of hiding what was once a comfortable and welcoming home beneath layers of trash? Was it an attempt at being economical? It’s going to cost us thousands to discard these shambles he leaves behind. Was it a grand intention to repurpose things? Because the broken-down furniture and unwearable clothing donated, the junk trashed, the cat jugs emptied of their old water and tossed in a dumpster. Those thousands of books will probably end in a landfill, somewhere. Such a waste.

Throughout my young adulthood, my dad always harped on about how I needed to buy a home, how real estate was the best investment I’d ever make. Surely, though, he has to understand that simply buying a house isn’t enough. Owning it isn’t sufficient. That investment has to be maintained and updated and taken care of. Issues need to be addressed before they become problems; problems needs the attention of experts before they become disasters. 

Whether for his home or his health, he’s done none of these things. I wonder if he suspected, last March, that those five bags of return address labels were just a harbinger of what was to come.