R.P. Andrews's Blog, page 12

New York’s Gone But Not Forgotten Leather Scene and My New Erotic Gay Romance, “For The Love Of Samuel”

New York’s Gone But Not Forgotten Leather Scene and  My New  Erotic Gay Romance,  “For The Love Of Samuel”

My latest work of erotic gay romance, “For The Lovel of Samuel” is a story of love lost snd love found, set in contemporary New York City and Fort Laudrrdale, where an aging gay man who loses his lover to despair is given a chance at eternal youth and the love of his life through the magical prowess of  the dog tag of s long dead Civil War soldier, Samuel Evans.

My book opens in 2012 in Manhattan’s  West Village  where my protagonist Billy and his older lover and mentor Gus,  once the dynamic duo of New York’s colorful leather scene, gone by the time my book begins, are now leading broken lives. Gus, once one of New York’s leading neurosurgeons, has bercome the cruel victim of a stroke, and Billy who ran the marketing deoartment for one of the City’s major health centers, is left to grab a lowly copywriter’s job at a two bit ad agency after his hospital goes bankrupt.

My book is as much a story of humanity’s never ending search for eternal youth and true love as it is a bittersweet salute to that leather  scene  l lived as much as my  characters  during its heyday of the eighties and nineties.

True, you can still find vestiges of the Sleaze Factor and echoes of the glory days of the seventies, eighties and nineties in Manhattan’s new Eagle, which opened shortly before I moved to Florida in 2002, or Fort Lauderdale’s Ramrod leather bar, rechristened the Gearshaft in my book, both of which play prominent roles in “For The Love Of Samuel.” But for real authentic sleaze you’d have to take a time machine back to New York City’s West Village Sleaze Alley threesome, the Spike, the Eagle and the Lure.

For anybody in the leather/levi scene of decades past and living in New York, visiting these bars on a Friday and Saturday night was a given. You wouldn’t just visit one of them even if essentially the same guys frequented all three. You’d have your early evening beer at the Rawhide in Chelsea (for those of us who came in from the ‘burbs parking in the West 20’s was saner). But by 11ish you were trotting your levied ass (or bare one if you were wearing chaps under your trench) down to West Street. The streets were dimly lit and kinda scary to be honest, but you didn’t care. You were butch (with no shirt under your leather jacket on a 10 degree NYC January night so your tits were all perky for your grand unveiling in the bar) and about to enter Manhattan’s Butch Zone. The “S” bars were all within reasonable walking distance of one another, so making the circuit was easy even with the wind blowing in your face.

And when you’re Saturday night horny, four or five blocks in sub-zero weather means nothing. Remember these were the days long before you were able to connect naked in your bedroom on the web.

While the other bars of the triumvirate were a bit kinder when it came to dress code, at the Lure it didn’t matter what you looked like; if you were wearing sneakers or, Jesus, after-shave or cologne, Mr. Bouncer would turn you away.

And once you entered these temples to sleaze, there was no place, I mean NO PLACE, to move except against another sweaty body in bars the size of the men’s section at any Macy’s. The smell of man-drenched arm pits and chests, beer-laden piss, even carcasses (The Lure, in the heart of the now chic Meat Market, was once a meat packing warehouse) was everywhere. While it was nice to socialize with some buddies, cruising was the main reason you were there in this world before 24/7 cybersex. And even if it was more illusion than reality, these holes had the dingy, dreggy look as if they had been there from the early days of NYC’s pre-gay liberation when being queer meant belonging to some truly secret society of men, not a sub-cultural demographic dissected by Congress and wooed by Corporate America.

On Summer Sunday late afternoons from 4 until about 8, the Sleaze torch was handed over to the Dugout at West and Christopher. There, sweaty men, half naked men flooded the corner, searching for the one last fling m two of the weekend before Monday morning reality came crashing down on all our respective little shitty worlds.

If they hadn’t become victims of the real estate boom that transformed this abandoned sector of New York into a new Soho, (though I understand it’s still called the Meat Packing District), NYC’s gay sleaze alley might still be with us. But alas, that was not to be. While City dwellers and tourists can still point to places like the Eagle or the Ramrod, it just ain’t the same without the West Village threesome, smelly corners of the world that every leather/levi bar today, whether it realizes it or not, is seeking to emulate, replicate, recreate.

In 2015 l, visited New York City for the first time in thirteen years, and one afternoon took the subway from my two hundred dollars a night hotel in the garment district down to Sheridan Square and the West Village, my old stomping grounds. Christopher Street, the catwalk of my youth, was now more trendy than sexy, and where my seedy hangouts, the original Eagle, the Spike and the Lure, once catered to the whims of the leather/levi crowd, high rise condos sliced into the sky. The crumpling West Street piers, the site of decadent night time liaisons, were now a sleek urban park, complete with a jogging trail and tourist ferries.

Ah, if only the sidewalks could talk

But as they say, you can’t go home again.

I’m just hoping some gay historian had the smarts to save the “Don’t Flush for Piss” sign in the Spike’s john that said it all before everything came tumbling down.

“For the Love Of Samuel” is now on sale as an ebook on Amazon.

 

Drug Imagery in My New Erotic Gay Romance, “For The Love Of Samuel”

Drug Imagery in My New Erotic Gay Romance, “For The Love Of Samuel”

I do not profess to condone drug use or exploit its imagery in my latest work of erotic gay romance, “For The Love of Samuel.”  l only wish to describe it for what it is, based on own personal experiences, and offer an honest, unvarnished portrayal of its users through one of my book’s secondary characters, Mitch, a composite of addicts l have known.  Drug use also plays a pivotal role in some life decisions made by my protagonist, Billy Veleber.

The drug in question is crystal meth or Tina, rampant throughout the gay community which, either smoked – ”being in the clouds” – or injected – known as “darting”or ”slamming” poduces a prolonged euphoric high and extreme sensuality, releasing any inhibitions. When two guys who are into one another use it,  their heightened destination is “homoheaven.” The drug is particularly Insidious since unlike other drugs such as alcohol, nicotine, cocaine and heroin, which are physically addictive,  meth is psychologically addictive which makes it that much harder a habit to break.

Meth use comes into prominent play in two critical points of my book. ”Samuel” takes place in 2012 in New York’s West Village. Fifteen years before Billy, my protagonist, had left his meth head lover Mitch for a stable life with a much older man Gus, one of  the City’s most successful neurosurgeons. However, by the time my story begins, Gus had suffered a stroke, ending his career, and Billy finds himself in a dead end job. He decides to go for an interview in Chicago in the hopes they can start a new life there and leave New York. But Billy also knows that his ex lover is now living in Chicago with his very enabling parents and with Gus no longer able to have sex attempts to rekindle a relationship.

When they rendezvous at a local bar Billy, the aging fifty one year old  is struck how little Mitch has changed in fifteen years. But it also becomes quickly evident that Mitch is a hopeless addict …

Sidelines is engulfed in techno sounds and ironing board body twinks, most young enough to be my sons. I venture to the back bar where we’ve agreed to meet and have just ordered my diet Coke when Mitch appears, a vision in black.

A tight button down black long sleeve dress shirt, smart black tapered slacks that fit his still slim, trim body like a condom, and, oh, that handsome rugged face with the Roman nose and shock of thick black hair lightly slicked back with a slate gray goatee teasing his chin.

And my dick.

I want to hide in a hole when he sees me, grins, struts over with that sexy quasi goose-step strut of his, forefeet up, heels down, wraps his arm around my shoulder and with all those young humpy guys giving us sneaky side glances, drills his black devil eyes into my baby blues – both of us being 5’7 makes it easy – and deposits his lips on mine, as I instinctively rub my bearded chin against his goatee. It’s as if we were all that time ago meeting for another one of our all-night weekly romps. Christ, we’re already into foreplay mode.

I can tell in an instant he is flying high. But no matter. Outside of a few more deep creases in his face that only accentuate his manly beauty, he is time stood still.

“You know, fucker, I’ve missed you. But hey, you’re a married man now, to a doctor yet. Yep, Rugby, you married well.” His nickname for the rug of fur that envelopes my body.

I can’t take my eyes off the chest hairs peeking out from his shirt, unbuttoned I know for my sake, just pass his collarbone, but he senses my lust and reaches into my tank top to touch my right nip.

“You fuck,” I say playfully. He presses his crotch against mine as some homely twink – if you’re going to be gay, you better have a big dick, be pretty, or have money, otherwise go straight – moves away from the bar so I can retrieve my coke.

Mitch already knows my little tale, Gus’s fall from grace, my own, and my job interview tomorrow at Kraft from our texts so there’s no need to waste time on talk.

I gulp down half my Coke and hand the glass to him to finish it off.

“You know where it is,” I ask referring to Villa Toscana.

“Hey, Rugby, I’ve been a townie for a while, remember?” and I follow him out of Sidelines, his goose step strut of utter huspa keeping my hard-on intact.

“So how’s the folks?” I ask, trying to make small talk. I know he had lost his job at Young & Rubicam where we had first met as lowly copywriters  – when you’re on Tina your attention span is about thirty seven seconds – soon after we had parted ways and he had come to live with his parents here.

“You mean my enabling mom and dad whose basement has become my gay bachelor pad and who think the world of their druggie son even if I’ve been in and out of rehab twelve times?” He laughs. Then his voice suddenly grows cold sober. “You know I need the stuff to feel good about being with you. It – it has nothing to do with you. It’s me, fucked up former altar boy me.”

He grabs my hand and gets silly again.

“Besides I learn about some new dealer or two every time I go in. Hey you know Rugby, you never rely on just one dealer in this game. Always gotta keep cultivating, keep cultivating.”

“But don’t you worry about the future?” I regret what I’ve just said. I had vowed no theatrics tonight.

“Rugby, you worry too much. My parents won’t be around forever. As their only boy, I’ll inherit their house and whatever else they’ve got. Making a living is for the unadventurous, present company excluded of course. Even if you married well.”

“And what do you do for money in the meantime?”

“The typical odd jobs. Like playing bagman for one my dealers…”

“Aren’t you taking all the risk?”

“Why? I ain’t carrying any cash. This is the twenty-first century, Rugby. They pre-pay with Pay Pal now. And there’s always pimping on Rentboy. You wouldn’t believe how many of these twenty something twinks will pay for a real man.”

“But I thought you needed this,” grabbing some of my own chest hairs.

“When it comes to dough, I don’t care if the guy is bald-headed and on chemo.”

Back in my room, we relive our ritual dance by softly rubbing one another’s nips which are hardwired to our dicks. As if they needed any help. I slowly unbutton Mitch’s shirt and savor that hairy chest and abs not as densely furry as mine but manly all the same, as he pulls my tank over my neck and throws it on the floor. Then he unbuttons his sleeves and throws his shirt on the bed, that glorious body, Michelangelo’s David.  I slowly rove my lips across his chest and abs and lower myself for the prize when he pulls me up.

“Wanna slam like the old days? I just smoked a little before I came over, kinda like Tina foreplay.”

“No, you know I’ve been a good boy. Besides I’ve got the interview 10 a.m.”

“So you don’t to fidget around like you got a vibrating dildo stuck up your ass…”

“Or sound like Chatty Cathy with a knot in her cord,” I chime in.

“I know. I know, the schmuck interviewing you will ask you about your job skills and before you  know it you’ll be giving him a lesson in the history of public relations.”

  Mitch reaches into his pocket and pulls out an eyeglass case.

  “Mind if I…”

  “No problem,” I answer, and as he moves over to one of the bed stand lamps I see his arm in the light, riddled with track marks. He slips his narrow belt off from his slacks while I go to the bathroom feigning a piss. It’s not that watching him dart bothers me, hell we did it dozens of times in the old days.

  I just don’t want to be tempted.

While in Chicago, Billy encounters a shopkeeper who gives him the dog tag of a long dead Civil War soldier whose wearer, if he has or has had love in his life. will become physically twenty one again, the same age the soldier, the Samuel of the title of my book, died.  After a series of plot twists when he returns to New York, Billy puts the medallion on and is transformed in a matter of days from a tired, pouchy 51 year old man to a raging stallion.

With Gus no longer in his life, Billy abandons NYC for Fort Lauderdale where he meets forty two year old Dare who becomes the love of his life. A disgraced ex New York City cop, Dare runs a thief ring fleecing wealthy older gay men. But when the cops get wind of his scheme, Dare flees to Bayonne, New Jersey, and his sister’s house; also wanted by the law, Billy changes his appearance by taking off the dog tag and becoming the old Billy again. When he finds out where Dare is, he decides to take the Amtrak back home and tell him the truth about his real identity.

But he must appear as the young Billy Dare knows, and the sensations he experiences as he puts the dog tag on a second time are not unlike what a meth user experiences “slamming” or injecting the drug intravenously:

This time it’s not just a super charged caffeine jolt that hits me like the first time. Suddenly, Mitch and I are naked and erect and mainlining one another, shooting one another’s veiny hairy arms up with Tina, and I can feel the shit coursing throughout my body and my brain like molten gold. My heart is beating so hard it’s going to pop out of my chest or just stop from sheer exhaustion, I gasp for breath, as I fly around the room, my arms wings, and Mitch’s face morphs into Dare’s  and there we are pressing as close together as any two human beings can, till I can feel my bones shattering inside me.

  I look deep into his eyes as he stares deep into mine, and at that moment, at that very instant, I know I have seen God.

Some readers may unfairly criticize me for glorifying what is an ugly insidious habit. But just like the Harvey Weinstein casting couch scandal which was kept under wraps for decades, meth use is like a plague within the gay community, and the only way we may eradicate it is to take it out of the shadows  and begin talking about it.  I hope my book “For The Love Of Samuel” will help initiate that conversation.

“For the Love Of Samuel” is now on sale as an ebook on Amazon.

Spirituality in an Erotic Novel? Damn Right!

Spirituality in an Erotic Novel? Damn Right!

Being brought up a Lutheran and now a devout agnostic, l didn’t plan to have a spiritual side in my latest erotic gay novel, “For The Love Of Samuel,”  and l’m still surprised where it came from. Simply put, my book is a story of love lost and love found, set in contemporary New York City and Fort Lauderdale, where an aging fifty one year old gay man, after a series of romantic missteps, finds in the magical prowess of the dog tag of a long dead Civil War soldier a chance at eternal youth and the love of his life. The dog tag will not bestow eternal life,  but as long as its wearer has or have had love in his life, he will physically become the same age as the soldier whose dog tag he wears died, in this case Samuel Evans, my fictional soldier who dies of his war wounds at twenty one.

As my protagonist Billy Veleber begins his transformation over the course of one weekend from middle age to youth when he puts on the dog tag, he experiences a not un-God like empowerment as he visits a local bathhouse:

I’m in the sauna with nothing on but my steel cock ring. And my boots. I never venture in barefoot. STD’s are one thing – catching athlete’s foot or Legionnaires Disease can be a bitch.

I let the steam overtake me, as sweat drips down, like the mighty Congo, down the crease in my chest, down my abs to my groin and my legs, down my shoulders and back to the crack of my ass. I celebrate and rejoice in my man stink.

I’m alone at first but then they come, one by one, the lame and the fat and the jock, the young and the old, the pretty and the homely, as they come to worship at my feet. Who cares what they look like in the shadows of the steam? They’re all a blur like the condensation on the sauna door.

As the perfect suitor, I let them suck me and rim me and feed off the sweat of my body like those cannibalistic kids did to that poor character in “Suddenly Last Summer.”

And as the perfect host, I let them bathe and nourish in my cum, and feel my stiff, thick dick deep inside them.

All those years of benign contentment with Gus, I almost forget the axiom that drove me, ruled me as a gay young man:

To be desired is to be loved, and to be loved is to be worshipped.

If that’s true, my penis, my beautiful born again penis, this weapon of empowerment and pleasure and lust and wonder is their new God.

Who says God is dead? He’s right here in all His glory in the sauna room in Manhattan’s Chelsea Baths

Later in the book, his first night in Fort Lauderdale in a shabby motel, Billy begins to regret how he is wasting this gift, that he repeatedly describes as Samuel’s “life force,” as some non-stoppable sex machine, and even invokes the Christ figure concept:

Where am I going?

What is all this?

Ever since I put the medallion on, I’ve used men and they’ve used me.

Have all I become is a fucking machine like the ones you can buy from the online sex toy stores?

Did I inherit the life force of that brave young soldier who died so long ago just so my penis can become a carnival side show?

I may look twenty one but this medallion of Samuel’s did not buy you life eternal, so no matter how I figure it, the real me, the middle aged me, doesn’t have a lifetime to find the real love, the true and honest love of another man.

Maybe if I yank this damn thing off my neck, I’d wake up and smell reality for what it is.

That most of us never find anyone.

But I can’t, IT won’t let me, the image in the mirror of a virile, yes, fucken handsome young man named William Conrad Veleber.

I need to find a job, something, but without an ID with a smiling 21 year old Billy and not a tired 51 year old William, I’m nowhere.

Sure, I can become a rentboy and I’m damn certain I’d be good at it.

But I owe Samuel, my Samuel, in a fucken strange way my Christ – and I’m no religious freak – who died so I could live the most coveted part of any person’s life over, more than that.

Abandoning Manhattan, Billy flicks off to Fort Lauderdale where he meets that love of his life, Dare, an ex-New York City cop who was thrown off the force after he was caught attempting to rape one of his male arrests in the back of his squad car, and who now is the mastermind behind a giant theft ring fleecing older wealthy gay men. Dare knows nothing of Billy’s ruse, and when the police get wind of his scheme, and Dare is forced to flee to Bayonne, New Jersey and his sister’s house, Billy must also hide from the law and does that by taking off his dog tag and in the space of a few days becoming the old Billy. When he eventually finds out where Dare is hiding, he grabs the next Amtrak back to New York but realizes he must re-become the Billy Dare knows. He puts on the medallion a second time and has a spiritual experience:

This time it’s not just a super charged caffeine jolt that hits me like the first time. . Suddenly… my heart is beating so hard it’s going to pop out of my chest or just stop from sheer exhaustion, I gasp for breath, as I fly around the room, my arms wings, and Dare and I are pressing as close together as any two human beings can, till I can feel my bones shattering inside me. I look deep into his eyes as he stares deep into mine, and at that moment, at that very instant, I know I have seen God.

To paraphrase my own character, God is not dead but very much alive in my book of erotic gay romance, “For The Love of Samuel.”

“For the Love Of Samuel” is now on sale as an ebook on Amazon.

Civil War Fantasy And My New Book, “For the Love of Samuel”

Civil War Fantasy and My New Book, “For The Love of Samuel”

“For The Love of Samuel” is my latest work of erotic gay romance, a story of love lost and love found, set in contemporary New York City and Fort Lauderdale.  After a series of romantic missteps, Billy Veleber, a fifty one year old aging gay man living in Manhattan, is given the chance at eternal youth and meeting the love of his life through the magical prowess of the dog tag of a long dead Civil War soldier, Samuel Evans, the “Samuel” of my title.

So where did l get this idea from?

Well, l’ve been an amateur Civil War buff since l was a teenager and read a magazine article, “If the South Had Won the Civil War.” It wasn’t the battle strategies as much as the war’s larger-than-life qualities that intrigued me. Over the years, l’ve been to Civil War battlefields, both North and South, including Gettysburg, have visited the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, PA, and The Museum of The Confederacy in Richmond, collected numerous books on the subject, became a devotee of Matthew Brady who created war photography, subscribed for many years to “Civil War” magazine, and have collected numerous memorabilia, works of art, and trinkets depicting the great conflict of The War Between The States

In my readings l discovered two little known facts: that the idea of dog tags originated with the Civil War on a haphazard basis with soldiers having their names and infantries engraved on coins; and that Walt Whitman, the celebrated author – though not in his time – of “Leaves of Grass” who led an openly gay life for his day, served as a volunteer nurse at the Armory Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he cared for injured and dying Union soldiers.

I used the dog tag, Whitman’s hospital service, the romance of the valiant soldier, and other facts from Whitman’s personal life and combined them with that eternal theme of humanity – the quest for everlasting life –  to come up with the fantasy premise of my novel: that certain dog tags were bestowed with the life force of their long dead owners and, provided its present day wearer had or had had love in his life, these magical relics would return their wearer physically to the age of the soldier whose dog tag he now possessed died. Most Civil War casualties died in their twenties from infection, the result of their war wounds.

When my story opens in 2012 in Manhattan’s West Village, Billy’s life is one train wreck. His long-time lover and mentor, the older Gus, has been fallen by a stroke, abruptly ending his career as one of Manhattan’s leading neurosurgeons; and the hospital Billy worked at as its marketing director has gone bankrupt, leaving him to take a lowly copywriter’s job at a two bit ad agency.

Billy goes for a job interview in Chicago where he hopes Gus and he can start new lives; and to attempt to rekindle an affair with his former meth head lover Mitch who now lives there with his enabling parents. But both his interview and reunion with Mitch, a hopeless addict, go nowhere.

Killing time before his flight back home, Billy visits a thrift shop in Halstead in the heart of Chicago’s Boystown where Tad, its young clerk who suffers from cerebral palsy, recites the magical history of the dog tag he himself wears after Billy tells him of his own plight.

“You sound like an educated, sophisticated guy. You ever hear of Walt Whitman?” asks Tad.

“Sure. Leaves of Grass. He was gay “

“Yea, but what most people don’t know was that he served as a nurse during the Civil War in the hospitals in D C. where he lived at the time working for the government. And some of these dying soldiers he took care of him gave him their medallions – ”

“Their dog tags -”

“Yea, their dog tags as a thank you for taking care of them, many of them just before they died.  Well, good old Walt had a handsome Irish lover, a trolley car conductor named Peter Doyle who Walt left a few of these medallions to when he died in 1892.”

“Okay. And …” I say waiting for the punch line.

“Doyle had a couple of fuck buddies, Horace and Gustave. He gave them two of the medallions, and an amazing thing happened. When they wore the medallions they gradually became – became young again, the age the soldier whose medallion they wore died.”

“Fuck!”

“They didn’t give you eternal life but as long as you wore them and you had love in your life, eternal youth was yours till the day you died.”

“Fucken unbelievable. But how does that connect with you and your lover David?”

“Well, these medallions were passed down from one pair of gay lovers to the next for generations. Most were nameless, but then they were those like Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward and Tennessee Williams who used the medals only on occasion because they had public personas to become young men for their own young men. Who knows, maybe these experiences inspired them to write Dorian Gray and Sweet Bird of Youth. Then there was Rock Hudson who hoped they would cure him of AIDS. You know how that ended. How my David came about them he never told me but he was convinced the spell they held would somehow cure me. You see, most people with CP don’t make it to their fifties. All you see is my withered leg but there’s a lot of other shit going on inside me the docs can’t fix.”

“But you look, you look like you’re twenty – “

“Twenty one to be exact. The age my soldier Samuel Evans died. Dave’s medallion belonged to a soldier who died at twenty two. So we put them on, and within a few days we were young again. Young with Dave’s trust fund and we thought time forever after.”

“But it didn’t cure you of your CP.”

“No it didn’t, and that devastated David more than me…I tinkered with fixing people’s laptops just to keep my brain occupied but Dave, Dave lost all ambition and took to drugs. Heroin.”

Tad’s eyes begin to tear up.

“We were together ten beautiful years when Dave just couldn’t deal with losing me, my CP biological clock was running down, and one day I came home to find he had OD’d. He left a simple note, ‘It’s better this way.’”

I begin crying too.

“I was ready to OD myself but couldn’t … So I came here about three months ago and took this job…Now the docs can’t do much more for me and I’m constantly in pain. Billy, I turned fifty this May. It’s time I gave up my medallion to someone who can benefit from it, maybe better than Dave and I ever did.”

Tad lifts his medallion from around his neck, gets up from his stool and, walking ever so slowly to me, his face grimaced in agony, grabs my hand and places it in my palm.

“Someone with love in their life. Someone like you.”

After several plot twists, Billy puts on the dog tag and begins his strange and fascinating odyssey as a young virile gay man, and explores “For The Love  of Samuel” for himself.

“For The Love of Samuel” is now on sale as an ebook on Amazon.

Why I Was Born To Write Erotica

Why I Was Born To Write Erotica

I write erotic gay fiction, mostly romance, my latest being “For The Love of Samuel’, for two damn good reasons. l’m a good writer, always have been; and l’ve had hundreds of sexual experiences to write about, and at age seventy have a more active sex life than a thirty year old Manhattan bachelor, which is unabashedly retold in my books. And l’ve brought both skills to play in my latest work of erotica, “For The Love Of Samuel,” a story of love lost and love found, set in contemporary New York City and Fort Lauderdale, that tells of one man’s quest for eternal youth and the love of his life, that my friends who l have read it say is the best thing l’ve ever done.

First on my writing skills: l skipped the usual college writing course after l submitted an essay to show l didn’t need it, but ironically got a “C” in the creative writing class l took instead. Maybe the prof had the hots for me, – ya think? – and when l showed no interest …

I made my living in the public relations and marketing game where writing good and writing fast were prerequisites for success; and when l retired fifteen years ago from crazy and cold New York City to hot and crazier Fort Lauderdale, l began writing fiction in earnest. Becoming a blogger which l began in 2010 and continue today, focusing on contemporary gay life, in “Confessions of A Straight Gay Man,” sharpened by thinking and writing skills even more to the point that, when l sit down with my tablet, the piece comes out almost done with little need for revision. The same is true with my fiction writing. After percolating in my head for almost two years, l wrote the fifty thousand three hundred word novel, “Samuel” in just two months.

Now they say write about what you know, so what did l know better than living life as a gay man, discreet when l lived and worked in NYC, and hell bent and fancy free as a retiree – is that an oxymoron? – here in sunny Lauderdale. In my sixties I became a paid male escort for a month – for my art of course – and was fascinated by the four guys that month – and no train wrecks –  who put two hundred dollars down on the bureau to have my hirsute still in shape body; and like some star being discovered greasing cars, my escort web ad was seen by a porn producer in San Francisco who was coming to Lauderdale to shoot some fresh talent and persuaded exhibitionist me to do a solo. Two hundred sixty five dollars for pleasuring myself in front of a camera. To this day, five or six years later, l have out of towners come up to me in the bar and tell me how much they enjoyed my fifteen minutes of fame. “Hot” is their one word description. You know how millennials talk in monosyllables today.

And at an age when most gay men are content with a little porn or some action in the shadows at a bathhouse, l am reveling in my new second gay career as a daddy. No, not a sugar daddy who supports some young boy, but a confident, self-assured and still sexually alluring older man younger men want to bed down with. Should l complain?  Two of my current loves with bodies by Michelangelo are 42 and 36, respectively, old enough to be my sons, and a third, equally handsome at 56, could be my younger brother.  They and the constant flood of men who proposition me on the web – gees, do you think the Russians put something in the water? – keep me pretty damn busy and provide plenty of sexual experiences to write about. I’m no Nebraska housewife imagining two men in bed – with my stuff, you get the real deal. In fact, two of the lead characters in my new book, “For The Love of Samuel” are largely based on two of my current loves. I’ll probably be the only senior citizen to have “cause of death: sexual exhaustion” on his death certificate.

When people ask me to what do l attribute looking twenty years younger than my chronological age, l reply blithely, “Lots of booze, lots of drugs, and lots of sex,” with an emphasis on the last two, as you will see if you take a gander at ”For The Love Of Samuel.”

“For the Love Of Samuel” is now on sale as an ebook on Amazon.

 

To The Obnoxious Tourists Last Night at MY Ramrod

To The Obnoxious Tourists Last Night at  MY Ramrod

I live in fabulous Fort Lauderdale, gay crossroads of the world, which becomes one of the most popular places to be for gays elsewhere once the temps drop below 40. And that means here in Lauderdale and south Florida, Season has begun.

But l don’t give a fuck if Florida has no state income tax or that my property taxes are lower than most because of the God Almighty tourist dollar – tourism remains our number one industry. Do you guys, who think you’re visiting royalty, act this obnoxious back home? Like in MY Ramrod, one of few surviving leather bars in the U.S.?

Oh, the obnoxious assholes I encountered last night.

Blocking doors, Chatty Cathying in nomadic tribes right where people are trying to get by, stepping on toes, running like little prom girls not paying attention that you’ve knocked into somebody and their seven dollar drink.

Now if you were all Brad Pitt (when he was young) pretty maybe l could settle for the eye candy dividend.

But you’re not.

For every one hottie there were ten notties, homely, or just plain ugly – how much cosmetic surgery did you have to look that bad – Jennie Craig failures (who’s the daddy?), some old enough to be my grandson, others on their way to being their own zip codes, tres fems, fashion statements from hell – harness, shorts and floppies? Jesus, you would have been castrated in my New York Leather Days right on West Street – ironing board bodies where your sparkly harnesses are training bras, or old old, like nursing home-get-out-the-Depends old.

Plus you’re all too busy talking to your buddies to see what else us going on. Or worse, solo surfing on your fucken I-phones! So why the fuck are you here? To be seen? By who? Lighthouse for the Blind recruits or nasty chroniclers like me?

Fuck it.

Give me back my bars that l support six months out of the year (who do nothing for us townies who help pay their electric bills) while you’re being assholes back wherever you came from.

 

Or do you save all your bad habits for us?

My Worse Thanksgiving – EVER

My Worse Thanksgiving – EVER

Did I ever tell you about the very worse Thanksgiving I ever experienced in my fucked up life?

When my parents were still alive, Thanksgiving was at least a tolerable holiday. In the days of my youth, we would host the big holiday feast for the rest of our family of freeloaders, but once my folks moved to a retirement community in Toms River, New Jersey, and my sister and brother-in-law moved to Long Island, it was just Dad, Mom and me, either at their place or a restaurant where I’d treat them as the good son.

Now, my father was a quiet, unassuming kinda guy, my mother a psychotic bitch, and when he dropped dead just shy of his seventy-fifth birthday, I was bequeathed the distinct honor of dealing with Mommie Dearest undiluted.

One Thanksgiving, in my feeble attempt to keep the family together, I drove all the way to extreme northwest New Jersey where mother, without consulting either my sister or I, had moved to after my father’s death, and brought her to spend the night with me on Staten Island where I both lived and worked. In holiday traffic, NJ and SI might as well have been the North Pole and South Pole. The plan was for us to drive over the following morning – Thanksgiving Day – to my sister’s on Long Island, another marathon on the Long Island Expressway.

Yea, I know, I’m a masochist, and not just with sex.

But when my mother saw some light snow falling that holiday morning, she refused to budge, and my frustration in seeing my carefully orchestrated holiday plans go down the sewer reached the point of no return, and in a sudden fit of rage, I knocked this then seventy something woman to the floor.

She pretended in typical “I’m gonna make you feel real guilty, boy” Mom style to be injured – she wasn’t – and all I thought was how I, a senior health care executive, was going to be charged with elder abuse of his own mother. We later buried the hatchets and spent Thanksgiving as the old lady and her fag son in a local diner.

Mom’s been gone eleven years now, and while I have memories of her, both good and bad, that Thanksgiving will go down as the worst.

Guys and gals, have a Happy Turkey Day – talk to you Monday. More about my new book, “For The Love of Samuel” then.

Here’s An Excerpt From My New Erotic Gay Romance, “For The Love Of Samuel”

Here’s an Excerpt from My New Erotic Gay Romance, “For The Love Of Samuel”

“For the Love of Samuel” is a novel of love lost and love found, set in contemporary New York City and Fort Lauderdale.

New Yorker and aging gay man Billy Veleber who abhors growing old has lost Jim, his former meth head lover, to his habit, and Gus, the older man in his life and mentor, to despair, when he is confronted with the chance to become 21 all over again, through the magical prowess of the dog tag of a long dead Civil War soldier, Samuel Evans. Young again, Billy abandons Manhattan for Fort Lauderdale where he meets Dare, the love of his life, whose clever quick rich venture first bonds them, then threatens to end their idyllic lives together forever. Billy also faces the reality of having to tell Dare the truth about himself.

In this excerpt from my book, Billy, after some sudden major setbacks in his life, has decided to put on the magical dog tag of a Civil War soldier who Tad, a thrift store clerk back in Boystown, Chicago where Billy had gone for a job interview that went nowhere, had given him. The dog tag had originally been given to Walt Whitman, author of “Leaves of Grass” who also served a a nurse in the Washington D.C. Armory Hospital during the Civil War, by a dying soldier, Samuel Evans, as a token of gratitude for caring for him, and had been passed down through generations of gay lovers.

As long as one has had or has love in their life, its wearer will return to the age of the soldier whose dog tag he wears died, in Billy’s case that of Samuel Evans who died at 21. Now, over the course of a weekend, the once aging 51 year Billy sees himself bring transformed into that of the young stud he once was…

 

I leave the baths around five, and after a coma nap, a quick Smart Choice Fettuccini Alfredo 400 calorie dinner and a good hot shower – I notice with cocky satisfaction in the bedroom’s full length mirror that my love handles are history, my stomach is flatter, my receding hairline is unreceding, and most of the gray on my head and in my beard and and on  – yes! – my chest is going or gone, I head over in my leather vest, no shirt, and levis and boots for The New Eagle off Tenth Avenue. It’s almost one – a.m. – but as one of my fuck buddies before Gus and even Jim, said, “That’s when they stop window shopping.”

Now it’s called The New Eagle because the old Eagle, along with the Spike and the Lure, the leather triumvirate of my youth and my years with Gus, were gone. They had become the victims of the real estate boom at the turn of the millennium, and had been brutally and sacrilegiously torn down for shiny, gleaming condos and spankingly clean baby carriages.

In the crappy bathroom at the Spike they had stenciled on the black wall in cheap white paint, “Don’t flush for piss.” That said it all. I only hoped some gay historians had saved that piece of the wall before it too became history. Now all we have left is the hole on Tenth Avenue, what us hardcore leathermen sarcastically brand as Genuine “Vi-nel.”

I strut in, my goose-step no longer adopted but my own, and find the same Chatty Cathy cliques – different faces, same old shit – going on like the last time I was here with Gus just after we’d  gotten back from our first class holiday excursion to Athens and Rome and a few weeks before his stroke.

In between the groupies are some of the oldest members of our clan, The Old Guard, usually alone because most of their cronies are already dead, and usually with enough keys hanging from their belts to rival a night watchman at the Chrysler Building, the fucken handkerchiefs hanging from their pockets, so Twentieth Century, or the best of them in faded, stretched out jock straps that should be on Antiques Road Show along with their owners. Yea it’s true, the older some of these guys got, the less they wore. For attention I guess.

Admired or ridiculed, it doesn’t matter; the greatest sin is to be ignored.

I order my nine dollar screwdriver with fifteen cents of vodka in it, and head up the stairs to the second level where just a year before Gus and I had had our leather marriage ceremony.

As I’m going up the stairs some twink in a super short Tux jacket, Bermuda shorts and floppies and one of those Abe Lincoln top hats – I guess he thinks he’s in the Garment District because anywhere else he’d be tire-ironed – and his angelic girlfriend, a vision in pink, dressed in a fluffy chiffon skirt, low cut blouse and sneakers, are waltzing down the stairs. They give a funny stare but I stare them right back.

“You,” say I, pointing to the bitch, “don’t belong here.”

“You can’t discriminate against us, fucker,” replies her boyfriend who sounds like he shoots up with estrogen in the morning.

I give him a frumpy look back. Yea, buddy, you’re right. The days when a leather bar could stop you from coming in if you weren’t dressed “in code” are over. With the leather scene fading faster than an Atlantic City “Wish You Were Here” postcard, it’s all about selling the liquor.

Period.

There’s less people upstairs, the same Chatty Cathy shit going on or guys on their fucken phones GPSing you but never making a move beyond that, when I see HIM.

He’s tall but not too tall, hairy but not a gorilla like me, older but not old, with an open leather camouflage vest showing a tight, lightly furry chest and six pack out of one of Men’s Fitness cover stories, “Dynamite Abs in Just Six Weeks!”, a scrawny beard and face of a felon who did hard labor, and leather gloves and biker’s cap to complete the whole Neo-Nazi look.

Plus a pair of furry, honey melon buns deliciously hanging from his chaps begging to be tongued.

Fuck!

He’s standing at the other end of the bar, surrounded by clones though he is far and away the pick of the litter. I lock my eyes on him like a laser for a good ten minutes but I get hardly a glance.

Now in the old days before Jim and Gus when I was free as a bird but as timid as a spinster, I would have just moved on. Oh, but this was the new Billy, the ballsy Billy. I walk over and stand two feet away from Mr. Hot Shit and his court jesters and just keep staring.

Finally I get his attention.

“You got a problem, bud?” he says returning the stare of a killer. His cronies do the same.

“Well, I’ve been cruising you for at least ten minutes now and I didn’t even get a fart back.”

“And…”

“So what are you looking for, some fem, or fat boy, or maybe some tough guy with whips, chains and razor blades hanging from his belt?”

His buddies begin to little girl giggle, but not a muscle moves in Hotshit’s Stone Mountain face.

“I’m not into watching your pubic hairs grow in, buddy.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“Thirty, thirty two maybe.”

Fuck, dude, I’d suck your dick all night just for that. But I continue to play it cool.

“So you get your kicks changing some old man’s Depends, I guess.”

Now Hotshit is the only one that’s laughing.

“Okay, smart ass, buy me a beer.”

He follows me to the bar and after collecting our beers, we move to the other side and sit down on the wood bleachers.

“I gotta tell you buddy -”

“Billy, name’s Billy.”

“Hank, in from L.A. Hell, Billy, you’re the first guy I’ve met in a long time that’s got balls for real.”

“Hey, I know what I want, so why waste one another’s time?”

“And you want me?”

“If you can deal with all this.” I glide my hand over the fur on my chest and abs when Hank puts his hand over mine and pushes it further down to my crotch.

And squeezes.

“I dig the fur big time. And most younger guys are so used to deleting and blocking everybody, they don’t know how to talk, Christ, they don’t know how to fart in public. But you – you sound pretty mature for a kid old enough to be my younger brother, or son if I had a teenage bride.”

“You don’t have to be old to have your shit together.”

Hank raises his razor chin. “So how old do you think I am, stud?”

Now with that hard core felon face, I take him for fifty but PR has taught me to tell people what they wanna hear.

“Forty.”

“Good answer,” he replies. “I’m 46.”

“I just threw a guy out younger than you,” I say smugly.

“Oh?”

“High maintenance. Wanted it all the time. Hey, what do I look like, some fucking machine?”

“You must be pretty tough.” He smiles for the first time since we connected, a tough guy’s, controlled, but a smile nonetheless.

“Yea, I’m a trust fund baby, do what I wanna do, when I wanna do it, with whoever I wanna do it with.”

It’s refreshing to create whatever past the moment calls for when you know, chances are, you’ll never see the guy again.

“And you?” I ask. “You’re not one of these aging hotties who live off those of us with money are you?” This time I place my hand on his chest, rubbing it slowly back and forth from nipple to nipple. He’s got a nice succulent set.

“You know something,” with his own smart ass grin. “I’m going to really enjoy hearing you howl while I fuck you.”

I get up, pat my ass for his benefit, then sit down again.

“This ain’t yours yet.”

“Okay, fair enough.” He takes my hand, places it on his crotch, a respectable bulge at that. “I’m a set designer in Hollyweird, between gigs, which is why I decided go visit New York and see some old buddies …”

“…who you’re free loading off of.”

“If you mean, I’m staying with one of them the answer is yes.”

“Current trans-coastal lover, present or former fuck buddy, auditioning sugar daddy, which is it?”

“None of the above. Just a buddy’s couch and a lumpy one at that.”

“Well then, that makes it easy.” I get down off the bleachers and wait for him to follow. He does.

“Remember.” He taps on the chrome and leather armband on his bulging left bicep.

“So two tops can have fun,” I say matter of factly, taping on my neoprene version, also on my not quite as bulging as his left bicep. “Who ends up on the bottom bunk is a matter of luck and timing.”

 

“Everything off ‘xcept the vests,” I order after locking my apartment door. I wanted no disruptions in case “In Transition” Robin or Casanova Carpenter are sighted.

“Hot foreplay?” asks Hank, leaving on his vest.

“No, nostalgia,” I reply.

Just before Hank strips, he pulls from his underwear bulge a sock with a Glade sandwich bag filled with what looks like Lady T, and a small straw.

“Now if I was a size queen,” looking at his unimpressive penis,” I’d tell you to get the fuck out right about now.”

I’m a grower. not a shower,” Hank replies pompously, as his dick comes alive staring at my boner that is as hard and long as my morning woodie. I grab his nips hanging like pearls off the earlobes of a whore, and twist them.

He gingerly spills some of his white magic powder onto the flat surface of the bed stand. “Want to indulge?”

“No, I’m a fucker, not a drugger.”

Who needs T? I’m high on him and high on my new found youth.

“Got anything to cut it with? Wait, let me get one of my credit cards…”

“Hold on,” I say, and pull out one of those plastic memorial cards funeral homes make up when someone dies.  “Use this.”

“Who’s Anna Veleber?”

“My mother. Don’t worry, she was a bitch when she was alive, but she won’t bite you now.”

He looks at me strangely, thinks nothing of my having him use this petty plastic memorial to the woman who birthed me so he can get high, shrugs those broad fucken shoulders, makes a line, and snorts away. He holds up his little straw in my direction.

“No, I’m just fine, really.”

Then my curiosity finally gets to me and I ask, “So what is that stuff? Tina? You buy it here?”

“Mostly T with a snatch of coke mixed in as a kicker. Hell, no, bought it back home where an eight ball is eighty bucks.”

“It’s five times that here,” I explain. “No wonder everybody’s nuts in California. They’re all flying high. But how the fuck did you pass airport security?”

“Ah,” he says with a smirk. “Some guys smuggle it in shampoo bottles, others up their ass like some fucken mule. Me? I just walk through the scanners with the shit in my pocket. Nobody ever bats an eyelash, though one time the security guy patted me down so much I was getting an erection, thought maybe he’d want my number.”

He prepares another line. “So you sure you don’t want any?”

I nod negative and he leans over and snorts two more lines. What he thinks I don’t know is that Tina dick is already setting in and his thumb size dick has gotten beer can thick but is like a jelly roll at Christmas without the whipped cream, going absolutely nowhere, while mine is one happy fuck fella, twitching away in anticipation of that beautiful fucken manly butt.

Welcome to the bottom bunk, buddy.

“Slide over to the edge of the bed,” I order. “My tongue is hungry for that furry hole of yours.”

I can see he‘s beaming just like Jim when I made the same request.  But nowhere did Jim have as furry a butt or manhole – Hank’s is almost as furry as Gus’s was.

I kneel at the edge of the bed, position his ass right in front of my baby blues, and sink my tongue into his hole like a kamikaze pilot aimed for a navy destroyer.

“Hey buddy,” he murmurs. “That feels r-e-a-l good.”

“Wait,” I say, and I lick the tip of my pinkie and dip it into his super concoction, lick some off with the tip of my tongue, then smear what’s left on my finger around the lips of his hole before l use my tongue to shove the stuff as deep inside as I can.

“Holy shit!”

“What?” I say like an innocent convent novice, who’s been caught using one of her crucifixes as a dildo.

“I’ve had booty bumps, but nothing like this.”

“That’s because your men are unadventurous and uncreative.”

Then I lick my two middle fingers, do a shake and bake in the stuff and, giving his hole one good spit, plunge them in, massaging his prostate that becomes as hard as the Rock of Gibraltar.

“What the fuck!”

“And you thought you Left Coast boys knew everything.”

Experimenting with Jim all those years taught me there’s a lot more to meth than just smoking and darting.

But my dick, throbbing and drooling, is saying enough of this shit, now it’s my turn. So for my piece de resistance, I finger one last shred of the good stuff and swab my wet head with it, feeling, I have to say, a little good myself by now and, without wasting another micro-second of pleasure, slowly shove my tool up his ass.

And fuck him.

And keep fucking him.

“Holy fucken shit,” yells Hank, in a world unto himself, “where the hell did you learn to fuck like that?”

“The Juilliard,” I say quietly.

No response. And here I thought he’s the artsy type.

After about a half hour, I climb up on the bed, a drop of precum falling from the tip of my swollen head to his delicious lips, stand up, and straddle him like the Colossus of Rhodes.

“Okay, handsome, now it’s time for YOUR workout.”

And with that I slowly lower my butt on his face, spread my furry cheeks, and shove my hairy man hole right on his bearded lips till he starts gasping for air.

 

I wake up and it’s three in the afternoon. It’s just me in bed, Mr. Hot Shit is gone, and propped up by the alarm clock is a note with a phone number scrawled over it and:

“If you’re ever in L.A., I’d skip my mother’s funeral for you. You’re right, two tops can have fun as long as one yells uncle…”

Another satisfied customer. Maybe I should start getting references.

I got a woodie and get up to take a piss when I catch a glimpse of myself in the bedroom mirror.

I do a double take, stop, walk up close and take another look.

“FUCK YEA!” I yell out at the top of my lungs and I don’t give a shit who hears me.

I’m fucken young again, yes, fucken young again!

I run over to the closet, and pull out a shoebox loaded with old pics. I find it, a picture taken about twenty five, no, Christ, almost thirty years ago, by one of the female photographers at J. Walter Thompson, my first job out of college, who had a thing for me. I’m at my desk and my hair is longer and I have only a droopy Paul McCarthy mustache. But the face is the same as the one staring back at me from the mirror now. Young and hot and boyishly handsome – and 21!

Fuck, fuck, FUCK!

The same age as Samuel, the soldier whose dog tag I wear – died.

For a second the solemnity of that thought hits me, but a glance back at the mirror and I’m once more overwhelmed by the orgasmic impact of my new reality.

I’m fucken young.

All over again.

Thank you Tad, thank you Samuel, and most of all, thank you Walt. I hope you’re in Homoheaven having every young guy you ever lusted after in your life – twice!

“For the Love Of Samuel” is now on sale as an ebook on Amazon.

 

My New Erotic Gay Romance, “For The Love of Samuel” Now Out On Amazon

My New Erotic Gay Romance, “For The Love of Samuel” Now Out On Amazon

Set in contemporary New York City and Fort Lauderdale, “For The love Of Samuel,” my latest erotic gay romantic novel, is a story of love lost and love found.

New Yorker and aging gay man Billy Veleber who abhors growing old has lost Mitch, his former meth head lover, to his habit, and Gus, the older man in his life and mentor, to despair, when he is confronted with the chance to become 21 all over again, through the magical prowess of the dog tag of a long dead Civil War soldier, Samuel Evans.

Young again, Billy abandons Manhattan for Fort Lauderdale where he meets Dare, the love of his life, whose clever quick rich venture first bonds them, then threatens to end their idyllic lives together forever. Billy also faces the reality of having to tell Dare the truth about himself.

Wednesday: a hot steamy excerpt from “For the Love of Samuel.”

My Life as a Gay Man: David

My Life as a Gay Man: David

I’ve done a lot of crazy things in my life lately at an age when I should be content with some pre-condom porn: been a paid escort, done some porn for hotoldermale.com., fist-fucked brothers, had a guy – who looked like a squeaky clean farm boy – rim my dirty butthole, and made love to a guy in a wheelchair. But this, this truly was a first.

His name was David, he was forty something, and every so often he would pop up on one of the  many hook-up sites he and I shared with a “hi.”  Black Irish cute with a mustache, and a hairy chest reminiscent of Jordan, my first truly hot hairy man from my formative LA days, he seemed personable enough when we chatted, but whenever I brought up about us connecting, or at least meeting, he always had a lame excuse.

One Saturday night, I had signed up for some sex party at one of the gay guesthouses by the beach but, with the all the non-stop rain we had been getting the past few days, it looked like it was going to be a washout. I mean, even though you may be walking around naked or near naked, trying to make a guy at the pool or one of the multiple patio areas the guesthouse offered, it isn’t all that sexy when it’s coming down in buckets. Which is exactly what it was doing less than an hour before I was supposed to leave.

So killing time til I decided what to do, I flipped on the hook-up sites when, lo and behold, who pops up but David after a good two month hiatus since his last sighting. I was almost ready not to respond since from my perspective I don’t think this guy ever wanted to connect and was just another gameplayer – his pics were probably 15 years old. But something – maybe my frustration with how what was supposed to be a lustful night was going – made me respond to his “What’s up?”

“So what’s up with you,” I typed back.

“Horny and looking.”

Hmm …  that sure as hell was a change in his usual script.

“You want me to come over?” I wrote, reasoning it was better to bed down with someone with nothing on than slosh around in the rain with nothing on. Plus after all these months, hell, years, he had gotten my curiosity up and, whatever happened, I could at least cross him off my trick bucket list.

“Sure, just one thing,” he wrote.

OK, I said to myself, here comes the “but.”

“I’m deaf.”

Now it all seemed clear – this long, drawn-out hesitancy about connecting. I’m sure that this was the moment when he expected some guys, maybe most guys, would  just cut him off. But not me. Hell, in my speckled gay career I had never made it with a deaf guy, in fact, had never really even known or met anyone socially who was hearing impaired, only seen guys, understandably in their little cliques, at a bar signing to one another. My only one-on-one social experience with a sensory deprived individual was in college when a classmate of mine introduced me to her blind friend who frankly turned out to be a conniving manipulative bitch exploiting her handicap to her full advantage.

“Who has to talk?” I typed back.

There was a few minutes lapse when I thought I had lost him. Then he came back on.

“You like to kiss?” he asked.

“Sure,” I replied.

Now as a way of, if not guaranteeing, at least covering my ass figuratively, of course, when I ventured out into the cold dark world (OK it’s Florida, folks, 70 degrees at night),  I would ask for the guy’s cell number in case I got lost. No cell number, most likely the guy was all bullshit. But obviously here, that wasn’t going to happen, so I mapquested his address – only a few minutes from me – and left, prepared to go to my sex party at the beach if he was a flop and the rain let up.

I knocked at his townhouse door but no one answered. Like duh. So I tried the door. It was open. I walked in and followed the light back to the bedroom.

He was sitting on his bed, watching porn on a 40 inch flat screen while dabbling on his iPad when he saw me and smiled broadly. I guess he thought I might be a no-show.

He looked pretty much like his profile pics, perhaps a bit grayer, but still black Irish cute, with a seemingly nice body underneath a white polo and baggy gym pants.

I moved up close to him, still standing, and said “hello.” He mouthed the word back to me, then pressing the biceps in my arms, raised his eyebrows in apparent approval.

I took off my tank top, and gestured for him to do the same. He was almost as hairy as me on his chest and abs and I could see in his eyes he liked what he saw. Soon naked, we lay side by side on his bed for a moment, like two schoolboys not sure about their “first time,” when I got up and began to kiss him – just like he wanted.

After that, the rest came easy, a bittersweet interplay of hardcore sex and soft gentle sensuality. And through it all, not a word, not a groan, not a murmur, not a sound, even when he came. Here, I had a doctorate in Dirty Talk which always added an undercurrent of unbridled lust to my sexual adventures with another guy (“Want that dick, huh, buddy, huh?”)  Now, I was speechless.

Afterwards, with the help of a pad he kept on his bed stand, I asked him about his life – he worked in computers – and encounters with guys which, as I figured, weren’t many. As we lay there, two young buffed guys were getting it on – really getting it on – on his flat screen TV, but he rubbed his hand across my chest and nodded affirmatively, then pointed to the two guys and shook his head. Yes, he liked ‘em furry.

I promised to see him again and meant it, and though the rain had stopped as I walked to my car and the beach sex party was only 15 minutes away, I decided to head to the Ramrod for a nitecap, then get home. I had had my fun for the evening. Our hour together was like watching porn with the mute button on, but after all, who needed words with the right guy?

And without feeling pity, I thought of all the shitty little problems me and my friends would bitch to one another about.

Then I thought of David, and realized how life was truly the luck of the draw.

“My Life As a Gay Man” resumes December 11.