R.P. Andrews's Blog, page 34

The Gym: Homoerotic, Homophobic and Just Slightly Fucked Up

The Gym: Homoerotic, Homophobic and Just Slightly Fucked Up

In this increasingly obese world we live in – one out of three American men are fat – those of us who faithfully hit the gym, straight or gay, are like members of some not-so-secret cult who, in varying degrees, care about something that apparently much of the rest of society doesn’t or only pays lip service to. While socialization certainly is part of “going to the gym” for some, (and for others the only reason), those of us who are dead serious about getting in shape or staying in shape suffer in silent ecstasy. But in observing others doing the same, we feel part of an unspoken camaraderie.

I used to belong to a totally gay gym in Lauderdale’s gay ghetto, Wilton Manors, but going to a gay gym I soon found didn’t improve my chances in the sack. Now I go to Crunch, practically walking distance from my house and only ten bucks a month, no contract. Gayer in the late morning with all those waiters and bartenders and male escorts buffing up, the place is mixed almost any time of the day,  but neither sexual orientation has a monopoly on eye candy, exhibitionism, homophobia and assholes.

As for the eye candy, what’s there to say? You can OD on it. Especially those under 25 guys relishing in their new found masculinity. I’m really not into young men but the other day I saw two near naked specimens in the locker room whom I think I would have paid for. No, they weren’t steroid high body builders, but there wasn’t an ounce of fat or flab on their sculpted bodies. It was like they were models for Michelangelo.

Which brings me to the homo-eroticism and homophobia. Rampant and thick as dried up cum on a rag or sweat on a crunch board. Straight guys are afraid to look at another guy for fear the guy will think he’s queer and coming on to him, and gay guys don’t look so they don’t have to deal with rejection, or make some poor slob think he’s being wooed. (After all, they can use Scruff to look at the guy once they ID he’s the one two machines away.)  It’s as if everyone has blinders on. So in the end, we sport that vacant, “I don’t give a fuck” stoic stare when, in reality, what we want to do is grab the guy by the balls, shove him down on that crunch board, and fuck the shit out of him right there in broad daylight.

Plus, everyone is trying to out-butch one another with that same gym jock trot, whether they’re six foot two and built like a brick shit house or five foot two and Woody Allen’s younger brother. You know the trot I mean, slow and easy with the hips, butt out, shoulders up (after all, you worked on ’em, so show ’em off) and those muscular, veiny arms just hanging there. Oh, with that stoic, vacant look to make it complete. Or that optional pulling up of the T-shirt to casually show off those killer abs.

Now we’ve got the guys (and gals) who are dead serious about their work-out. I believe you’ve got to beat yourself up, challenge yourself by going a notch higher every time you go. And then we’ve got those who just go through the motions to project some pseudo-athletic image.

Top on my list in the gym asshole category are the smartphone addicts. Guys used to grab their crotches to give a butch tug to their itchy uncut cocks – now it’s to stroke their perpetually stiff penile substitutes. Fine, it’s a free country, unless they’re on a machine you want and they’re just sitting there, gabbing away to their clubbing partner, girlfriend, mother, or playing hooky from the office and talking to some sucker who may actually be interested in that overpriced home they’ve been trying to unload for the past six months. All gyms should make it a rule: if you gotta make a call, do it off the gym floor. Planet Fitness, that I used while up at my country home for the summer in PA, does.

Smartphone-itis was the cause of an altercation that happened recently at my gym. A gay guy was chatting away a storm for some twenty minutes when a gay gal with bigger muscles than him and waiting to use the machine he was on finally went up to him and told him to “get the fuck off!” He called her a dyke, she called him a fag and the next thing you know she had a forty pound plate she was ready to drop on his head when cooler minds prevailed.

Lesson Learned: Never get on the wrong side of a lesbian.

And I do love how these young jocks spend ten minutes fucking around with their I-phones or I-pods while sitting (legs lasciviously spread – fucks!) on a machine, and two minutes doing a rep. I didn’t know you could burn calories and build muscle just using your fingers otherwise I’d jerk-off ten times a day and fuck the gym!

A close second to the techno boys are the chitchatters, those two guys who linger around a machine you’ve been wanting to get on for the past half hour, one on it but not doing anything, the other leaning against it in a sexy kind of pose. And, God help you, if one’s trying to make the other. One time I clocked a conversation that went on for twenty minutes.

BTW, even innocently bullshitting with a work-out buddy while you’re waiting for him to finish his reps on the machine before you take your turn is a waste of good gym time. The experts say keep those downtimes to a minimum; the best way to really max your work-out is by flipping back and forth from one machine, let’s say for biceps, to one for triceps, without much of a break.

Then there’s the asshole with a bod all the hours in the gym aren’t going to make a difference to who just has to get on the machine you’re on. He lurks there on the edge of your peripheral vision but enough to make sure you see him. There’s a least a dozen unoccupied devices of self-torture he can use, but, no, he has to get on yours. Sometimes he’ll even quip, “Gonna be long?” to which I usually reply, “Sorry buddy. It’s gonna be a while.” Or I kill myself and do an extra rep just to piss him off more.

The “I impressed you, didn’t I?” guys do 30 pounds and two reps, then reset the machine to 150 to delude or intimidate the next guy up.

The body builders – their muscle hard won or the result of a generous diet of steroids – always seem to stick together like members of some mutual admiration society. Or could it be they’re afraid some four foot ten lesbian toughie like the one I just spoke about might beat them up if they wandered the gym solo?

The ones I love the best are the “Must Be Seen” boys, who mill around the gym looking busy to maximize their exposure, but leave a half hour or 45 minutes later not having done much at all.

All this sweat and sacrifice and money and time, plus assholes, just to snare a man. We can fool ourselves all we want into thinking it’s because we want to stay healthy but, deep down, we know we want to feel hot and confident and ready. I’m beginning to wonder if just whipping out my credit card once a month for the deep massage therapist of my choice listed in the back of one of the gay rags wouldn’t make more sense. One thing for sure. It would take the guilt trip out of pigging out on a half gallon of pistachio ice cream or leftover Halloween candy.

A Horror Story for your Upcoming Labor Day Weekend Reading …

A Horror Story for your Upcoming Labor Day Weekend Reading …

How would you feel spending the Labor Day weekend with a hottie you barely knew who turned out to be your own private nightmare?

That’s exactly what happened to my character in “Best Buds,” from my short story collection, “Basic Butch” available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and here for your holiday weekend enjoyment. Meantime, have a great Labor Day weekend. See you back on the 7th:

 

It’s been a month now since I’ve taken a shower or left my apartment. There’s nothing left in the freezer and I’m down to only a handful of canned stuff. Not sure what I’ll do after that.

Here, I could have still been teaching my future Social Security checks in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, cavorting the catwalk of Christopher Street, and playing spin the bottle with some fellow Manhattan faggot. Instead, I’m stuck in this ground floor condo off Fort Lauderdale Beach with the vertical blinds drawn. It’s dangerous being on the ground floor, you know, but asking the landlord to change apartments would mean I’d have to leave this one.

And I can’t.

Not now.

You see, I’m waiting for Jack.

Waiting for Jack to find me.

I should start by telling you that I was pretty much of a loner as a kid. Dad worked 60 hours a week in the factory, and mom never let me play with other kids – she was always afraid I’d get hurt. I couldn’t even have a bike. So I grew up not equipped with the usual social skills which was O.K. by me until I was faced with student teaching in my junior year of college. Frankly, I was scared shit to stand up in front of some crazed, oversexed adolescents – you know, it was like that final scene in “Suddenly Last Summer.” I even consulted a shrink who said I was mildly paranoiac and agoraphobic and pushed the pills. But after I observed some of the other, more seasoned teachers in action in the faculty room and saw there were bigger shit-heads than me around, I got over my shyness on my own, thank you, very much.

Coming out a year later in the butch bars of the West Village, I realized the only way to rise above the masses of reasonably in-shape, decent looking guys was to go shirtless. I might not have been the tallest, hunkiest or prettiest guy in the place, and as the years went by, not the youngest either, but my hairy chest and muscular arms seemed to be enough to get people looking. Even if some queeny clothes horses giggled in ridicule, I had gotten them to look.

After all, wasn’t that all that counted?

After half a lifetime spent in cold and snow and a having new principal at my school who was one son-of-a-bitch, I woke up one bleak November Monday morning after almost twenty years of teaching the little bastards in New York City and decided that it was time for a change. I had nothing to hold me, no lover, no great pool of friends, just a small, well established coterie of fuck buddies all within walking distance of my upper West Side apartment and all of whom had gotten – well – boring. The one good thing was that I was a high school teacher – English – and that meant it would be easier for me to find a job elsewhere than most forty year olds. Plus my apartment with the leaky tub and drafty windows was being destabilized in a few months which meant the rent would be going through the roof.

I had vacationed in sun and fun Fort Lauderdale a few times and one day, for the pure hell of it, I combed Careerbuilders.com for a teaching job down there. There was a mid-year opening at a high school in Hollywood – some new-right-out-of-college teacher couldn’t deal with the kids throwing their desks at one another – and I grabbed it. After teaching so long in City schools, playing boot camp bastard had become second nature to me.

I got myself a nice little ground floor rental a few blocks from Fort Lauderdale Beach, and over the next year I blotted out my aloneness – I say aloneness because, again, I rarely felt truly lonely – with an ample dose of sex. But Lauderdale is a tourist town and fags in particular – me included – were always waiting for new meat – so I found it increasingly impossible to re-establish the little fuck buddy network that I had had back in New York.

One night in late July – I was off for the summer – I decided to hit Lenny’s Hideaway, a place where young guys hooked up with daddies. With its 3-for-1 drink specials, it was the only place in Lauderdale on a Thursday night guaranteed to have a crowd. Going against the grain when it came to acceptable Lenny’s attire – T, tank or polo – I walked in with an open shirt.

For a while it seemed like it was going to be one of my typical nights at the place where I got stewed on the cheap alcohol and ignored by the endless cliques of chicken-shit young things and transplants from the neighboring bear bar when he saw me across the bar and smiled. A short guy like me – 5’8” at most – a well built, gymnast body evident under his tight white pullover. He had a shaved head, no facial hair, and oh, that smile.

I waited a few minutes, then walked past him. He had been talking to this guy old enough to be my father, but he turned away for a second from his conversation and looked my way. Close up, he looked real young – thirty at most. Maybe I was tired, or maybe not just buzzed up enough, or maybe I figured the old man was somebody to him, so I decided to leave that Kodak moment alone and call it a night.

As I walked to the parking lot, I heard someone yell out, “Wait a minute.”

I turned around. It was him. He introduced himself. Jack was his name.

“I just gotta tell you, Fuzzy, you got one beautiful chest,” and he slide his palm across my sweat.

Nice manly voice. Nice manly feel.

He brushed his hairless chin against my mustache as if to kiss me, then stopped.

“And you’re one good-looking guy,” I replied. Then I smiled and we went our separate ways, I to my car, he back to the bar and, I guess, his old man.

Two weeks later, I was at the baths, lying in my room, with my jockey shorts and work boots on, and who walks by but Jack. No body hair and one of those tight, no fat specimens of manhood that looked like he had been sculpted out of clay. He stopped.

“Just get here?” I asked, trying to stay cool.

“Yea, Fuzzy,” he replied. He sounded a bit buzzed. “But I’ll be back.”

Ten minutes later, he was.

“So I’m a top,” he announced matter-of-factly, shutting the door of my room. He ran his hand vigorously across my furry chest.

“So am I,” I replied, trying to keep the grin on my face but figuring, after all this cock teasing, I would lose him.

“So what do two tops do?” he asked.

We figured it out quickly enough. Standing there by the edge of the bed, my legs straddling the floor, Jack gently stroked both our dicks – I was slightly bigger at seven inches – until first he, then I came. I let him wipe up the mess with my towel, and then he left my room and I left the bathhouse not wanting to see whom he played around with next.

A month later, I ran into Jack at the new sex club. I never forget a dick and caught his six and half inch piece of meat hanging out of one of the glory holes. It wasn’t drooping for long, though, and I made sure to suck him dry before I let on it was me. He was surprised, but happy to see me. This time, I decided to take it to the next step.

“You interested in going to Orlando for Labor Day – you know, just as buddies cruising for ass – I never been –“

“Sure,” Jack replied, genuinely excited by the prospect. “That sounds great. Just as long as we don’t do Mickey Mouse. We can stay at the Marlboro Motel Resort. Never been either. I’m a low maintenance guy, Fuzzy. Give me your number.”

He went one step better and at the front desk, got paper and pen to take down my number and address, too.

Our initial plan was for Jack to do the driving. But in the end, I was the one who played chauffer and picked Jack up in front of his apartment off Sunrise Boulevard. And during the monotonous ride on the straight-as-a-pencil Florida Turnpike, I learned some more about this stranger whom I had invited to spend the weekend with me.

He told me he had come out late at 27. Before that, he was, as he termed it, “straight shooting,” even married for a short time. And no boutique clerk here. He said he had a business degree from Boston University (he had tried out for the Olympics in gymnastics – hence the great bod) and had moved down here about three years ago. With a little ingenuity and a lot of luck, he boasted he had snowballed a small inheritance from his grandmother into several million dollars worth of rental properties which he owned and managed in Jacksonville. I imagined a lot of the guys whom I saw on Sebastian Beach were the new wave of gay land barons that Florida’s exploding real estate market had created.

Now I had one sitting next to me.

He mentioned Boyd, a short, hairy, very in-shape guy with a huge cock that he had met at the Driveshaft, Lauderdale’s leather bar, a few weeks ago. Boyd and his 6 foot-2 partner, Jesse lived in North Lauderdale – they were both closer to Jack’s age than mine, thirty-somethings – and were actually planning a trip to the Marlboro that weekend, too. Sure enough, less than 20 minutes after we arrived, we ran into them in the parking lot.

Jack was right. Boyd was lightly muscular, hairy, and boyish with a crew and a sexy two days-growth worth of a beard. But the real attention getter was his pair of white, see- through gauze pants – no underwear. Jesse, a fart from being matinee handsome, smooth, and holding in his stomach, was the more conservative, wearing knee length swim trucks. But, later at the pool, I occasionally spied him nonchalantly stroking his crotch as he looked in my direction. Both Boyd and Jesse liked short guys – and they had already had Jack.

Frankly, the Marlboro didn’t impress me. It was in a crapo neighborhood of downtown Orlando, littered with porn parlors and druggies, far from the Disney glitz. The place itself looked like it was stuck in some time warp from the ‘60’s, a three level structure shaped in an L. Below, surrounded by cracked and faded red asphalt, were several bars, a restaurant, and the pool. I was waiting for Jayne Mansfield to pop out at some point. Instead, a tall, lanky, fiftyish transexual with flowing blonde hair and boobs hanging like two eggplants, did. It looked like she was halfway through her surgery and trying to make money from some of the Latino men who wandered onto the property to pay for the “Final Solution.” Jack named her Transylvania.

Our room was on the second floor and our neighbor was a tall, nondescript blonde-headed, forty-something guy named Sam from some god-forsaken little town on the east cost of Georgia. We got to talking at dinner and found out his thing was young Latins. But it was starting to get dark and Jack was in a rush to finish his lasagna. It was time to prowl.

And so we did, dressed in basic butch – jeans, boots, and open shirts – prowling first the little western bar and later the large dance bar on the premises, then strolling over to the Log Cabin, a leather/levis/bear bar just two blocks away.

The drinks were cheap, a buck for a beer, two bucks for a screwdriver, and Jack lulled me into his drinking style so that by midnight we were both staggering back to our room, totally wasted, just as the Marlboro bars were beginning to hop.

Jack had asked that I book double beds, but sometime in the middle of the night with the music from the dance bar still blasting below, he crawled in beside me. We were both naked and as I lay on my side, he snuggled up against me, his half hard cock sitting in the crack of my ass.

“Cuddle, cuddle, Fuzzy, sleep, sleep,” he murmured, his arms enveloping me. I could feel and hear his heart beating. I had been used to years of hit and run sex and this was the first time in a very, very long time that I actually lay with a guy in bed – no sex – just lay there next to this beautiful man, stroking his baby-smooth ass cheeks from behind, as he slowly rubbed his hard abs and chest against the hair on my back and buttocks.

I was about ready to ask him to fuck me – solid, unwavering “Top” me – but realized his long soft cock wouldn’t get much harder than a roll of manicotti without the sauce. All the liquor he had consumed that night had made sure of that. Soon I heard him snoring.

The next morning, with Jack still in la-la-land, I walked down to a small lake on the perimeter of the property where they had created a white sandy beach. I sat there alone, sipping my container of coffee that I had gotten from the restaurant and vowed that I would not let Jack get me drunk again that night.

A few hours later at the pool, with all of us, Sam, Boyd, Jesse and I sitting together, Jack was the first to start with the beers. I said nothing but gave Jack one long look. He knew why.

“It’s just I need a few to loosen up,” he explained casually. “Without a drink, Fuzzy, I’m as shy as a cloistered nun.” Then he added, “After all, there’s a lot worst shit than beer.”

I stuck with my cranberry juice.

A tall, hairy, somewhat flabby guy with tit rings and salt and pepper hair – 35 or 40 I’d say – kept looking my way. As he passed our lounge chairs, I leaned out and said, “Did anyone ever tell you that you look like Sean Connery – I mean when he was young?”

“No, no one ever did,” replied the guy making sure to catch my eye. “But thanks for the compliment.”

Later in the pool, he came up behind me and began thrusting his groin against my ass.

“Down boy,” I said firmly with a smile. “That’s not my scene.”

An hour later, he and Boyd were in the water, negotiating. A few minutes after that, the two of them drifted off together as Jesse, lying on his float, continued sipping on his rum and coke, a silly ass grin on his face.

There were a lot of couples there that weekend. Some, like newlyweds, hung all over one another. Then there were those who prowled apart or at least toyed with the idea like the couple from Rochester, New York, with whom Jack had struck up a conversation. They babbled on about their “solid” monogamous, two year relationship as they eyed Jack’s basket the whole afternoon, especially the older one with the tank that read “No Gag Reflex” over his chest. And then there were the Boyds and Jesses who did it right under one another’s noses.

It was a few minutes after Boyd and Sean Connery left for their romp in the hay when this middle-aged guy with a comb-over, whose skin resembled one of Hitler’s human lamp shades and whose ass was in Florida but stomach somewhere in Alabama, waltzed up to Jack.

“Jamie,” he bubbled. “Didn’t think I see you here. I’m in 145 in case you need car fare to get your sorry ass back to Jacksonville.” Then he sashayed daintily up to the pool and gingerly waltzed in so as not to spill his drink.

“What happened?” I asked jokingly. “Were you that bad a fuck? And who’s Jamie?”

Stone faced, Jack said nothing, got up abruptly from his lounge and dove straight into the pool behind Mr. Wrong. I could see the coy look on the guy’s face as he was about to turn around and play hard to get, when Jack dove under the water and apparently grabbed the guy from beneath, pulling him down and keeping him there long enough to stir some commotion from the people nearby.

Suddenly, after what seemed forever to me, they both shot up from the water like two hot, hungry cocks. Mr. Wrong was coughing his lungs out, clinging to the edge of the pool.

“I think you just went over your credit line,” scolded Jack quietly.

I let it go. Now I realize I shouldn’t have.

I’d never been to the red light districts of Europe but I understand the whores there ply their wares by sitting lasciviously by large shop windows. By 2’oclock, the upper decks of the motel looked the same as guys sat or lay on their beds, their room drapes pulled open and doors ajar, and the parade of hungry faggots passed by, window shopping.

Every so often, usually after another $2 vodka cranberry, Jack or Sam would get up and announce they would be doing another “whore walk.” Boyd and Jesse felt their chances were better at the pool. Me? I was an old fashioned boy who believed in sex only after sundown.

Judging by the parade of men in and out of her room, I think the only person who was consistently successful that day was Transylvania, who had been down at the pool earlier that afternoon showing off her surgeon’s talents in a two piece lime bikini.

We both took naps which allowed Jack to recover from his early afternoon buzz.

“Fuck this place tonight,” he decreed as we were taking our showers. “Let’s grab a cab, Fuz, and check out Roy’s.”

Roy’s was an out-of-the-way, neighborhood hole-in-the-wall bar that urban legend claimed had some back room action. Even though we had the car, Jack thought it smarter to cab it – that way we could get tanked without worrying about the DWI patrol.

I thought neighborhoods in Orlando couldn’t get much worst than where the Marlboro was. Arriving at Roy’s – a ten buck cab fare – I realized I was wrong. Plus, even though it was after 11, the place had maybe ten or fifteen guys at most, a few cute young rebel types I admit, but mostly just fat, good old boys playing pool or darts or munching on peanuts.

The back room was actually an outside, fenced-in patio which mimicked a mini-version of the Rambles of Central Park. But the two cute ones Jack and I had our eyes on ventured out only briefly, leaving as the main event some fat fuck on his knees blowing another fat fuck behind some trees.

Then everything changed for the better when one of the rebel boys – tall and thin, grizzly beard with a red cap and south of 25 – stationed himself a few feet from the Fattie who was on his knees. A few minutes later, Rebel Boy had yanked his nice long piece from out of his jeans and Fattie quickly shifted gears and moved in for the kill.

Jack gave me a nod to follow him. He stood beside Rebel Boy, unbuttoned the guy’s shirt and began stroking his smooth chest while Fattie continued to blow below. When Jack moved and began deep kissing the guy, I knelt down and began licking whatever Fattie didn’t have in his mouth. Rebel Boy instinctively turned closer in my direction, leaving me with the whole prize as Jack, still kissing him, stuck his hands down the guy’s pants and felt his ass. Before long, Rebel Boy was bent over and bare assed, Jack’s firm dick sliding in and out of the guy’s pre-lubed asshole as I, back on my feet, let Fattie finish me off. Jack and I came at about the same time.

By the time we returned to the Log Cabin, Jack’s alcohol buzz was in high gear. I was trying to space my drinks with Cokes but it was hard to resist when Jack kept buying.

He was only half way through one screwdriver when he ordered another for himself and one for me. I guess the bartender had a Ph.D. in mumblers-deciphering and slide the new drinks next to our old ones. With that, Jack took his first drink and poured it into the new one, the overflow flooding the top of the bar where we stood. Not missing a beat, the bartender grabbed some napkins and quickly sopped the mess up.

“He ain’t potty trained yet,” I explained to the curious guy next to me who was watching us.

Huddled away in the corner, a couple of older guys in Bermuda shorts and flannel shirts had been observing Jack since we first came in. Their looks weren’t cruises, but more like probing stares, as if they were trying to place where they had seen him before.

Suddenly, Jack grabbed me from behind and gave me a long and heavy tongue kiss. I knew it wasn’t love, but at first I thought it was the liquor, then realized Jack was playing diversional tactics with these guys.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he slurred. “315. We gotta check out 315.” Three fifteen was Boyd and Jesse’s room.

Boyd was alone, naked, standing by the window, his Prince Albert glistening in the parking lot light. It was as if he had been expecting us. He opened the door and gestured for me to pull down my jeans to which I complied – I had wanted that fuck from the moment I saw him that first day. Jack settled with unzipping his own fly and pulling out his limp dick, but after several attempts to get hard while Boyd worked my stiff rod over with his tongue, Jack gave up, zipped up his fly and stumbled out of the room.

Boyd didn’t seem to care. He had gotten what he wanted, and so, too, had I.

“Aren’t you going to pull the drapes?” I asked.

“Why?” replied Boyd as he reached for the lube and began fingering my asshole.

“I don’t get fucked,” I said with a smile.

“You will tonight,” he said, determined.

If anybody was going to fuck my virgin hole that weekend it would be Jack – or forget it.

Just then, the door opened. It was Jesse with his own trick – Sam. I used the opportunity to get off the bed, pull up my jeans and, still smiling, make my exit.

Jack hadn’t returned when I got back to our room and I used the opportunity to get some sleep. Jack was still gone when I awoke the next morning.

I went to have breakfast. Boyd and Jesse walked into the restaurant and joined me. We small-talked but it was as if last night had never happened. Finally I brought up what was really on my mind.

“You guys haven’t seen Jack, have you? He didn’t come back to the room last night, and as of this morning, he was still MIA.”

“Well,” said Boyd, “I can give you 67 guesses where he might be.”

I looked at him.

“That’s the number of rooms in this dump,” explained Jesse as if I were a moron.

I didn’t touch a drop of liquor the rest of the day and as the afternoon progressed into night, I got increasingly worried about Jack though I tried not to show it. But it seemed like I was the only one who gave a shit. In fact, Boyd and Jesse connected with a dynamic duo from Philly and never did catch up on their suntan and Sam ping-ponged from one chaise lounge to another, pining after some young Latin cutie.

I tried Jack’s cell phone at least a dozen times that afternoon and evening, always getting voice mail, then realized he had left it – and his wallet and apartment keys – in my locked car all this time. I wandered around the property and up to the Log Cabin, retracing our tracks, aimlessly hoping I might find some sign of him. I even went up to the front desk and asked for the number of the nearest hospital and called over there, pretending I was a family member, to see if someone fitting Jack’s description might have been brought in the night before. But I got nowhere. I thought of calling the police, but Boyd had put on a rare queen’s face when I had floated the idea that morning at breakfast. “Honey, you ain’t your brother’s keeper.” So I didn’t.

Was Jack lying in some hunk’s bed or in some alleyway? Had some Religious Right gay basher or one of the neighborhood druggies gotten him? Had he grabbed a cab that night again for Roy’s and been abducted by aliens in the patio? Had some trick gone sour?

It was after eight when I found Boyd and Jesse in the bar. Initially I felt relieved – maybe they would have some new ideas of what to do – but they were too interested in having a second round with their new found friends from the City of Brotherly Love to pay attention to my ramblings.

Sunday’s T-Dance at the Marlboro was the gay event of the week for Orlando, and as I watched from the walkway outside our room the crowds below become ever bigger and noisier, an icy reality gripped me.

I was alone in all this.

Totally alone.

I went to bed early but I couldn’t sleep. So around 10, I wandered through the growing crowd in the courtyard to the Log Cabin. My heart raced when I thought I glimpsed Jack making out with a saddle worn, pseudo-cowboy type outside the Last Round-Up, the motel’s shitty little western bar. The guy wasn’t much taller than us which made his oversize cowboy hat look even more ridiculous. But as I approached them, I realized I was wrong.

It was my last night in Orlando – I definitely had no plans of ever returning – and so I didn’t give a shit what people thought of me. I went shirtless. Though not billowing like the numbers flocking to the Marlboro, the men at The Log Cabin were a livelier group than I had encountered the two previous nights. Maybe it was because I was totally sober.

No one – me included – could ignore the young guy who pranced in around 11, donned in sexy faded jeans and a black T that read ‘High Voltage – Heavy Metal.” Tall, body builder-built, with a hairless, baby face and buzz cut, he was one of those rare sightings you just couldn’t keep your eyes off of. As I sipped my drink, I saw that he was looking my way.

I was standing by the bathroom waiting in line to take a piss when he gave me another stare – this time a long one, from around the corner. I was liquor-free, but I needed to get Jack off my mind for a lousy five minutes. I walked straight up to him and smiled.

“So how’s it goin’?” I asked.

A broad grin came on his face.

“You know, you’re the top man in this place tonight,” I continued.

He grinned again, looking a bit embarrassed by my comment.

“In fact, you should be able to go up to anybody in this dump and say ‘you’ and save all that beer money.”

“It isn’t that easy,” he replied, a response I found bizarre coming from him. “But then, tonight, I didn’t have to. You came to me.”

I asked him his age. Twenty-nine.Jack’s age.

A minute later, he was stroking my chest. Just as he was bending down to kiss me, Boyd and Jesse entered the place. I know they saw us because I could see Jesse wink at me from the corner of my eye.

Brian lived just a few blocks away in some apartment complex off Orange Blossom Trail. I thought this 6’4” boy-man would be a God-sent distraction, sucking my dick, eating out my pits, rimming by furry butt hole, and matting my chest hair down with his sweat. But I couldn’t get hard, blamed it on what little alcohol I had had that night, and snuck out back to the motel.

The real reason was Jack.

The next morning, no goodbyes from the gang. It was as if they were intentionally ignoring me. After all, who wanted to be bothered with someone else’s problem? I waited by the pool after checking out, waited as long as I could, hoping against hope that I would see Jack reappear from some corner. But at about 1 when the dark, heavy clouds started rolling in, I decided I couldn’t hang around anymore. Jack would have to find me – back in Lauderdale. I left my number at the desk in case he surfaced and left.

It thunder-stormed for most of the eternal ride back. I was freezing in the car since the only way I could keep the windows from fogging up was to have the ac up full blast. Sometimes the visibility was as non-existent like being in a snowstorm back home in New York in February. One good thing – it kept my mind off Jack’s stuff – cell phone, wallet, keys – that was strewn across the passenger seat next to me like relics.

Somehow I made it back in one piece and fell into bed with my clothes on, exhausted.

The next day, between classes, I rechecked the address on Jack’s driver’s license. My game plan was to go to his apartment off Sunrise after school, drop off his keys and wallet and overnighter and, most importantly, see if he had shown up. That’s when I noticed it – there was Jack’s mug on his license but the name was different – Alan W. Lacey. Where the hell had “Jack” come from?

The first thing that struck me walking into his place was that the furnishings were lean and mean like he had either just moved in, or was just moving out. Funny for someone who bragged about being a millionaire. There was no sign anyone had been in the place for days. In fact, a half eaten, hard-as-a-rock tuna fish sandwich was still lying on the kitchen counter.

That’s when I noticed it, stuck to the front of the refrigerator. The front page of an issue of the SoFlo Gay News going back to July. Circled in red ink was a story about some old faggot in Jacksonville who had taken a guy home who then robbed and budgeoned him to death with a hammer. According to the story, two of the old man’s friends had seen them together that night at Hennessey’s, Jacksonville’s version of Lenny’s Hideaway.

The guy called himself Jamie, the same name that fat fuck at the Marlboro who Jack nearly drown had called him. The story included a police sketch.

The guy in the sketch was a dead ringer for Jack.

I know it sounds paranoid, but from that moment on I made sure not to leave my fingerprints on anything and wiped down his keys and wallet and the straps on the overnighter that I left on the dining room floor before I exited.

Maybe I should have called the cops right then. But, soon, I realized it was too late.

That’s when my shadows – and the endless hang-up calls to my apartment – overtook me.

Why I don’t know, but I was afraid I’d run into Boyd or Jesse at the Driveshaft, or someone else who might have seen me in Orlando, so I decided not to go out. Skipping the gym came next. I had told too many people there about my Labor Day weekend plans – they’d be nosey. But why did that matter I kept asking myself.

Because I was afraid Jack knew I knew?

I couldn’t concentrate at work, lost control of my classes – it was my junior year in college all over again – and after a while I stopped going in all together, spending the day mostly in bed. Finally I left my resignation on the principal’s voice mail after hours – “family issues” – and just ignored his calls after that until they stopped coming.

I couldn’t drive because the man behind me looked like Jack. Coming back for me. After all, our original plan for Orlando was for him to do the driving and pick me up. He had my address. He knew where I lived.

There was a time when I jerked off thinking of Jack and that big dick of his in my mouth. But now all there were were nightmares, Jack, naked and bloody, sneaking into my apartment through my screened terrace, coming up to my bed and forcing a plastic bag over my head until I couldn’t breathe, while he took a utility knife and very neatly sliced off my dick at the root. So I locked the terrace door, drew the blinds closed and began sleeping on the sofa in the living room so any windows or doors would be in my eyesight.

But the nightmares kept coming.

I was afraid to take a shower – there was always that dark, muddled figure through the glass – so I stopped.

Those dead calls continued for weeks. Dozens of them, all hours of the day and night. Hang-up after hang-up. As if someone were checking to see if I were here.

That is until last Thursday. The caller finally left a message.

“Fuzzy, I think it’s time we talked.”

Now I spend my days and nights aimlessly wandering around my apartment, taking catnaps when I can, and waiting.

Waiting for Jack.

Waiting for Jack to find me.

 

Author’s Note: Outside of Jack’s murderous past, the characters and events in my story are a direct rip-off of a weekend I spent at the Parliament House in Orlando.

 

Me, Myself and I: Super Egos

Me, Myself and I: Super Egos

This Life puts a colossal over-emphasis on physical beauty, so when I label somebody a “loser,” he may be a $700,000 a year corporate attorney with a great personality and a heart of gold, but who in the looks and body department, even $700,000 in plastic surgery couldn’t help. Having established what I mean by a “loser,” I ran into a trio of guys in this dubious category whose egos made the Empire State Building look like a shack.

One was a 300 pound bearded baby whale who I small talked with at the clothing optional swimming pool at Mars Campgrounds in central Florida one Saturday afternoon. How we got on the subject of the websites I’m not sure, but he proceeded to tell me that he had dropped out of bear411.com just a week after he posted his profile and pics, since the over 700 hits he received were too much to wade through. 700 hits? Huh?

A second guy I encountered while we both munched on our free lunch at the Club Fort Lauderdale’s Saturday afternoon barbecue, clad only in towels. He was a flight attendant who flicked all over the place and who kept reminding me how his beautiful blue eyes were enough to draw barely legals to have his dick in their mouths or up their butts. All I could think was how those beautiful blue eyes had been wasted on one of the homeliest guys I ever saw.

My third was middle aged Vito at Lauderdale’s Leather Inn – again both of us were stark naked at the pool – who for an Italian American had an uncharacteristic three inch dick. He went on about his sexy trophy girlfriend who he fucked the shit out of when the two of them weren’t screwing around with his fuck buddies.

That’s when it finally hit me. If guys like these who on my Dickter Scale of Hotness were 1.5’s thought they were such hot shit, what the fuck was going through the minds of The Truly Beautiful People in this Life?

Is this why so many of us – me included – wait for someone to come up to us instead of us making the move? Do we all think we’re just too good?

Then there are the guys on the web who apparently have led a charmed life and whose super egos can’t take rejection. Hell, for every guy who tells me I’m hot, there are 20 who, based on their profile, should be interested in me, but who say “thanks but no thanks.” Am I pissed or frustrated or depressed? Sure, but I just move on. Yet in just the last couple of weeks I’ve had two guys who I very politely said “no thanks “ to who got all bent out of shape, one calling me an asshole, the other wishing I got AIDS. These are people you’d invite over your house for some playtime?

Let’s face it: all humans have egos: Level 1. We homos are in our love with our own sex: Level 2. Then there are those of us who are in love with ourselves: Level 3. And then there are those of us who think we are God’s gift to Gaydom: Level 4.

Defense mechanism or reality? A by-product of the “You’re beautiful – I’m beautiful” mentality of our society? Or just a reality of This Life? Who knows?

What Works and Doesn’t in a Web Profile

What Works and Doesn’t in a Web Profile

All right, you’ve finally had it with all the shit in the bars and the baths and you’ve decided it’s time to put your dick or ass on the line, deal with the humiliation, and post a web profile on an eclectic site like Manhunt, or the butcher ones like Daddyhunt or Bear411. Or even one of the exclusive phone apps like Growl’r or Grinder. After all, isn’t that where most guys are finding Mr. Right or Mr. Right Now nowadays?

Maybe.

Well, as a suck buddy friend of mine up in PA where I have a summer home who’s a New York theatrical agent put it, view your profile as your audition. You usually just got one shot to make it right with the guy who catches your stuff. Our judgment calls, like a lot of things in life, are instantaneous.

So, based on my years of experience as a website addict, what works or doesn’t work, at least for me?

Works:

Directness and brevity. You tell me who you are (a jock? fine, makes you sound hotter; professional? I’m impressed, shows you aren’t an airhead who can only gush on about the latest pop icon), you give your stats, or at least those you think you can get away with, height, weight, age, cock size optional; and say what you’re looking for in another guy, including what you’re into in bed. Period. End of story.

Pics that mean something. If not a face and shirtless upper bod shot ( O.K., I understand, you either work for, or are wanted by the FBI), at least an upper bod pic. Hey, we’re not meeting to play bingo. And if you ask me to choose between a face shot and a bod shot, I’ll take the bod shot anytime. Some of the homeliest guys can have glorious bods and make great lovers. And please don’t use the lame excuse, “I have nobody to take my pictures …” If you got a smartphone, you can take pics of yourself on the “portrait” mode with a timer. Or get a cheap digital camera with a timer for under a hundred bucks. Either way, you can shoot away in the privacy of your own exhibitionistic bedroom til you get the pics that give you a hard-on and hopefully will do the same for your would-be suitors. (I think guys who say they ain’t got pix are hiding something.)

Now for what doesn’t work, for me at least:

Ego-rich Screen Names. I love these ballsy guys with screen names like “Handsome Guy” or “Good Catch” or “Hot Man.” According to who? These hangers are subjective at best, pretentious at worse. Hey, I know it’s all in the eyes of the beholder, but I saw “Handsome Guy” on the beach one day, up front and personal, and I’m sorry, folks, he has a face only a mother would love.

And then there’s the tired, sagging, haggard, gray haired “Daddy’s Boi” or “Hot Bear Cub.” Sure. Buddy, I’m not talking about age here, but if you wanna pass for junior, you better at least look like you have your shit together.

Unreal Expectations. Like those washed out 59 year old guys who want only a twenty something to come over to their place so they can fuck ‘em. Sure, the youngen spends his gas to go over and fuck your sorry ass. Or there’s some 39 year old being emphatic about “no guys over 40.” Buddy, you’ll be there some day yourself. Real soon. Isn’t it nicer just to say, “seeking younger than me” or “guys 25-35”?

Super Negativism. I see this in particular in profiles of guys in their twenties. “No blacks, no Asians…,” “if you don’t have a face shot, I’ll block you…” What makes you think your shit don’t stink? Would you wanna go to bed with a guy with an attitude?

Guys also always seem to say what they want in Mr. Perfect – young, tall, bodied, hung – but have they looked in the mirror on what they’re bringing to the bedroom? Like, have you asked, what do I, the recipient of your love note, want?

Diarrhea of the fingertips. Profiles that go on and on and on about hobbies, past loves, terrific current partners (who apparently can’t be that terrif if you’re huntin’) or, spare me, Harry, retro ‘60’s , pseudo-hippy philosophical or spiritual views on life. Who gives a fuck what you think about Buddhism? Or your soppy poetry? Especially when all your pics are ass shots.

Pushiness. “Seeking LTR.” Huh? Even if I were too, I need to, at least, see your dick first, right? With men, it almost always starts with sex and if the sex ain’t good, there ain’t gonna be any LTR.  If you don’t want to sound like a complete whore like me (“into hook-ups only”), then say nothing.

On the other side of the gay cyber rainbow are the “I want it now” boys. and only now. Like I’m going to drop everything at 2 a.m. or 10 a.m., put my life on hold, take a shower, use the last of my mouthwash and Viagra, so I can travel in MY car using MY gas to screw YOU for fifteen minutes before YOU kick me out. Sure.

Evasiveness: “Just looking for friends” or “Found the love of my life – just here to chat.” If you’re somewhere in the middle of North Dakota, and the nearest gay guy is 57 miles away, maybe I can buy that. But if you’re “just looking for friends” and your profile is accompanied by a hard dick or rosebud close-up, cut the shit – either you’re looking for a virtual fuck buddy, a friend with benefits, or you’re using the web as a screen. I’m also sure if the guy extending the olive branch of friendship was commutable and a hottie, you’d ditch your partner in the nearest abandoned refrigerator or skip your mother’s funeral to get him in bed. If you’re truly looking for friends, you should be dressed in a tasteful polo, buttoned up to your chin, and if partners, the two of you should be together with Fido on your lap posing for that holiday shot with Santa.

But if you really believe guys bare their soul and their asses with their ONLY intent to make friends, I’ve got some stretched out, vintage ‘80’s jockstraps to sell you. (Actually, they’re kinda hot.)

Pics that mean shit, like:

Ass or dick shots only: Listen I ain’t saying the equipment doesn’t count, but if I’m going to go through the trouble of coordinating a time and a place, I’d like to know who I’m doing it with. Otherwise, I can drop in at my local sex club and get blown in the dark.

No pics at all. You mean you’re going to pay me?

Family Albums: Who gives a shit about your Yorkies or what you looked like at your Confirmation or when you were 25? As if misrepresentation and deceit weren’t enough, some draw attention to the fact that years have gone by posting one pic when they were a hot 25 or 35 and then a pic as they are today, 10 or even 20 years later. Who am I doing it with? The topper: one guy posted his Boy Scout pic!

When I questioned a guy on his out-of-date photos (he posted one pic he himself captioned “2000,” another, gray haired and wrinkled, which he admitted was already three years old), he called me a “rude fuck.”

Or when all a guy’s got is a face shot wearing a cowboy hat or baseball cap and you ask for some shirtless body shots, he pleads the fifth.

Pics taken on the other side of a Walmart parking lot.

Crazy costume or weird face shots. You looking like a jerk is supposed to get me excited?

And once you’re done, and have your profiles up and running,  just remember, in the end, it all still comes down to luck, timing, and hormones.

But you knew that all along, didn’t you?

 

Cruising in Limbo

Cruising in Limbo

Are you one of those guys faced with this no-win dilemma when you’re out for more than a cold beer?

You’re 35, 38, north of 40, maybe even 50 and beyond. You’re in decent shape, go to the gym at least more often than the average American male, have a clean bill of health, don’t take pills for anything, don’t smoke (because you’re cheap), don’t do drugs (because you’re cheap and smart), and don’t drink excessively. Or either by luck or good genes, and an occasional touch of Just for Men or an every-six-month botox shot, you look good, buddy, a good ten years younger than your momma would tell you.

Now, who wouldn’t be flattered when a guy old enough to be your son comes up to you and whispers to you in a deep guttural tone, “Man, you’re hot. I wanna be your bitch.” You certainly wouldn’t kick him out of bed. (Most older guys who ONLY go for younger guys I think are setting themselves up for eventual failure, but, hey, that’s their business.) But your preference is a guy 35-55, your chronological or mythical (he or you are 55, but look 45) contemporary. And a kissing cousin in the looks/physique department.

One problem.

Three out of 4 of the guys in your preferred age range have their stomach in New Orleans and their ass in the Panhandle, are triple chinned, chain smoke (a notorious fag habit) between double shots of vodka, still sniff coke or smoke grass like they were college freshmen, or do meth like candy and/or are a walking medical dictionary.

And … they don’t give a shit. They actually think THEY’RE hot. And like there’s a lid for every pot, there are guys out there who think they are, too.

Oh, these men will come onto you Big Time like the train wreck (see above) who came on to me once at the now gone 2206 leather bar in Tampa. I tried to be polite but every  time I cruised on, he made it a point to come over and resume the conversation, telling me down to my shoe size that I was IT to him. Finally, he popped the question which he should have asked ten rounds around the bar earlier. “So what are you lookin’ for?”

“My clone,” I replied dryly. “If I had a twin brother, we’d never leave the bedroom.”

And I’m a sincere believer that the 50+ generation, in particular, lost a lot of hot guys who probably would have stayed that way if Big A hadn’t spoiled their plans.

So what about that fourth guy (you know, three minus four equals one), the guy who’s a 47 year old hottie? Well, nine out of ten times (stay with me, guys), he wants somebody who’s taller than you or shorter than you, furrier than you or smoother than you, butcher than you (whips, chains and ropes hanging off his belt loops) or girlier than you (eyeliner optional), heavier than you or skinnier than you, darker than you or blonder than you, or shit, younger than you … you get the drift.

So, where are we then?

Yep, cruising in limbo.

 

Talking Dirty

Talking Dirty



Hey, I’m a visual guy when it comes to sex. A guy wanting the lights down low can actually be a deal breaker for me. But there’s another sense that is as equal a turn-on:”being verbal.” And in the mating dance of sex, that usually starts off with talking dirty.

Whether it’s on the web edging up some hottie half a country or half a world away, or in the flesh, up front and personal, dirty talk certainly adds some spice to an activity that might otherwise be relegated to video tape replay territory. After all, after you’ve played the scene awhile, dicks and asses, bods and even faces all begin to look kinda familiar like you’ve had him before. Even when you haven’t.

And being a writer who taught writing, and a graduate of the University of Southern California’s School of Theatre when I was young and naive enough to think I might become the second Dustin Hoffman, I have a couple of different 101 Porn Writing Class scripts I use depending on the type of guy I’m, shall we say, entertaining. I’m usually the one to initiate the edgy, filthy chatter, though sometimes I get a guy who’s not just pretty but bright enough to know how to play along and really get into it.

There’s the generic, one size fits all script: “so man, like that (big) (stiff) (big knobbed) (big cut) (big uncut) cock … (to which he usually nods and grunts affirmative since he’s got or should have your dick down his throat by now and can’t talk) …show me how much you like it, buddy … that’s it, man, you know how to keep that (big) (stiff) (big knobbed) (big cut) (big uncut) cock happy … yea, work it, man, work it with your tongue, get it nice and wet … yea, man, get those nuts in your mouth, swallow ‘em, that’s right, man, now you got it… ” And when you think that he’s ripe for some back door action, “So you want that dick, huh, man, ready for that (big) (stiff) (big knobbed) (big cut) (big uncut) dick nice and deep in that (sweet) (tight) (hairy) (handsome) (manly) butt hole of yours?”

Then there’s the truck stop buddy fantasy script, complete, if your sex partner is as imaginative as you, with both of you in baseball caps, jockstraps and scruffed up work boots: “Hey, buddy, long day huh? Need somebody to take care of that boner for you … just two truck stop buddies taking care of one another, right buddy? … need to take a piss first? Sure, buddy, I want that hot piss of yours all over me…” (stage direction: men move to bathroom tub – let’s hope. Hot piss on my chest is dandy, cold piss on my mattress ain’t). Yep, the word “buddy” or “bud” must be used at least ten times in 30 seconds to make the talk cock-sure effective.

A variation on the truck stop buddy script is when I’ve got a guy from Texas or Georgia or Carolina or even northern Florida whose drawl is enough to keep my dick stiffer than 100 mg. of Big V. That’s when he becomes my “Southern rebel boy.”

And when the guy’s younger or smoother than you or just in the mood to play your sub-son, there’s the Daddy-Boy script. Like when the guy is bobbing his dick in front of your face, “Dad’s proud of his boy’s (big) (stiff) (big knobbed) (big cut) (big uncut) dick …” Or when you’re ready to fuck him, “Ready for your training session, huh, boy? Dad’s gonna make you a man, boy, ready for that Daddy Dick up your ass?” Or “sorry boy, Dad’s gotta punish his boy’s (sweet) (tight) (hairy) (handsome) boy butt hole for being bad, just gonna have to keep fuckin’ it, boy, sorry boy, but…”

An enhancement of this theme is my “Civil War” angle.

“Well, rebel boy, you lost the war, so this Yankee here is gonna teach you a lesson for being on the wrong side…”

Now, when reading your script from your imaginary teleprompter, you also need to remember how you read it – in low, almost inaudible guttural tones – is as important to setting the mood and keeping those dicks nice and stiff as what you say.

But in the end, whatever you say, and that includes reciting a nursery rhyme if the guy’s pretending he’s 12 and you’re defiling his virgin ass (sure) for the first time, what’s key is that The Script gets the two of you to that ultimate Kodak moment.

I think you know what I’m talkin’ about, right, buddy, huh, buddy, huh?

 

Looking for Mr. Good Dick

Looking for Mr. Good Dick

Why are so many of us so promiscuous, think we are, or like to be? Why can’t we just be happy with that one guy? After all, no one, not even our egotistical selves, is perfect. But I guess that’s the problem. We think that that next guy (read dick) in the bar, on line, at the sex club or bath house, or off the plane, or at that next Bearfest in Seattle or Leatherfest in Berlin, or RSVP cruise to Greece will be the dick of our wet dreams. Always on the hunt, we are never really satisfied, and so our insatiable search goes on infinitum. Like Bette Davis once quipped in one of her early films, “I’d let you kiss me, but I just washed my hair.”

What the fuck was she waiting for?

Why are we so obsessed about dick? Maybe it’s because men and their cocks come in so many shapes and sizes (small, big, thin, thick, cut, uncut), that the possible Las Vegas slot machine combinations between the type of guy we’re hardwired for and his dick are endless. So we remain constantly curious to see what IT’s like and what IT will do for us. And that often means going beyond our usual circles of bars or local hang outs and out into the world like some sexual explorer, dropping all that money that could be going into a CD or retirement account on trips, botox, cool sculpting, or Lumineers, or killing ourselves at the gym, all just to look good, when that ultimate dick might be right next door if we opened our eyes.

Some people disagree with me and say it’s just a guy thing – you know, it’s all about the sex – but I think deep down inside it isn’t about cock at all. Because saying it’s just cock eliminates pondering about or dealing with that other c word: commitment. We think we’re not ready to commit ourselves to another human being just quite yet; we meet the guy with the perfect cock and the perfect body and the perfect everything, but there’s just something about his big toe that isn’t quite right; or we want to play run-around Sams forever. After all, old age or worse, loss of libido, happens to other people, right?

Hell, here in breezy, easy Fort Lauderdale, commitment is sharing a fresh bottle of poppers with your trick and letting him have the first sniff.

And so the search goes on. And on. And on. The 10’s are looking for 13’s, the 4’s will only settle for 10’s, and the 7’s are ready to go straight.

“You Party?”

“You Party?”

The first time a guy asked me that ( I think in a bathhouse), I figured he was ready to share a six pack of vodka coolers. I learned pretty quick that he was either looking for a fellow druggie to smoke or shoot up with, or more likely, some free junk.

Listen, if anybody should have been on drugs, c’est moi. Raised by a more than slightly psychotic mother who my sainted father wouldn’t rap, I was a lonely, highly introverted, nerdie adolescent, self conscious, not about being “different,” but about the fur sprouting all over a body that was made to play sports. Feeling unpopular and unloved, I thought of suicide more than once.

But at a point in my life where turning to addiction would have been oh-so-easy, I instead refocused my energies into building a career, and became a successful public relations executive in New York, and later an educator in Florida. Never once, in college. the workplace or even the scene, did I buy drugs or pursue them. Not even grass which never gave me a real high until I tried medical marijuana years later with a crippled friend who used it for pain.  But, hey, if a trick offered me a line or handed me the pipe, why not experiment on his dime, right? Though I confess I’m an addictive personality in other ways, I was never concerned I’d get hooked.

Nor, to my surprise, did I, til I did it with one of the handsomest men I ever had in my checkered gay career. From that point on, like Pavlov’s dog, I forever equated Tina with the most sensual sexual experience of my life.  Another problem, at least down here, in sunny Lauderdale, is that the hottest guys are on it and the only way you’re gonna get ’em is to do it too. That is, of course you have the stuff not them.

But the immediate setback I quickly discovered was that while coke or crystal meth puts you in seemingly Perpetual Arousal, Horned Up Heaven, Mr. Peter is taking a nap. Viagra or no Viagra. For me, if I and the guy can’t get it up – isn’t the penis the reason we like men? – well, what’s the point, pray tell? Apparently, not a problem for my drugheads, even the ones butch as hell with a nine inch dong between their legs, who love being bottoms. High on shit, they could lie there for days getting fucked while Mr. Hard does all the work, that is, if there were an army of dicks at their beck and call. But it you’re the Top, it’s a different story.

Safe sex? Huh?

Of course, if you got a meth head buddy with some Trimix and he gives you a shot in your pecker, you can be high and hard all night, just as long as there’s still someone around to be hard for at 5 in the morning.  (That’s why the gay God invented Xanax and its poor man equivalent, Benadyrl.)

Another sidebar to partying is the eventual paranoia, like the time one methhead I was playing with suddenly got all uptight, stared at his pc, and stammered, “You think the cops are camming me?”

I had a fuck buddy years ago in Jersey whom I rendezvoused with at his place after work. We’d start in the living room with a beer, then we’d have a joint, then we’d move upstairs to the bedroom where we’d each sniff a line. By the time we were ready for more shit, our dicks weren’t.

Or take my 6 foot, 4 cowboy from Austin, Texas, who met me at my snowbird condo in Lauderdale. After getting high on his coke, we caroused on the outdoor terrace, rolling around in perpetual horniness but unable to even jerk off.

Then there was New York transplant Mitch, my meth-head clone, 5 foot, 8, humpy, hairy, and one of New York magazine’s “handsomest men in NYC”, whom I knew I could fall in love with if I let myself but didn’t, and who despite a thick beer can uncut cock wanted me to fuck him all night. But after a mutual feast of meth and G, all I could do was use my fist.

So today, when I’m on the web and a hot guy, after making me think he’s really interested in having sex with me, drops the bombshell, “You party?”-  and sadly an ever increasingly number of them do – now I know what he’s really fishing for is free drugs. My stock response: “My boys bring their own candy to Daddy’s party.”

You wanna know how fast he disappears into cyberspace?

Gay Double Speak

Gay Double Speak

Hell, today more than ever in this culture of info-overload, our society is full of celebrities, politicians, and commentators saying one thing and meaning something else. Hey,  look at Trump! One moment he’s bating some gun crazy jerk to assassinate Hillary, the next moment he’s deploring the media for not getting his sarcasm.

Ah, but I think it all started with us gay boys:

“You look great!”

What he really means: “You looked like shit the last time I saw you, and you still do, but since I heard Gig left you, and I can see why, I don’t want to be the person who pushed you into walking in the middle lane of the nearest interstate, so I’ll be upbeat.”

“Gees, you lost weight!”

What he really means: “You don’t look as fat as the last time I saw you, but you still got a ways to go to look as good as me.”

“Boy, you look like you work out a lot.”

What he really means: “I’m envious. I probably spend more time in the gym than you do. So how much juicing up do you do, buddy? Don’t you know it’s gonna pickle your balls?”

You ask when a guy you thought was interested in bedding down wants to connect, and he replies, “Cool!” or if you throw out a strategy, he replies, “Sounds like a plan.”

What he really means: “Shit, I don’t know if I want to make a commitment right now, I mean you look O.K., but I’m on vacation and I’m really waiting for somebody better, but just in case, let me string you along with some nice, hip, totally evasive response.”

A buddy is getting nowhere with some hottie he’s tricked with three times in a row: “But I really love him!” You reply, “Well, did you tell him how you feel about him?”

What you want to do is shake him and yell, “Look, all you were was a good fuck – if he wanted more from you, don’t you think he’d say so by now? You’re 45, and look 55, he’s 33 and ready to pose for the cover of Men’s Fitness. Wake up and smell the coffee!”

The guy is 55, got infected when he was 39 (i.e., around 1995, ten years after researchers knew how HIV was transmitted). He describes himself as a “survivor,” looking for some kind of sympathy from you. You respond, “Glad to hear it.”

What you really want to say is: “You fucken jerk – you knew what was gonna on. Sorry to hear you got fucked, literally and figuratively, but my tax dollars are paying to take care of you and you want sympathy too? Huh?”

You’re on the beach and your buddy introduces you to bunch of guys he met in from San Francisco for the weekend. As they leave for their beach blanket, you exchange, “it was nice meeting you.”

What you really want to say to the hottie of the group: “Here’s my number. Ditch your friends and let’s fuck.”

Or if none of them stirs your dick, “That’s a relief. I was afraid one of them was gonna make a move on me.”

You’ve fucked around with a guy at the bath house and you both had some fun but it’s too early in the evening to cum, so as he moves on, he says, “Catch you later.”

What he means: “That is, if nothing better comes along because I’m a pig and I want to fuck around with as many guys as I can tonight, but if I still haven’t cum by 2 and you’re still trolling around, well, why not?”

You’re introduced by an acquaintance to some fifty something rich but trolly faggot who’s either a six figure Manhattan corporate attorney or a trust fund baby who can’t stop telling you what exclusive neighborhoods his seven bedroom home and two thousand square foot condo and beach front vacation getaway are in, how he trades in his Lexus for a new model every year, and where he stays when he vacations on the French Riviera. He, in turn, introduces you to his 35 year old muscled partner who throws his arm around him affectionately.

You smile benignly and reply, “That’s great.”

What you want to say is, “I don’t give a fuck if you got as much money as Bill Gates. You’re still an ugly, old fuck that even half a mil in cosmetic surgery won’t help.”

And to his hunky paramour: “Who the fuck are you kidding with all this lovey-dovey bullshit? How many times did you fuck his sorry ass or his yours for those keys to the Ferrari?”

But, as we all know, honesty is not always the way to win friends and influence people – and definitely doesn’t work when you’re searching for dick.

When Is a Sex Addiction Not a Sex Addiction?

When Is a Sex Addiction Not a Sex Addiction?

The American Psychiatric Association which is still grappling with whether sex addiction is a disease at all, defines hypersexual disorder as spending so much time pursuing intercourse or masturbation as to interfere with your job or other important activities. I guess what they mean by “other important activities” is social interaction, the responsibilities of daily living, like eating and sleeping, etc.

OK, I can buy that if you’re constantly getting a hard-on by your desk at work fantasizing over the cutie in the next cubicle or the daddy on your pc screen instead of working on that report for the boss; or you call in sick because you were on an all night bender edging yourself up on X-Tube til four in the morning.  And your place looks like a contender for the next installment of that hoarders series.

But what if you live alone, don’t have a wifey or kids to contend with, or have a partner who’s on auto pilot, you work from home, are retired, or fulfill your 9 to 5 duties, do your food shopping or laundry, and then spend the rest of the evening thinking about dick?  Is that interfering with your job or other “important activities”? Is it any worse than some jock beer-bellied wannabe watching football or baseball six nights a week or obsessed with violent video games on his X-Box? Or some meth head getting perpetually high?

Hey, in between writing my blogs or my next book, I’ll check the hook –up sites to see if anybody loves me. (He loves, he loves me not, he loves me …).

Now the APA definition of hyperactive sex doesn’t distinguish between intercourse ( i.e.,  actual in-the-flesh hookups) and masturbation, and while studies show regular sex with a committed partner once a day is healthy, only 3% of horny college age men reported they got off that many times with their dick in a hole. So does that mean guys who get it less than seven times a week are just as less healthy as guys who get it a lot more?

As I already surmised as an amateur sociologist, sexuality, according to the experts, including orientation and level of your horniness, involves your brain’s hormonal system which is regulated by our inherited genetic make-up but also molded by environment. Being bombarded by porn if you hit the hook-up sites regularly or the provocative visuals we see everyday in  Madison Avenue driven Corporate America can certainly contribute to our heightened sexual longings.

Whether it is a form of diversion or recreation, or borne out of boredom, the desire to be wanted, or just plain lust, is wanting to get it on for real or virtually all that wrong if we have the rest of our life’s ducks in a row?

As for the reclusive isolationism a runaway sexual appetite padlocked to a pc may create, more and more, thanks to camming, smart phones and texting, haven’t all of our direct face-to-face social encounters taken a nosedive?

So is runaway sexual behavior just an extreme version of normal sexuality or sick?

What do YOU think?