Your 2015 Resolutions

It’s the new year. You’ve decided you need to make some resolutions—get your life back on track.
I feel you. You’ve come to the right place. I’ve had all kinds of readers come out of the woodwork and ask me for advice in framing their declarations for 2015. I don’t blame them for trying. The first of January always brings a fresh new start. A clean slate. A new perspective. Three hundred and sixty-five pristine days ripe with opportunity.

Yet I’m afraid that some of you guys will squander the opportunity by coming up with resolutions that are . . . well. Let’s just say flabby. Underdeveloped, maybe. Every year I hear from guys, “This is the year I intend to improve myself!”

“Fantastic!” I’ll reply. “What are you going to do? Learn a new language? Read that volume of Proust? Take up the banjolele?”

“No,” they’ll say, blinking. “I mean I’m going to take care of myself.”

“Fantastic! So what, you’re going to learn to cook? Start an IRA?”

“Uh, no, dude,” they’ll say, looking at me as if I’ve suddenly sprouted an extra head. “I’m going to go to the gym and work out every day.”

Listen. I’ve got nothing against you guys who enjoy going to the gym. Quite the contrary. I have mounted many a gym bunny over the years. They can be fun. But I’m old enough and wise enough to know that improving yourself is more than just being able to take a better shirtless selfie.

Trust me on that.

Behind all the mania for gym memberships this time of year, for gay and straight men alike, is deep down a conviction that without that perfect body we’ve all seen in porn videos and on magazine covers and in cologne ads, we simply won’t get laid. Physical fitness is grand and the cardiopulmonary benefits are fantastic and the autoimmune response to exercise yadda yadda yadda, but at heart there’s a conviction so many people have this time of year: that nobody’s going to want you in bed if you can’t pose sideways in a mirror, lean back at the perfect angle, and snap a pretty shot of yourself in your best pair of name-brand underwear.

If you think that all you have to bring to the table is a good shirtless selfie for Grindr and maybe a V chiseled at your waistline, son, you are going to have a rude awakening down the road. There’s nothing wrong with being buff. I’m not saying it’s silly or stupid or trite. But unless you’re intending as well to do a little work on your personality, your outlook, and your brain, your chances of getting laid in 2015 are going to be about as much as they were in 2014 . . . and for a lot of you, judging by my email, that’s anywhere between average to dismal.

So here I am to offer up three simple suggestions for self-improvement.

You’re welcome in advance.

1. Try saying ‘yes’ more often. These days I look at profiles online, or at the descriptions of yourselves in the apps all you young whippersnappers are using, and I still shake my head and marvel how some of you manage to get your dicks wet. “No fats, no fems” still appears from time to time (what is this, America Online in 1993?). “No guys older than my dad!” “No blacks!” “No white men!” “No married men!” “No guys in a relationship please!”

And then there are the ‘you must bes.’ “You must take care of yourself.” “You must have a regular job like me.” “You must be HIV-negative.” “You must be all top.” “You must live within 9 miles of me.” They’re just another way of saying no. Of exerting a false sense of control. Of walling yourself off from experience, brick by brick.

Guys, step outside those little comfort zones. You can tell yourself all you want that your preferences are your preferences and that you can’t change them. The truth of the matter, however, is that the nests you’ve made for yourselves are often incredibly small (and small-minded). With every ‘no’ you utter, with every large subset of humanity or experience you reject out of hand, you’re just putting another brick in that wall.

So say yes. Have a date with a guy ten years older than you’d ordinarily consider. There’s no obligation to sleep with him, or to see him again if you’re genuinely not interested. Try topping instead of bottoming sometime—or vice versa—instead of stomping your foot and insisting you’ve got a role and you’re sticking to it. Say yes, you’ll go to that sex party you’ve been interested in attending but haven’t yet gotten the nerve. Say yes, you’ll try something different.

You want real self-improvement? Stop turning up your nose to opportunity and start saying yes to the many fantastic experiences that life has to offer.

2. Stop thinking about the sex you want. Start having it. You know what the problem is with most of you poor motherfuckers? You jack off too much. You pull up a website and watch amateur porn, you swipe on your phone and bring up a movie, you pop in a DVD and you whack off. Pbbbt. Job’s done.

I get it. It’s easier to jack than it is to make human contact. Meeting a guy is tough stuff. You have to clean up (and clean out). You have to get dressed, get in the car or get on the subway, travel. There’s that awkward conversation before and after. The sex might not even be good—it’s a crap shoot sometimes. Your hand and a good fuck flick is a sure thing. You can do it in your sweatpants. Your hand doesn’t care that you haven’t showered or shaved. You don’t feel obligated, while you’re getting dressed after, to ask your flushed palm about whether or not it had a happy childhood or how long it’s lived at its place. Five minutes, and you’re back to watching Netflix while feeling nice and relaxed.

But fuck, guys. If you’re jacking off three, four, seven, ten times a day (you know who you are) and using that as a substitute for any kind of intimacy with another guy, you’ve kind of lost the right to rant and rail against your lack of a real sex life. Masturbation is fine as a quick release valve. I recommend it for girls and boys of all ages. It is, however, a mere Tootsie Roll of sexual nourishment. And none of you muscleheads so intent on improving yourselves would ever make an entire diet of Tootsie Rolls.

So take your hands out of your pants and get the fuck out into the world. You can have the sex you want. In the immortal words of The Rocky Horror Picture Show: don’t dream it. Be it.

3. Get your asses on PrEP. If you’re HIV-negative and want to stay that way, and you’re barebacking, you should be on a prescribed course of Truvada, courtesy of your physician. Full stop.

PrEP, of course, is an abbreviation for pre-exposure prophylaxis, in which men (and women) who have tested as HIV-negative take a pill every day; it contains medicines that prevent HIV from being able to infect someone exposed to it. Its effectiveness is as good as, or better than condoms, depending on what studies you read. No, it doesn’t prevent one from catching other sexually-transmitted diseases, as many will be quick to point out. But you know what? Condoms aren’t totally effective against that, either. And unless you’re using a condom during oral sex—and no one is except for that one solitary weird guy without any photos on Adam4Adam who stridently insists on it in his profile—you can still catch those other diseases during your foreplay.

“But I’m not one of those barebackers,” says the man who does indeed bareback with his boyfriend, but doesn’t know his boyfriend is fucking around behind his back and exposing him to risk. Or, “I’m not one of those awful people who has unsafe sex!” says the fellow with the spotless online profile who has the date of his last test proudly displayed (“NEG AND STAYING THAT WAY!!!” emblazoned beside it) . . . and yet who caves in front of a cock like mine and tells me that although he doesn’t really fuck raw, he’ll make an exception.

Or maybe you’re one of those guys who admits that he barebacks and needs the intimacy and warmth of it from time to time, but thinks you’re doing the right thing by picking the guy on Scruff or Manhunt who has ‘neg’ listed in his profile and asking him to play raw with you. There are an awful lot of you out there, too. I’ve fucked you.

It’s time for some truth-telling. There are all kinds of sneaky little games you guys play with yourselves to enable yourselves to fuck raw, all kinds of voodoo calculations and self-delusions. It’s a new year, though, and we’re writing some resolutions for ourselves, so let’s face up to the facts: we engage in these unhelpful behaviors because we’ve convinced ourselves that barebacking is a bad behavior.

It’s not. People enjoy barebacking. Humans have barebacked for the vast majority of history. They watch bareback porn. They read bareback blogs. In fact, you know who’s barebacked? Your mama.
Guys bareback. You are likely going to bareback. Do-gooders can tsk and chide all we want, but it happens. Take responsibility for your behaviors, if you’re neg and truly intend to stay that way. It’s not up to your parents, or your doctor, or your husband or wife. It’s not up to the guy who fucks you. Admit what you’re doing, take responsibility, see your doctor, and get on PrEP.

But I can’t get on PrEP, I hear you whine. I’m worried about the side effects. You know what? We have all heard way too many god-damned people worrying about the god-damned side effects of god-damned Truvada. I have a friend on Facebook who went on PrEP (and good for him!) but who has, every day since, seen fit to announce to broadcast EVERY DAY the side effects. Not that he’s experienced any, mind you. On day thirteen he had a little bit of digestive trouble but it could have been, he readily admits, the Thai food. But for forty-odd days, now, I’ve been treated to daily recountings of hypochondria that rival Andy Warhol at his most paranoid.

Frankly, when my friends go on Ambien, or anti-depressants, or meds for high cholesterol, or pills for acid reflux, or aspirin, or any of the pills we take on a daily basis, none of them feel compelled to relate the side effects—or even think much about them. Combine side effects with PrEP, though, and suddenly everyone’s all concerned. It’s as if we’re still convinced that we have to pay, somehow, for a pill that might improve our sexual experiences. You know what? Shut up and take the damned pill. If you are the one-in-a-million person who experiences constant flatulence or kidney failure, you have my permission and encouragement to discontinue what is at heart a completely optional drug.

But I can’t get on PrEP, you’re saying. It’s too expensive! Yes. It is expensive. Very fucking expensive, if you ask me. But you know, unless you go to your doctor and discuss Truvada with him or with her—including its cost—you’re not going to know exactly how much out of pocket you may be. Your health insurance may cover a big chunk of it. You may be eligible for a discount from the manufacturer for a healthy portion. The state in which you live may have programs for which you are eligible that will help cover the costs.

Instead of sitting back and deciding for yourself that it’s out of your range, get up and make a few phone calls. Talk to your medical professional. Try your local gay and lesbian community center and ask them about potential programs. Search online. Don’t concede without a fight; do what you can to make it happen. Because you deserve it.

Now, if you’re an HIV-positive guy, you can amend this resolution to read that you’ll keep your asses on your daily antiretroviral regime that’ll keep HIV to an inert level. If anyone reading this is still convinced that their HIV-positive brothers on antiretrovirals are somehow tainted or untouchable because they carry a virus—even though it’s not doing them or anyone else any active harm—you know what’s another virus that stays in your bloodstream for life, virtually inactive, after you’ve been infected with it? German measles. And I don’t see any of you being all self-righteous and proclaiming in your profiles, “GERMAN MEASLES FREE AND STAYING THAT WAY!!!” So get over yourselves.

There. Now you’ve got a start on your resolutions. You can figure out the rest for yourselves. But you know what I’d suggest? Resolve to be kinder to each other. Resolve to be kinder to yourselves. Resolve to be honest, and responsible, and to treat every person in your life in the way you would like to be treated.

If you ask me, that’s improving yourself.

What are my resolutions, you ask? Why, it’s to be even foxier than I was in 2014 . . . Which admittedly is a high bar to set, since I was already pretty damned foxy. What else?

Lessons from Pasta

Things I’ve Learned About Gay Guys After Being Subjected to Twenty Berjillion Facebook Posts About Pasta Last Week

1. Immediately after someone posts a notice resolving to boycott a brand of pasta, the first three comments are going to be along the lines of That brand sux! __________ is soooooo much better!

Well, welcome to the conversation, Miss Fancy-Pants. I’m really glad that the latest cause célèbre involving outrages against gays and lesbians has given you the perfect opportunity to leap in and show everyone what superior taste you have. I am so compelled by your exquisite discernment that I am hoping, when I prowl back in time to 2011, I’ll find a sensitive comment from you about the devastating Thailand floods that affected over thirteen million people and killed hundreds that reads, Phuket is sooooo overrated anyway! Go to Aruba if you want a real vay-cay!

That brand of pasta was one I used for over a decade and a half because it was recommended to me by a close female friend’s father, who owned a popular and highly-rated Italian restaurant for years and years. If it was good enough for him and his family—who were all born in Italy—it was good enough for me. I can’t begin to count the number of meals I’ve served to my family over the years made from that pasta. Thank you, but I can do without you seeing my anger and upset at the unkind words of the company’s leader merely as an opportunity to show off what’s in your pretentious little home pantry.

2. The fourth comment is going to be some queen saying So what??? Gays shouldn’t be eating carbs anyway!!!

Hey, thanks. Like we didn’t have enough self-image dysmorphia as a population without some little body Nazi shrilling at us what we can and cannot eat, and what we should and shouldn't look like.

Now sit down and shut up. I’ve got some donuts to eat without guilt while you watch.

3. The fifth and subsequent comments are going to be, I don’t know why you buy your own pasta. Making your own is soooo easy and soooo much more delicious! All you need is flour and eggs!

Oooooo, gurrl. You have picked the wrong stay-at-home husband for this hair-pulling catfight, Martha Fucking Stewart.

I am a man who kneads his own bread. I am a man who boils and bakes his own bagels. I am a man who keeps track of what month it is by what fruits he’s currently making into jams and preserves.

Bitches, I am a man who makes his own yogurt. (And even I think that’s a little excessive on the home self-reliance front.)

I know that making pasta only requires flour and eggs. I’ve made pasta. And you know what? The next time I want to spend two hours making a mini-volcano out of flour and pouring some carefully-whisked eggs into it, and then trying to roll out and slice fresh pasta on the two square feet of kitchen counter that I currently have, before actually making dinner itself, instead of simply taking a box out of the cupboard and boiling the dried noodles inside for eight minutes, I will give you a ring-a-ling on the cell so that you can coach me through the process.

I wouldn’t advise holding my breath until it happens, though.

4. One of the comments that follows will be a passive-aggressive statement to the effect that OMG the Chick-Fil-A boycott was a failure! Why are we buying into the media frenzy? It just makes us look mean and vindictive instead of like nice people!

I’m just going to toss out a quote from Nietzsche, here:

When the oppressed, downtrodden, outraged exhort one another with the vengeful cunning of impotence: "let us be different from the evil, namely good! And he is good who does not outrage, who harms nobody, who does not attack, who does not requite, who leaves revenge to God, who keeps himself hidden as we do, who avoids evil and desires little from life, like us, the patient, humble, and just" -- this, listened to calmly and without previous bias, really amounts to no more than: "we weak ones are, after all, weak; it would be good if we did nothing for which we are not strong enough."

We make a fuss because we are strong and growing stronger. We make a fuss because things matter. We cause a ruckus because we realize we’re no longer weak and without power, and because we understand people are listening.

Boycotts don’t work instantly. Progress comes slowly. Over time, though, and with education tactics like boycotts work; companies and institutions will change and have changed under constant pressure. To assume that every battle will be won instantly, and without setback, is naive.

The show-offs, the diet fascists, and the guys who spend too much time with the Food Network are nothing. They’re comic relief. The apologists who would have us and our allies do nothing, however, so that we don’t ruffle feathers? They’re obstructive. They’re dangerous, because they’d have everyone believe they’re the nice gays, the gays who aren’t controversial, the gays who behave at the table and never make a fuss because it isn’t decorous.

They’re also the gays who accept slaps and pretend they’re kisses, who would rather see us all kicked and beaten rather than run a risk of not seeming nice. In the long view of history, they’re the most dangerous of all.

Sink or Swim?

I’ve mentioned before I occasionally see a friend of mine I’ve known at this point for nearly a quarter-century. He’s a glum personality; I’m afraid that in a couple of past entries in which he made appearances, I assigned him the unfortunate soubriquet of “Eeyore.”

But it’s fitting. He’s a sweet guy. I genuinely believe he’d give to me the shirt off his back if I complained I was chilly. In all the time I’ve known him, though, he’s always been a bit of a downer. Not a whirlwind of drama, mind you. More like a powerful but silent magnetic force that can walk into a room full of the most upbeat and high-spirited folk around—a real Baz Luhrmann Great Gatsby of a party with hot jazz and hotcha flappers sipping bathtub gin and doing the hot new sensation called the Charleston—and without really meaning to, can suck up all the fun until there’s nothing left in the room but some limp crepe paper streamers and a sad, tattered print hanging on the wall of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” Within minutes he can have every single person in a five-room radius moping, contemplating the futility of his existence, and reaching for the extra Ambien.

Come to think, I’m pretty sure I saw that exact situation on an episode of Fringe.

I went out on the town with Eeyore and another friend of mine not so long ago. As a trio we bar-hopped our way across Manhattan, pretty basically. We had drinks at a few establishments along Christopher Street. We stopped off for happy-hour $3 Long Island iced teas and drag queen fun before dinner. (I drank bottles of water.) We decided to have dinner before heading off to the Eagle, which involved me, the sober one, guiding them up Seventh Avenue and restraining them at intersections by planting my hands on their chests, so my two extremely inebriated friends wouldn’t blunder out into oncoming traffic. For all of those three hours we were together before dinner, the entire time Eeyore kept talking about the guy he’d taken home the night before.

I hadn’t paid much mind to the story, because all the guys Eeyore takes home are strippers. Dancers, I mean. (When I fuck dancers, they’re ballet dancers or former contestants on So You Think You Can Dance. When Eeyore gets with a dancer, it’s a stripper.) You know those newly-engaged women who, when you’re trying to relate your father’s medical issues and your own recent work woes, lean forward and flash the rock on their fingers and manage to turn every conversation into OMG your diamond is so BIG! ? Well, it was like that with Eeyore and the stripp . . . er, dancer.

I was trying to recap the plot of Blue Jasmine for someone and it would trigger Eeyore into saying, “That reminds me of something my dancer said last night after I took him home. . . .” Or I’d ask Eeyore how was his vacation in Chicago, and he’d reply, “Oh, it was fine. I found out the dancer I took home last night was from Bushwick. That’s not very far. Do you think it’s too far?”

It wasn’t really until we were sitting down at dinner and Eeyore picked up the menu and said, “I think the dancer I took home last night would really like this place. They have hamburgers,” that I turned to him in surprise. Here I’d been kind of politely ignoring his dancer stories in the same way I might have overlooked a big old booger hanging from his nostril. I’d been thinking, Oh my god, how many times can he bring up the fact AGAIN that he had sex last night? And when a sex blogger who’s constantly parading his tricks in front of an international audience of thousands is getting annoyed with with someone exhibitionistically talking about fucking, you know it’s got to be excessive.

But over the hamburger menu I realized that for the first time in I didn’t know how long, Eeyore actually seemed kind of happy. I commented on it. “Well yeah,” he said. “Of course. I mean, I almost got laid for the first time last night in twenty years.”

And I shouted, “WHAT?!”

He repeated it for me. “I said, last night was the first time in twenty years that I was close to getting laid.”

“Twenty years,” I said.

He nodded.

“Two decades.”

He nodded again.

“Since 1993.”

By now he was looking at me like I was a blithering idiot. “Well, yeah.”

I stared at him for a moment and then, with outrage, demanded to know, “WHAT THE FUCK?!”

I have a tendency to think of myself as unfairly deprived if I have to go for five days without sex. Twenty years, to me, sounded like the stuff of science fiction. I’d known that Eeyore’s track record wasn’t stellar. All of his stories tend to end with the dancer (stripper) stealing his wallet, or leading him on, over the course of weeks or months, for lap dance money and then leaving him high and dry. Or else they involve the mercenary cleaning out his bank account and moving on to the next john.

But jeez. I assumed that from time to time in there, there’d been some actual nookie.

“There are just things in play that prevent me. . . .” he started to say.

I wanted to know what.

“My job. . . .”

“. . . . doesn’t involve a vow of celibacy and allows you plenty of hook-up time,” I countered.

“It’s a crazy city. . . .”

“. . . . where I manage to have sex several times a week.”

“I just wasn’t raised that way. My parents. . . .”

And here’s where I lost my patience.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve had people—friends, lovers, readers of my blog who’ll write in to me or engage me in social media—tell me that they want to experience sexual joy, but that they can’t because of outside factors. I’ve had men tell me that they want to let go and play with whom they choose, but they can’t do it because they were raised in a religious household. I’ve had dozens and dozens of guys tell me they want to play with men, but they can’t because they’re married. They’ll tell me they were raised in the South and their upbringing prevents them from seeking sex with men. Or any number of other factors—all external, all allegedly beyond their control.

When a guy tells me that he wants to be more sexually adventurous (or, you know, to have sex more than nearly once every twenty years), but then rattles off a number of outside forces preventing him from achieving his goal, I know it’s not any of those externals that truly restrain him. Religion can be overcome. There are pigs worldwide from every ethnicity, nationality, and regional background. Not every relationship comes with a lock and key. No, what I hear is a man telling me that his inaction is a result of a mysterious societal conspiracy. Other people, vague and undefined, are making his choices for him. What I hear is a man telling me that he’s too frightened to make his own choices.

Look. I grew up in a family with no less than four ordained and practicing ministers, all Southern Baptist. It doesn’t get much more religious than that. I’m married. I was raised in the very same South. I know I’m not everyone’s touchstone, but none of those things keeps me from being a total whore. I don't allow any of those factors to keep me from pursuing sexual adventure any more than they I would allow them to keep me from reading what I want, watching the television shows that interest me, or listening to that demon rock and roll. I don’t allow external, invisible forces, up to and including God himself, to dictate my day-to-day happiness.

If Eeyore had, in answer to my question of why he’d been celibate for two decades, replied, Well, I’ve decided that it’s important to me to wait for a special someone, I would’ve thought about it, probably privately decided that his response wouldn’t be mine, and then given him a pat on the back and some words of support. That would’ve been a choice he’d made, based on a philosophy he believed in. If a married reader tells me that he wishes he could fuck around, but that he’s made a choice to stay true to his marriage vows because it makes him a more honest and committed person—fuck yes, more power to him. I admire anyone who makes a choice and owns that choice and isn’t afraid to stick to it.

For me it all boils down to whether a person is an active protagonist in his own life, or whether he’s passive and adrift and allowing invisible forces to carry him downstream. An invisible god shouldn’t be making choices for you. Kowtowing to the a disapproving, inchoate society or the thought of frowning and unhappy parents (who, in Eeyore’s case, have both been deceased for years) means you’ve taken the passive route. Thinking about your choices, and making the ones that are right for you—even if you’ve been told that they’ll make Baby Jesus cry—make you a warrior in your own life.

It really doesn’t take a lot to move from passive floater to an active leader of your own life. Mindfulness helps. Reflection. Learning to recognize when you’re allowing fear and commonplace external forces to dictate your direction. I truly believe it’s important to take as much control of our own lives as possible, because every one of us one day will find ourselves facing external obstacles that will throw the triviality of everything else into sharp relief. I’m talking about illness, and accidents, and irreplaceable losses of love and family. It’s when those roll around—and they always do—that we realize that we had happiness within reach all the time.

Whether or not you grasp it, or at least chase it, is up to you.

All of us are living on borrowed time. Every single one of us. One day it all comes due. Trust me, I know from experience that it’s possible to drift for long periods of time on tides that seem beyond our control. But some day we wake up and realize that a year has passed—five years, twenty years—and we’ll never again have that time or the opportunities it presented. I know that I’d rather face that moment knowing I threw myself into those waters and relished the sport and challenge of them. I’d rather splash and make noise and make a goddamned mess than drift quietly and apologetically through life. I’d rather regret the choices I made for myself, crazy as they may be, while I can make them, rather than regret fearing everything, making no choices at all, and blaming it all on forces beyond my control.

Again: I know my choices are my own. I don't expect anyone to follow in my exact footsteps. I just want people—I want you—to be the person at the helm of your own life. I want you to conquer those fears holding you back, whatever they may be.

For Eeyore, breaking a twenty-year dry spell is a first step. Learning that it’s not too late to quench his thirst is up to him.

Open Forum Friday: Online Hookup Turn-Offs

Online is how men find each other for sex these days. Sure, it’s still possible to cruise public parks or restrooms to find some occasional dick. One can still head to the bar and pick someone up. Okay, I suppose it’s still possible to meet people at places like the job or while doing things like volunteer work or attending church, but let’s face it. Going online, whether on one of the many sex cruising websites, or Craigslist, or a phone app like Grindr, is these days the fastest and most expedient way for most horny guys looking for man-on-man action to get laid.

That’s one of the reasons I do it. But it’s also so ripe for the mocking that I can’t resist going at it, on occasion.

Which is basically my set-up for saying, I was going to write today about a fuck I had this week that was less than stellar, but then I decided to be an old curmudgeon instead, as if I were starring as a sexed-up Mr. Wilson in a reboot of the Hank Ketcham comic strip called ‘Dennis the Leather Menace.’

So. Without further ado, I present:

4 Things I Wish You Wouldn’t Write Me in Your Hookup Notes


1. UNLOCK

It’s usually a one-word note. Not even that. Just a subject line in an online email, on a site like Manhunt or Adam4Adam. UNLOCK.

What it means is that the guy wants you to flip the switch that permits him to see any private photos you might have that aren’t on view to the general public. Simple enough, right? Sure, there might be more polite ways to ask such a thing. Hey, I find you attractive. May I see your locked pics? comes to mind.


Unlock strikes me as abrupt and imperative, but hey. At least it’s not coy, right?

The thing is that I don’t lock my photos. They’re all out there in the open, X-rated and G-rated alike, shots of my goofy face rubbing up next to photos of my nuts and dick on proud display. (Not in the same single photo. I don't do that any more.)

I know that most guys, particularly in my area, don’t do such a thing. They have either their faces and torsos on display and their gonads behind the lock, or the reverse. Not me. I’ve received email lectures about doing it from local guys who are shocked that I’d be so trashy. Screw ‘em.

Don’t ask me to unlock. I don’t have anything to unlock. You look like a dumbass, saying it. It’s like walking up to a naked man and yelling at him, Take it off!

Note: I do have locked pics on my BBRT profile—but only because the site asks that users lock penetration shots. It’s also the one site where I don’t have people sending me UNLOCK emails.


2. Picture Inequity

I suppose I shouldn’t really complain about notes with twice the number of words as UNLOCK. But I’m gonna complain about this one: MORE PICS?

I do have more pics. I have a lot more pics. I have a decade’s worth of digital shots, dating back to the days when I had a Sony Mavica that recorded photos on floppy disks.

But see, sir, the thing is that while I have—oh, I don’t know—eight or ten photos on my profile, you’ve got exactly zero. Or maybe one. And if you do have one, that one is a particularly small and grainy shot of what could be your chest, or might be your elbow. Again, I don’t know. It’s tough to tell when it’s so blurry and out of focus that it seems to have been shot through a field of dirty beer mugs.

With my old Mavica.

So here’s the thing, guys. If you really want someone to send you more pics, why not make the first and more generous move? Say, I really like your pics. What’s your email so I can send you a few more? Do you have any others to trade, too? Not only does it make you sound as if you’re trying to do the right thing, but it tells the guy that you’re willing to give a little to get a little.

That’s a good thing, because MORE PICS? always gives me the impression that you don’t think my existing pics are good enough for your blurry ass.


3. Are you still interested?

There’s a certain type of personality online that needs constant reassurance. I find that type of personal fucking exhausting.

There’s always a good initial fit, it seems. Mutual interest on both sides. But there’s something that keeps us from getting together right away. That something is usually distance—I’m where I am, and they’re in Pennsylvania, or Boston. Or it could be scheduling—he’s in Manhattan, but he’s only available weekends, and I usually only go into the city on weekdays.

So then will come the barrage of emails. Hi, I thought we were a good match the other day but I need to know if you’re interested in getting together sometime. There still aren’t any concrete suggestions of what to do, on his end. Just a general need to know if I’m interested.

Nothing wrong with that. Once.

But the more extreme types of this personality require constant reassurance. Usually within about ten seconds of me logging on. Are you still interested in meeting sometime? I need to know. Or, I really need to know if you still want to meet.

Dude, listen. I’ve told you I’m interested. I’ve given you ways to contact me. I’ve given you my schedule and probable best days to hook up. The ball’s in your court. We’re not a Victorian relationship with a decade-long engagement; it’s not my responsibility daily to assure you that my intentions have not changed, or that I don’t have my eye on that saucy minx who shows a bit of ankle from under her bustle.

If propping up your fragile ego is becoming a bit of a full-time job, chances are that you’re going to be put on my block list real soon.


4. Lookin

Another one-word note. LOOKING. Or sometimes, LOOKIN. Sometimes with a question mark, often without.

Yeah, I might be lookin’. I might even have found you attractive under other circumstances. But for some reason, those one-word notes, usually no more than a subject line, I find really off-putting.

Or off-puttin’.

If you can’t be bothered to write even a simple note like, I can host and I’m horny, want to come over?, chances are that I really don’t want to meet you. You’re just telling me you’re a lazy fuck, basically. And who wants to labor over a lazy fuck?


Man, apparently I am Mr. Wilson.

So readers, tell me. What’re the notes you dread getting online? Is it the ‘sups, or the UNLOCKS? Is it the constant requests for you to top when you’ve plainly stated you’re a bottom? I declare this Open Forum Friday. Gentlemen, start your engines. And may the best griper win!

10 Things You Might Want to Avoid Telling a Sex Blogger

Or any blogger. Even as a joke. Unless, of course, you actually enjoy being told Fuck you! in a fairly prompt way.

1. You are my seventh-favorite blog!

Because I'm going to want to hunt down and kill the six between myself and the highest spot, of course.

2. The metaphor you used in your blog yesterday didn’t work for me. Also I think you should’ve used ‘sprinkled with cum’ instead of ‘laced with cum’ because ejaculate doesn’t have holes.

Then you know what? When you write your own blog, please feel free to do just that.

3. Too much yadda-yadda-yadda. Get to the action already.

There are hundreds of similar blogs out there. Please feel free to find one that suits you better.

4. I love your blog! There are too many words but I like your picture at the top.

Gee, thanks bunches.

5. Did you ever have a hot and sex encounter where you visited a guy at home and got caught by his wife and she got really upset and stripped off her clothes and forced both of you to lick her feet while she called you nasty faggots and then used dildos on both your asses and made you fuck her husband while she laughed and played with herself? If so, can you write about it?

Thanks for your oddly-specific request. I’ll dig through the memory banks and see if I can recall such a happenstance.

6. Hi I love your blog link to mine at imanastyfratboycumslut.blogspot.com.

No.

7. I used to read your blog all the time, but kind of got out of the habit.

Thanks for telling me. Asshole.

8. You used to write that blog, didn’t you? So what’s been happening? Catch me up in two sentences or less.

You know what a blog is for, right?

9. I’ve read your blog before. What’s the address again?

Most modern browsers have this thing called a ‘bookmark.’ Would you like me to instruct you how to use it?

10. Do you still keep that blog thing?

Gee, thanks for sharing your disinterest. I feel all warm and smooshy inside now.