R.P. Andrews's Blog, page 36

Latin Lovers

Latin Lovers

Now, when it comes to my favorite kind of guy, Italians are at the top of my hit parade, followed by Middle Eastern, (my long-time partner was Lebanese) and Black Irish (black as in dark hair not race). But, since l live in south Florida, l’ve also had my share of Latins, hot Latins like those super hairy Cubans or my Leather Latin Stallion fuck buddy whose semi hairy body was sculpted by Michelangelo.

Then there are the guys who fit the somewhat derogatory label of “Latin Lovers,” to a T, you know, the ones who are super passionate one week and as frigid as Antarctica the next.

Take Eduardo from Chile who hit me up on Manhunt last spring. Short like me, hairy but slim, at 42 he looked at least 15 years younger. I drove to his trailer park about ten miles from me going Miami way and we fell in love instantly, l guess, me the hairy daddy, he my hairy boy. That was the first and only time we connected because l was going up to PA to spend the summer with my boring other half George, but throughout the next three months we sexted one another almost every day, dirty pics included. as we gushed on how much we dug one another and how much he anticipated our connecting again when l got back right after Labor Day.

Then out of the blue, a week before l was to head back, Eduardo announced that he had met a guy who was “The One” and hoped l would understand.  Shell shocked by his fickled behavior, l wished him well and he replied what a nice guy l was for being so understanding. What the fuck else was l supposed to say? His English was poor and l was too old to start learning Spanish.

Then there was 48 year old Tito, a Venezuelan whose family owned a cattle ranch and who worked for one of the cruise lines out of Lauderdale. Again hairy, again athletically slim and a bit taller than me, he dug furry guys and looked at me like a piece of Godiva chocolate. Though both tops, we got into oral sex like that’s all we needed and he kept insisting all the way to the door as l left that we needed to connect again, that he really liked me and hoped that maybe there could be something more between us. He pushed meeting again the following weekend but when l reached out to him that Friday, he kept saying he was out shopping and would hit me up when he got home. He never did and after three attempts to pin him down, l gave up.

Finally, there was Drew, whose family came from Spain, the Real Deal, and who lived up in rural central Florida. 5’7, slight, only slightly hairy with a heavy beard and the Yul Brynner look. Drew had looked at my profile on Daddyhunt dozens of times over the years so l decided to reach out to him. We chatted and sexted and sent pics back and forth as he went on how hot l was and how much he had wanted to meet me. But as we got deeper into conversation l sensed he almost never came to Lauderdale which he described as a “sex sewer” and was tremendously busy with his trade – buying fixer-uppers, rehabbing them and then flipping them for a solid profit.  So, thought l, if l went up his way, four hours from Lauderdale, and we hit it off he would probably be on his smartphone troubleshooting half the time. When l confronted him that l had once been on the work merry-go-round and realized only when l got off that there was more to life than just making money, his passionate demeanor went stone cold. “Making money is my life.”

End of that romance.

Motto of my story: enjoy your Latin lover for the time you’re together, but definitely hold off buying those matching diamond studded cock rings.

 

 

The Flip Side of the Possible HIV “Cure”

The Flip Side of the Possible HIV “Cure”

Researchers have succeeded in removing the HIV virus from the cells of laboratory animals, in effect, “curing” the specimen of the disease, and are confident that this miracle of gene splicing can be replicated in humans.

Great news, right? Not if you one of the thousands of HIV poz guys now collecting Social Security Disability and a lot of associated perks. I’m talking about the many we see down here in Lauderdale playing the system to the hilt while working off-the-clock jobs, using meth, and buffing up with steroids and human growth hormone, some of which comes with their medical coverage. I know at least three poz guys I’ve tricked with who refuse to go on the dole and earn their own way, and who like my buddies and I are fed up with these guys who are healthy enough to work but contribute nothing to society. In fact, there are twenty somethings who intentionally get infected to take advantage of this manna from heaven the rest of us underwrite through our taxes.

So what will happen when their HIV is “cured” and they no longer are eligible for Disability, free cosmetic surgery, free dental work, housing assistance and all the rest?

Stay tuned.

 

Get Ready To Move to Costa Rica …

…if Trump and his just announced running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence win. Pence is about as conservative as you can get, and was probably strongly “suggested” to Trump by the GOP Establishment to balance out his own rough edges. Pence is an Evangelical Christian, the equivalent of a Hasidic Jew in Judaism. He’s against gay rights, women’s rights, abortion – hell, he’s forty years behind the times – and if he had his way, he’d round us all up and put us in concentration camps in North Dakota. How a gay Log Cabin Republican can rationalize backing a ticket like this is beyond me.

 

“Looking for Mr. Goodbar:” A Cautionary Tale – For Today

I just caught the 1977 flick about the evils of the str8 swinging singles world of that era on TCM the other night  Diane Keaton is dynamic as the young professional feeling her oats in the early days of women’s liberation, and who pays the ultimate price when a trick gone wrong bludgeons her to death.

Though the film is almost forty years old, its message is as contemporary for both str8’s and gays as it was then.  I mean, if you’re a guy who plays the web or picks up a guy the old-fashioned way – in a bar – do you really know who you’re bringing home?

That’s why for starters I rarely connect, either on my turf or his, with a guy bigger than me who I feel I can’t handle, or have two guys in my house who I’ve never met before looking for a 3some.

 

 

It’s A Fact: Forty-one Percent of Gay Men and Bi’s Bareback

It’s A Fact: Forty-one Percent of Gay Men and Bi’s Bareback

And frankly that’s just the number who are willing to admit it, so chances are the total could be a lot higher. Published in the magazine AIDS, the study included info from a national HIV survey and showed in the space of nine years, the percentage of gay guys who did it raw rose from 29% to 41%.

So what does all this say? That the propaganda from the health authorities and gay health activist organizations about using condoms is going nowhere and perhaps was never all that effective.

Hell, l was living and playing in New York City, one of the epicenters of the AIDS crisis in the early eighties and was a frequent visitor to the baths where during the Sodom and Gomorrah seventies everything happened. As soon as the great medical minds figured out that this very, very bad virus was transmitted through bodily fluids, boys just stopped having traditional suck and fuck sex and retrograded to the j-o variety. At least for a while till the hormones and lust overtook us again.

Interestingly, unlike San Francisco which closed its baths, the bathhouses in New York City remained open though l remember the infamous St. Marks Bath being shut down either by the authorities or because the boys stopped coming

Before AIDS hit the deck, one barfly buddy of mine would boast about the disease of the month he had caught fucking like a bunny. My favorite was amoebas. I lost touch with him soon after that but l suspect Bobby Rosenberg was among the first wave to go six feet under.

So why the increase? It’s not because of the resurgence of bareback porn as one of the naive female readers of my erotic gay fiction hypothesized. Nor could the study correlate increased use of PrEP or other prophylactics with decreased condom use.

So are we just becoming more reckless? Think the disease has peaked when in hotspots like South Florida it’s continually on the rise? Or are fooled by the pharm propaganda that if you get infected, just pop a pill and everything will be fine?

If that’s the prevailing view, l’d like to introduce you to a couple of fifty plus boys l know who while technically still alive look like my father and are beginning to fall apart inside. After all, the track record of HIV drugs is only about 20 years old, so who knows at what point in time they will no longer be effective, and that assumes you’re leading a clean life, meth free. And stronger, more powerful drugs only mean your liver and kidneys have to work even harder.

As I’ve said many times before, in the end it’s your decision on whether or not to BB, not his.

Okay, I’d Wear That!

Okay, I’d Wear That!

Most times when I see the latest in haute culture for men by some freaky designer, their clothes are something you could only wear in metrosexual Manhattan. Just about anywhere else you’d be inviting a tire iron beating in some dark alley.

That’s why I found this FW16 men’s collection from Michael Bastian refreshing. I’d wear it if I were still in NYC – and could afford it.

But I’m a cheap fuck, and still wear T-shirts older than most of my tricks. Hell, if they still fit, and haven’t got more than one hole in them, why not?

Thanks to South Florida’s WireMag.com for the pics.

One Month Later …

An Apple a Day Keeps The Doctor Away? Well, 21 Loads a Month Keep The Urologist Away!

An Apple a Day Keeps The Doctor Away?

Well, 21 Loads a Month Keep The Urologist Away!

When l was a horny teenager l’d look forward to Saturday afternoons squirreling away in the family basement to jerk off over all those near nude male bodies that appeared in back issues of Sports Illustrated my baseball addicted uncle would leave behind. Hell, from that time on through my twenties and thirties it wasn’t uncommon for me to spill the juice two, sometimes three times a day. It was only when my demanding career and age overtook my life that my jo score card started getting lean.

Now there’s another reason besides feeling good to get it on with the mirror, some porn or a guy. A just completed study by Harvard reconfirmed the results of a similar study from 2004 that guys who shoot their loads at least 21 times a month have a 20% less chance of developing prostate cancer compared to guys who only do it four to seven times a month. Even 13 times a month will do the trick. Hey, l got my first professional job on the thirteenth of the month so thirteen has always been my lucky number. It’s thought cleaning out all those babymakers on a regular basis keeps everything – including the prostate that contributes to the batch – squeaky clean.

Viva le lust, promiscuity, high testosterone level or something like that, right?

Funny, when you look at studies of priests who are supposed to be celibate, the correlation between prostate health and sexual activity tends to be inclusive. Could it be like a friend of mine who was going to enter a religious life then changed his mind told me the seminaries were like gay bath houses? Or maybe getting on with all those choir boys had some good outcomes after all? I know, wash my mouth out with soap.

And according to a University of Texas study, two to three cups of butch coffee, not the decaffeinated dishwater variety, will promote better erections.

Hey, anything we can do to keep our junk healthy is worth the sacrifice, right?

Trim My Chest Hair? No Fucken Way!

Trim My Chest Hair? No Fucken Way!

Call me old fashion – hey go ‘head, l tell myself that everyday, but no manscaping for this guy  buddy. Maybe because l was in love with my furry dad or maybe because l’m in love with myself, but to me fur is what separates the boys from the girls and the men from the boys. Nothing is more sensual that raking you fingers through a guy’s pelt or he yours. Hairy chests, hairy abs, muscular hairy legs are all good but nothing gets my Daddy Dick stirring quicker than a nice firm furry butt.

But while the New York Times – yes the Times – reported that the groomed look in body hair was beginning to fade, stats from a poll conducted by Men’s Health prove otherwise. Almost 70% of men polled groomed their chest hair in some way and 12% went for the nude look. Only 20% like me never touched their rug.

Fortunately more than half of those men questioned left their leg hair alone – thank God. You know how many near misses I’ve had driving when some shirtless jogger with a pair of muscular furry legs comes into view. I guess ‘lm a legs man at heart. Why men would even think of shaving their legs, a femmie act l equate with girls, is beyond me but 15% of the guys polled by Men’s Health said they do.

Worse, according to the American Electrology Association, which represents those electrolysis Nazis, Floridian me, probably most of them living here in Penis Republic South Florida, represent 8% of l laser air removal nationwide. No wonder furry butts are becoming an endangered species

To each his own. I’m taking my body hair intact to my grave. If you really wanna know why, go ask my fuck buddies.

Another Installment of “Go Ask Daddy”

Another Installment of   “Go Ask Daddy”

Buddy: I met Tom last fall on a R.S.V.P. cruise. We were surprised when we found out we were both from Atlanta. We really clicked and six months ago decided to get an apartment to be together more and share some expenses. When l met Tom he had a good job and seemed responsible, but after he lost his job over a month ago he changed. Since l make more than him l offered to carry the rent and utilities until he could find work but so far he’s done nothing but play video games and surf the web. When l bring the subject up he ignores me or seduces me into a marathon sexfest so l forget. But now l’m even beginning to wonder if he’s screwing around on the side while l’m in the office. I’m getting increasingly frustrated but l still love him. What should l do?

Daddy: First start checking out one of the online roommate services or Craig’s List.  I think you’re gonna need it.

Then lay down the law. Your landlord or the electric company don’t take IOU kisses as payment do they? Try talking to him again. If he stonewalls you, communicate in a way he understands: text him. Tell him you still care for him but continuing to live this lopsided relationship isn’t healthy for you or him. And don’t let him distract you by whipping out his dick. Give him 30 days to find a job or find a new place to live. If he becomes belligerent or threatening, change the locks and give him the info on the nearest “You Store” where to find his gear. If you have to physically remove him, have a couple of your tough buddies around or slip a twenty to your local bar’s bouncer to do what has to be done. Then change the locks.

Love requires mutual respect, and playing the bum while you play sugar daddy doesn’t cut it. Yea it will hurt for a while, but if he’s truly repentant he’ll come around and apologize. If not, move on.

The Gay Male Baby Boomer: Then and Now – II

The Gay Male Baby Boomer: Then and Now- II

We’re all aware of the triumphs the BB Generation and the generations that followed have achieved since Judy Garland OD’ed and those gay boys and drag queens mourning her passing at the Stonewall that June night almost fifty years ago said enough already to those meandering cops. But all this progress has come at a price. Today’s young gay guys think they’re having fun but the real fun, the mystic of “Being in The Life,” of being a member of some secret society is gone. It’s no longer secret when the Supreme Court blesses gay marriage and you see a billboard for a gay hook-up site on the interstate.

Today, most baths, with the exception of maybe Chicago’s Steamworks, are largely the depository of BB and pre-BB gays, prancing around in stretched-out jockstraps, reminiscing about the old days when they looked as hot as the Men of Finland art collecting dust on the bath house walls.

Today, so many of the gay ghettos the BB Generation carved out of shit neighborhoods have gone mainstream, with our kind pushed out by high end yuppies, baby strollers and straight money. Witness S.F.’s Castro where what gay men are left – mostly BB gays since the young ones can’t afford it – are aging in place.

Today, the bars, once a haven for meeting guys, are now largely social venues to have a beer with your buddies on a Friday night as you rub shoulders with an increasing number of girly girls and kool straights, or where washed up BB’s who let excess or Father Time overtake them feed their alcoholism on 2-for-1 drink specials and google at chicken. Purist guy bars and leather bars are destined for extinction as those of us for whom they were created stay home, socializing with a few close knit friends, or entertaining ourselves with some porn and a few stiff drinks, as younger gays gravitate to the clubs, fondling their Iphones.

Are we, the guys who fostered the greatest acceptance of homosexuality since the ancients, now taking a back seat in its next chapter, being gay in 21st century America?

I think so.

And just like the Great Recession rocked society at large, there are as many have not’s among older gays who partied away their youth and have nothing (God – as in Government – will provide, I guess) as there are those of us who thought ahead about tomorrow. Yet, whether we gave all to our careers, content with a few friends and friendly fucks along the way, were party boys who were always waiting for Mr. Right, were just not gay life material, or loved and lost, there are many of us who find ourselves at 50 or 65 unattached and alone. Sure, there are the lucky ones with partners – what we used to call lovers – many of whose loveships have morphed into buddyships or “open” relationships, some purely financial, but for others, “ex’s” checker the landscape of our gay past. That’s why I think so many of us try to fill this void late in life with a double dose of unbridled hedonism, be it real or fantasy, particularly when there is no job or lover to straight jacket us.

Yes, I agree there are some of us who choose to be alone, who truly like living alone, and I must admit I’m one of them. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. Yet even jaded I get depressed when I see these old men on the beach with their buyguy forty something paramours – is that where those of us alone but with means are headed? – or I read this line in so many web profiles of guys 50, 57, or 62, the men of my generation, the men of my youth …

“Waiting for an LTR but in the meantime … ”

Have a fun Fourth – see you next Wednesday …

The Male Gay Baby Boomer: Then and Now

The Male Gay Baby Boomer: Then and Now

I’m a gay Baby Boomer or BB, a member of that giant bleep on the American demographic screen of guys (and gals) born between the end of WW II and JFK’s assassination. But I’m not going to play amateur anthropologist here, throwing a lot of stats and facts out at you. My admittedly subjective view of my generation is as a witness.

And a participant.

It was largely because of our numbers that when we were old enough to fuck we transformed gay life in America and did something the generations of gay men before us were too timid or intimidated to do: redefine “The Life” from a closeted, secretive, stigmatized existence of dark alley bars and close-ended dinner parties to one that resembled a year long circuit party on South Beach. We were young and, for those of us who had the goods, ready to enjoy every minute of it. And out of that tumultuous period was born Castro and Halsted and the wild side of NYC’s West Village.

Sure there were still the fems and the butches, a throwback to a time when over the top outward signals were the only way you could tell if he wanted you, but by the ‘70’s even the nelliest guys were wearing flannel and denim. Maybe it was because we all felt we had to prove we were men first, gays second, something today’s fully liberated gay youth don’t seem to care about. Then, it was all about facial hair and leather and hard won muscles to make sure no one dared fuck with us. Bear then meant a guy who was beefy and hairy, period. The bath houses, once the domain of the effete and the fat, became the playground of the fit and the hot, competing soon with warehouse sex clubs where you window-shopped looking for dick. It was at a long gone bath house on Manhattan’s lower West Side where you could suck dick for two bucks on a Tuesday night that I was introduced to poppers to which I became forever psychologically addicted and, to this day, associate with good sex.

But this was tame compared to the shit my cohorts were sniffing and snorting and shooting up to enhance their sexual experiences. Guy bars and leather bars where the pool table smelled of stale piss and beer blossomed in the back streets of almost every urban area of the U.S. because there were so many of us that it just made for good business. And gay porn, once veiled as artsy body builder propaganda, came out of the closet, too, big time, like a nine incher in 3D and Smell-o-vision.

I remember being at a New Year’s Eve Party on December 31, 1979, hosted by a Upper East Side buddy of mine who slept around more places than George Washington. The Village People were camping it up on TV, and it looked like, while the ‘70’s was the decade we appeared from the shadows, the ‘80’s would be the decade when we would arrive and take control.

That is until the party backfired and that Big Bad Wolf virus that had been lurking out there since the ‘50’s hit like a Tsunami, decimating our wild but naïve generation as hard as WW II did the young blonde Arian men of Nazi Germany. My Upper East Side New Year’s Eve host was one of the first to succumb. Before AIDS, syp, gon, or exotica like amoebas were the most you had to worry about, and we actually laughed, even bragged about going for penicillin shots as if health department clinic appointments were a sign of your prowess and virility.

But after the disfiguring deaths of the most beautiful among us started piling up and the great brains finally figured it out that you didn’t get it from toilet seats or a bad bottle of Rush but from fucking, the carefree wild lifestyle so many of us had enjoyed came to a halt and to this day has never returned to its rock hard brilliance. A bath house addict (I just found it more practical than standing in a bar all night), I personally witnessed the slow, agonizing demise of the baths and sex clubs as those of us who were smart or just lucky enough to survive the plague and still wanted to press the flesh were more hesitant about playing with the proper stranger. Lust had been replaced by trepidation, intimacy by voyeurism.

Those of us educated BB’s worked on our careers during these pre-cocktail years of the post Gay Liberation Dark Ages; if we were pretty, we led schizophrenic existences, white collar professionals by day, musty leather/levi men by night. If we came up short in the looks department, we checked out the personals in those quasi-commie weeklies that predated the web, or cautiously sucked dick in some bath house or backroom or bookstore when opportunity presented itself. Some of us even succumbed to societal, peer or family pressures or a need to propagate, and married and sired, while acting on our “deviant” desires in secret, only to leave straight existence years later when our yearnings to be true to ourselves eclipsed our sense of duty. Then there was the handful of us who paid more than lip service to political activism which, while it had its share of handsome men, always seemed to be spearheaded by the nerdy guys who I think were in it more to win hugs and kisses from the studs whom they knew they could never get in bed than for propelling the movement forward.

Separate from all this were both the pretty and smart or simply pretty who just wanted to have fun and continued the moveable feast unabated, content at working at schlock jobs like serving frustrated wives behind the perfume aisle at Macy’s, just to make enough dough to flick out of town for that hot weekend on Fire Island or Rehoboth Beach or Palm Springs or for that bag of crack. Save for retirement? Who’s gonna grow old?

What fascinates me today is how the web, which first surfaced in the very late 90’s, in so revolutionizing gay life and how we met other guys, has led so many of us right back into the closet. Those of us born at the beginning of the BB Generation are now collecting or about to collect Social Security while those on the other end of the timeline are approaching the Big 5-0. A minority of us egomaniacs, thanks to luck, good genes, cosmetic surgery or pharmaceutical assistance, have kept both our libido and shit together and can still stir some heads in the bars and the clubs and the “ten items or less” aisles of our overpriced gay urban ghetto supermarkets, often playing Daddy – hey, whatever works.

Many of us, however, have dropped out of the scene, content to hang up our jockstraps or meet our buddies for a beer and nothing more. We’ve either “been there, done that,” feel ostracized by young flesh that often laughs at the old faggots (unless they’re Daddylusters), or we just don’t drool over dick like we used to. Nor do straight guys have a monopoly on beer bellies and sagging tits and asses; us BB gay men just try to put a positive spin on middle age flab by calling ourselves bears.

So, along with all the other under 40 boys, we gravitate more and more to the web to get it on and off with some guy. Sometimes it’s for real, but often it’s second hand, whether the guy is two blocks or two thousand miles away or just a fantasy in your head. No condoms, no risks, and hell, you don’t even have to use mouthwash.

Then there are those infected in those early days who hung in long enough for the meds to arrive to their rescue but who, today, while survivors, still bear the scars of the wild indiscretions of their youth in wilted bodies and clouded brains which they attempt to hide from the world with heavy doses of steroids and cosmetic fillers. But these compensations can only go so far.

More next time …