R.P. Andrews's Blog, page 43

“Thou Protests Too Much…”

“Thou Protests Too Much…”

There’s a scene in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” where Hamlet stages a play to gear the reaction of King Claudius, who he thinks killed his father and then married his mother Queen Gertrude. As they watch this play-within a play, the Actress Queen, who is actually representing Gertrude, goes on and on how she will never remarry if her husband dies. Hamlet turns to his mother and asks her, “Madam, how like you this play?” Her reply: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” The line, modified to “Thou protests too much,” has since been used zillions of times when people go overboard on an issue.

Well, last night Chris Rock, host of the Oscars, definitely protested too much. What should have been a few quick, sardonic jabs at the lack of black nominees for this year’s awards turned into a sermonette against “whitey.” This annoying bullshit continued throughout the show in various vignettes, many involving Rock’s accomplice-in-arms, Whoopee Goldberg. Yet when Rock pulled his own stunt, having Asian kids trot out dressed in tuxes mimicking Price Waterhouse auditors in charge of the ballots, no one booed his racial stereotyping (Asians = good at math = get it?).

Enough already.

Yea, there were some great performances by black actors that should have been recognized, and the Academy itself admits most of its voting members are Caucasian and OLD, but if you were a Martian monitoring American culture from millions of miles away, you’d think half of America was a minority. No, my dear, blacks represent less than 20% of the population, and will soon by eclipsed by Latinos as our largest single minority group. Asians make up just 8%.

And, has anybody brought up the hard cold fact (if you don’t believe me, google, “Who Controls Hollywood”) that the entire entertainment industry, I’m talking about the people behind the camera, mostly white guys, who call the shots and come up with the dough are predominantly (should I dare say it?) Jewish? This dates back to the earliest dates of the movie industry when guys like junk dealer Louis B. Mayer, later of MGM fame, or furrier Adolph Zukor, who founded what would become Paramount, got into the business of the “flickers” because they saw a quick buck.

Proof in point: There’s no denying Steven Spielberg is a super talented director. But how many graduates fresh out of the USC Film School (which he later heavily endowed) get a full directorship at the get-go? No strings pulled? No piezonism? Me thinks yes.

Few, including Mr. Rock, bring up this reality – which may, at least in part, be responsible for this lack of diversity in the industry – because it would be “political incorrect.” Or, more likely, the end of their careers.

But enough said before I start sounding like Queen Gertrude.

Just How All American a Company is Apple Anyway?

Just How All American a Company is Apple Anyway?

Zillions of yuppies and guppies sleep outside their local Apple store every time the company farts out a new product or version of iPhone. (Its Dick Tracy watch was a flop. If you’re too young to know who I’m talking about, Dick Tracy was a popular cartoon detective of the 40’s and 50’s and something of a techie, who wore a wrist watch you could communicate with with both voice and pictures.)

But just how All American is Apple?

Tom Clark, its CEO, seems to be channeling Steve Jobs’ hutzpah, or maybe his tight-assed queen persona is coming out (I’m queer so I can say it) when he refuses to un-encrypt a phone used by a known terrorist/killer in the recent California massacre who no doubt was in touch with many very bad guys and gals. Clark’s justification, and those of Apple’s attorneys, that it would wreck the company’s entire encryption platform for everyone, is fucken ridiculous.

Actually, this is not an isolated case: local law enforcement across the country is looking for Apple to open many other locked phones tied to ungodly crimes but as with the high profile federal case, Apple’s answer is a uniform NO.

But that’s not the only reason I feel the Golden Apple has had a free ride for too long.

While maintaining only 10% of the global smartphone market, Apple generates over half its profits on iphones, selling as much as $600 and up. Materials average under $200, and all the assembly is done not here where it would generate jobs for Americans but in in places like China where workers earn under two bucks an hour and are treated like shit by Apple contractors. In the end, labor costs for a single phone come to about thirty bucks, just 2 to 5% of Apple’s sale price. Manufacturing an iPhone in the United States would cost about $65 more than in China, but no doubt their profit margin would still be huge.

Supporters of Apple’ stance say most of the components that go into Apple products are now manufactured in China, which would mean having to transport all that stuff to the states. So, can’t Apple just establish such a supply chain here and again give Americans jobs?

Critics of bringing the assembly back here also point out there aren’t enough low end U.S. workers. Bullshit. Ask the folks who live in the boonies where Walmart is or maybe was the only employer (the department store chain just closed 150 stores, many in Small Town America).

In a more localized effect, there’s also the Silicon Valley factor driving up rentals in places like San Francisco, pushing the average middle classer and creative types out of the city. Because companies like Apple bus their employees back and forth to work (Silicon Valley is only a half hour away) and these employees are making crazy salaries, the landlords in the City By the Bay are just taking advantage of the good old supply and demand principle in a town already tight on housing by raising rents to the stratosphere – and getting them. Like over three grand for a studio or over four grand for a one bedroom. If this continues San Francisco may become a town of techie nerds who in the end may kill the very cosmopolitan character that made SF desirable to them in the first place.

So just how All American is Apple?

You tell me.

Or maybe the crippled Supreme Court or the fucked-up Congress which supposedly is in bed with Apple will decide on the encryption issue and do the talking for all of us.

The Conclusion of “Picture Perfect”

The Conclusion  of “Picture Perfect”

“Sorry, I’m early,” said Eric in almost a whisper, fidgeting with his towel.

“No problem,” said Ralph, getting aroused by all that black hair that matted Eric’s chest and abs and legs, and not caring that he was. “Let me just get all this stuff off me.”

He watched as Eric watched him rinse off and could see from the rising bump on his towel that Eric was pleased by what he saw. But he made no move to join him. Instead, as Ralph stepped out of the shower, Eric lifted Ralph’s towel off the nearby hook and began wiping his back and butt ever so gently. Then as Ralph turned around, Eric threw the towel over his head and stared him straight in the eyes.

“You’re beautiful buddy, just fucken beautiful.”

For one of the few times he could recall in his life, Ralph felt himself blushing over another guy, and taking Eric’s right hand, he placed it on his own stiff cock.

“You had me at the first hello.”

Keeping his grasp on Ralph’s cock, Eric took Ralph’s hand and placed it square on the bump on his towel.

“Here’s looking at you, kid.”

“Movie buff?” said Ralph.

“Big time.” Eric grinned.

“Me too, ” said Ralph, smiling back.

When he was 14, Ralph went with Dad to a church flea market in nearby Clifton and was so fascinated by the heavy iron old movie projector with a “Thomas A. Edison” nameplate he found that he bought it for twenty five dollars and kept it high on the bookcase in his bedroom. The “hunk of junk” as his dad described it got Ralph curious about its past and in the library he found it dated from the earliest days of the movies. Soon Ralph couldn’t get enough about the old Hollywood, not the glitz, but how it had all come to be, and most of all the technical side of making movies. He decided right then he would become a cinematographer and go to the University of California’s Film School to become just that. Then, just three weeks before Ralph graduated Ridgewood High, Dad dropped dead of a heart attack at work. With no one to support Mom, Ralph put his dream on hold and went to work as a claims adjuster for Network Health in Manhattan. A year later Mom died of liver cancer, leaving Ralph little but his freedom. He soon got his own place across the Hudson in Lodi.

As they strolled slowly back to Ralph’s room, Ralph noticed Eric was limping ever so slightly but decided not to make anything of it.

“So where’s all your clothes?” Ralph asked as he slid the magnetic key card in the door slot. “You didn’t come off the street with only a towel on, did you?

“No,” said Eric grinning. “I stowed my stuff upstairs in one of the lockers. Figured I’d hit the bathhouse in case you weren’t interested.”

“Fat chance,” said Ralph and, and slamming the door behind them, he dropped his towel on the floor and threw himself on the bed. Eric wasted no time flinging himself on top of Ralph and wrapping his arms around his shoulders.

For what felt forever, they lay there saying nothing, Ralph stroking his hands slowly up and down Eric’s furry back and butt and Eric rubbing his beard against Ralph’s. Then almost as if they had rehearsed it, Eric flipped onto the other side of the bed as Ralph rose up on his knees and ever so slowly entered Eric’s furry butthole.

For the next hour, their bodies switched positions, Eric savoring Ralph’s cock, then Ralph’s his, then Ralph entering Eric again and again, first from the back, then with Eric lying on the bed facing him until Eric sprayed Ralph’s belly and chest with his cum just at the moment Ralph bred his new found buddy.

“I usually top,” said Eric wiping the sweat from his face with his hand. “But I think you’ve opened a Pandora’s box for me with that beautiful tool of yours, handsome. It’s like it was custom-made for my manhole.”

Ralph reached for the towel on the floor wiping the sweat from Eric’s torso which he then used to sponge off the cum from his own. Then they went outside to the courtyard to get some air and take a dip in the hot tub. They were the only ones there. Eric, whose Cuban grandfather had worked in the cigar factories of Ybor City, explained how what was today Ybor Resort back then had been the infirmary that the factories ran for the workers. Then they settled into the hot tub and kissed some more.

“You know, I’ve wanted you for almost a year now,” said Eric.

Ralph looked bewildered. “But why would you check out the Jacksonville listings?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then …?”

“You got me the very first time I saw you hanging up in Alberta’s Photo Gallery. I’m a paralegal and at work at a law office a few blocks away and made it a point to pass by every morning on my way in. It was better than the butchest coffee in town at picking me up.”

Laughing, Ralph told him the story on how his naked posterior had ended up larger than life.

“And then when I saw on furryguys that you were here in Ybor, well, that was it.”

They spent the rest of afternoon and evening and into the night napping, fucking, kissing.

Even when Eric swallowed Ralph’s load, Ralph stayed stiff enough to continue to fuck Eric until Eric came. It was as if they had been fuck buddies for years and knew one another’s every flash point perfectly.

And in between fucks, they played old Hollywood trivia, from how old Orson Welles was when he made “Citizen Kane” to how many dummies they had used in that crane shot of the Confederate wounded at the railroad station in Atlanta in “Gone With the Wind.”

“You know,” said Ralph that morning, after they had both cum the fourth time. “The next time we meet I think I’ll let you do it to me. Fuck my virgin butt, that is.”

“And there will be a next time, won’t there buddy?” said Eric as they got up and headed for the shower room.

“Sure, handsome, hell, we might even go to that TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood next spring together and show up Robert Osborne,” said Ralph.

Ralph returned to the room, still semi-wet, and fell back on the bed, happily exhausted.

Eric had headed upstairs for his things. Then came the knock on the door, but the fully clothed Eric who presented himself at the door was a different guy from the one Ralph had worshipped all night. Jeaned and t-shirted, he wore black framed glasses, and was leaning on a cane.

“Oh, this?” said Eric responding to Ralph’s stare. “I don’t usually meet guys for the first time with my surrogate dick – could be a big turn-off.”

“I didn’t want to bring it up,” said Ralph hesitantly.

“No, it’s not what you think.” said Eric. “I’m not a poz guy falling fall apart. I was in a bad car accident about a year ago that left my hip in fourteen pieces. I’m still going for rehab but I think this stiff rod here”- he held up the black stick in his hand – “is destined to be my companion for a long time.”

“But none of the stuff we did all night didn’t – well, didn’t hurt?”

“Hell, no,” laughed Eric. “It was worth two months with my very homely female physical therapist.”

They kissed. Eric promised to send Ralph his e-mail address over furryguys.com and they both promised to connect again, either here or in Jax soon. Then Ralph watched as Eric quietly walked down the corridor, his limp almost indiscernible, and into Ralph’s memory.

Realizing checkout time was only a few hours away, Ralph stopped by the desk and asked if he could pay for another day. While he needed to get back to Jax that evening – tomorrow was Monday and work – his body needed some sleep before he hit the road.

The cute balding manager who had shown him around on Friday admitted they had no one booked for Monday in any of the rooms and cut a deal where he could stay until 4 for $25. Ralph gladly whipped out his card, went back, set his alarm for 2 and dropped into a coma, too tired to even fantasize about all that happened.

Either he slept through the alarm or didn’t set his clock right, but it was almost 2:30 when Ralph opened his eyes. He immediately threw on some clothes, dumped whatever was still lying around in his duffel bag and, desperate for a line of caffeine in his veins before he hit the highway, decided to trot over to that little Starbucks wannabe in the square for a quick pick-me-up. While it had warmed up a bit, the clouds overhead looked threatening and he wasn’t crazy about driving in the rain on a slick 75.

He walked down East 7th Street intending to look one last time at the mural, but he was only half way down the block when he saw He was gone, the only vestiges that something had been in the window the thin dusty wires still hanging from the ceiling. And even though it was Sunday afternoon, prime time in a tourist town, the “Closed” sign was visible on the door. Imputing the gallery’s number into his phone’s contact list, he would call from home tomorrow to find out what had happened.

It started to sprinkle.

As he returned to his room, guzzling down his coffee as he walked, he could hear some commotion stirring at the end of the corridor. It was his resort tour guide from Friday and one of the twinks who cleaned the toilets up on ladders nailing Him to the now empty wall to the side the staircase that led to the whorehouse. All that tattered, yellowed ‘70’s kitsch was gone. And standing there with her back to him was, he soon learned, the Alberta of Alberta’s Photo Gallery playing supervisor. She immediately him reminded of Dorna Silvers from his Ridgewood High days, a tall, skinny, no boobs, tight bobbed babe who always hung out with her clone and fellow girls soccer team member, Lisa Gerrari. The talk was they were lovers but nothing every came of the rumor.

As she described Eric as the guy who had walked in that morning to purchase the mural for the Resort, she immediately blurted out, “Now I get it – you’re the cute guy in the – well up there!”

So someone had put two and two together. Finally.

And as he turned around to get back to his room, he could see a note sticking from under his door:

“Here’s looking at you kid.”

And under that was a phone number.

Suddenly Ralph didn’t care if it poured all the way home.

“Picture Perfect”: Part II

“Picture Perfect”: Part II

The next day – Saturday – began as a sunny, brisk day. The muffled voices of some news show commentators on a TV in a neighboring room lulled him out of his stupor, though venturing out for breakfast, he was surprised how quiet the rest of the corridor of hotel suites was.

As he was walking down one of the streets, intending to grab something at a small restaurant in the square he had remembered from the previous night, he passed a few antique shops, then a huge photo gallery. That’s when he caught it in the corner of his eye. There, hanging from wires in the gallery’s street front floor-to- ceiling window.

The mural.

His mural.

Ralph stood there for what seemed forever, surprised by what he saw and pleased that he hadn’t changed much at all.

What had it been? Three years, maybe longer when that graduate student from Columbia – Doug, right? – reached out to him on one of the hook-up sites, but not for sex. For his doctoral dissertation in fine arts, Doug was working on a photo project called “Guys in Their Living Space.” He liked Ralph’s toughie demeanor and asked if he would pose nude for him in his own apartment for the project, doing things guys do. The best of the shoot would be displayed, wall mural size, along with those of a dozen other men at some small gallery in the Village that April.

The shoot took a few hours and Doug, tall, thin and geeky, was purely professional about the whole thing. There were shots in Ralph’s tiny work kitchen, shots of Ralph trimming his beard in his bathroom, shots of Ralph sprawled on his living room sofa, and shots of Ralph in bed. All nude, of course, but tasteful. No erections here, more like Michelangelo’s soft-cocked Adam.

Nor did Ralph care if someone from work might end up seeing the exhibition. After all, he had sacrificed a lot of hours in the gym for that body so why not leave something of it to posterity? Hell, it might even earn him a few tricks.

Ralph never mentioned the mural even to his Manhattan fuck buddies Vinnie and Pete and the opening night of the exhibition in the Village Ralph went alone. Doug had selected the bathroom shot with Ralph’s face reflecting in his bathroom mirror, his firm fuzzy butt turned to the camera but with more than a hint of his thick uncut cock gently touching the door of the bathroom vanity. After pondering himself up on a wall, bigger than life, ten feet by six feet, and feeling a bit of a bulge in his jeans, Ralph stepped back and quietly observed the reactions of his admirers, mostly retro hippy collegiate types, with a sprinkling of older couples and smartly dressed yuppies. The only other gay men in the room were those like him up on the wall, all with friends or lovers. It looked to Ralph like he had been the youngest of Doug’s models.

Only one man, sixtyish, dressed in a blazer and slacks, actually recognized him as the guy in the picture and coming up to him at the refreshment table quipped, “Nice posterior, young man.” Doug was huddled most of the time Ralph was there with fellow geeks and, hesitant to disturb the little coterie, Ralph quietly left. It was getting to be bar time on Christopher and he had had his fifteen minutes of fame.

But how had the mural ended up here, more than a thousand miles away from New York in some photo gallery in Florida? Ralph had to wait until after breakfast and the gallery had opened to speak with the manager, an aged lady with a fluffy orange dress, still clinging to some genteel era of her life, who described how a guy who fit Doug perfectly had sold the mural to the gallery owner – a woman – almost a year ago. And, yes, while it was technically for sale, the gallery owner was more bent on keeping it as a “conversation piece” for her window and had even refused a few offers. Ralph didn’t let on to Miz Scarlet that he was the guy in the photo and she apparently didn’t make the connection or chose not to let on if she had.

He killed time at a small museum about Ybor City and, rambling around, discovered a farmers flea market in progress in a park a few blocks away. Back in his room, he found no responses from any of the guys he had lined up back in Jax and only two messages from local guys who wanted him to come to them. With the car safely stowed away in the municipal garage, Ralph wasn’t ready to drive around on strange roads just to get off.

Leaving his tablet on, he strolled over to the courtyard hot tub where he found two ancient bears in from Orlando bobbling in the water. He made small talk for all of ten minutes, then went back, figuring a nap might be the best way to spend the afternoon until things picked up. Somehow. Somewhere.

He was pulling the blinds closed in his room when he heard that familiar beep that he had received a message on furryguys.com. It was from “Just Another Guy’s Guy:”

“Hey, hot man, would you be available this afternoon? I live in the neighborhood and can come over if interested. Eric here.”

Ralph clicked on the guy’s profile. There were no tempting shirtless pics or ass or hard cock shots, just a portrait of an Italian or black Irish looking man, classically handsome, with wavy dark hair and beard and right on dark eyes. His specs read 42, five, seven, 145, moderately hairy, and he was a top/versatile.

Ralph was getting a hard-on as he typed his reply, “Sure, how’s 2? I’m staying at Ybor City Resort, Suite 17. Ralph here.”

He checked that the guy was still online and sat staring at the screen, waiting for a reply.

When ten minutes passed and none came, Ralph figured “Just Another Guy’s Guy” was just another one of those cockteasers he had encountered all too often on the sites, coming on to you, then suddenly vanishing when it was ready to close the deal. He walked back to his bed, and had unlaced his boots and stripped down to his underwear when he heard the beep again.

“2 is fine. See you soon.”

Though he made it clear in his own profile he was a top, Ralph was surprised the guy hadn’t interrogated him like guys usually did on what he was “into.” He lay in bed for about a half hour trying not to think about his date so he could catch a cat nap but when his dick refused to cooperate, Ralph bounced up, grabbed a towel and walked down the empty corridor to the shower room with its shiny white tiled row of stalls.

He was all lathered up when from out of the steam he heard a voice.

“Hello. Ralph? Is that you?”

Ralph turned off the faucets and pulled back the shower curtain.

There, standing just a few feet away, wearing only a towel, was a short, slim, lightly muscular guy who looked just like his profile picture.

Only better.

The conclusion of “Picture Perfect,” Friday…

 

 

 

 

“Picture Perfect”: A Love Story

“Picture Perfect”: A Love Story

From my short story collection, “Basic Butch,” available on amazon.com, “Picture Perfect” was inspired by two events in my life; a weekend romp in Ybor City (pronounced E-BOR), a minor but growing gay mecca in North Florida; and my participation in an unconventional photo shoot as part of a doctoral candidate’s dissertation. You’ll understand more what I’m talking about as you read my story, serialized for you all this week …

Except for the Sunshine Bridge that linked the mainland to St Pete’s and Tampa and was like driving over a roller coaster, it was a pretty smooth ride in from Jacksonville. Armed with his tablet and Samsung Galaxy and a list of potential Tampa area web dates Ralph had lined up while back in Jax – some had even given him their numbers to text them when he got in – he was confident he would have fun. He had also switched his home location from Jax to Tampa on the key sites to grab the Mr. Right Now guys while he was in town. Besides, Ybor Resort and Spa, the hotel he was staying at, had its own bath house built right in, and it was just across from the Eagle, Tampa’s leading leather/levi bar.

Hell, how could he not score?

Ralph had moved down to Jax just a few months after accepting that transfer as a claims adjuster for Network Health in Manhattan, a fart from Lodi, New Jersey where he grew up. It was either that or be out of a job at 42 in the middle of the Great Recession. And leaving it all behind – including NYC – was not that hard to do.

Over twenty years as an openly gay man had produced half a dozen Teflon romances and a running series of fuck buddies, while his dream man – a 5’ 6 furry in-shape clone of himself – seemed to elude him. Plus, the West Village, his stomping grounds as a leather/levi gay man, had morphed into a Disneyfied Condo Yuppie City. True, the Jax scene was pretty lame, but with the tight compact bod of his high school wrestling days which he kept up faithfully at the gym, the cherubic face of a choir boy, peach fuzz on his chest, abs and legs, and a nice, uncut 8 inch piece between his legs, Ralph continued to enjoy his little trysts. He expected no more – nor no less – this weekend.

Ybor City had once been home to the world’s largest cigar making industry back at the turn of the last century. It had fallen into decay after World War II when cigar manufacturing went from by hand to machine, but about twenty years ago, an artists colony emerged from the ruins and, with the infusion of tourist dollars, the old red brick and cobble-stone neighborhood was reborn as a visitors haven/entertainment center/gay mecca. Ralph liked the idea he could leave his car in the parking garage for the weekend and wander on foot aimlessly along its tight, cobblestone streets, much like in his old Village stomping days, something he missed in car-mania Jax where pedestrians were an endangered species.

Ybor Resort and Spa was a tired, whitewashed two story building but its inside belied its drab tenement exterior and Ralph was pleasantly impressed by its outside patio with its huge kidney shaped hot tub that reminded him of the courtyards of the Roman ruins he had seen in Italy on vacation. The floors of the corridor of hotel suites were inlaid with faded but intricate tile work as was his room, and the manager, a bald headed thirty-something guy, short and stocky and kinda cute, guided him up the wrought iron stairs at the end of the corridor to the bath house side of the place. Plastered all over the wall next to the staircase was that 70’s fantasy Tom of Finlandish poster art of beefy, furry men of a bygone era that Ralph envied he had been ten years too young to enjoy.

Having played the steam scene so many years in NYC, Ralph cut a deal with the guy to rent one of the claustrophobic cubicles upstairs for the weekend. Hell, if a guy he met was that hot, he could always bring him downstairs to his elegant digs. He called the four cell numbers he had with him, got voice mail on all of them, with auto-greetings that didn’t give him any idea whether he was dealing with a guy or a flake, and e’d the other three on whatever site they sat.

And waited.

It was about 8 when he ventured out of his room after a nap to find the streets, virtually empty when he arrived that afternoon, teeming with date nighters, yuppies and a few guppies if he looked close enough. He was eating a slice of pizza he had grabbed at one of the local storefronts in the quaint city square when his cell phone rang. It was Gary, one of his web contacts, a six foot, four burly man from his pics, bearded, but young, who liked short tops. He sounded O.K., and could meet Ralph back at the resort in about an hour. Ralph gobbled down his pizza and headed back.

When nine turned into nine fifteen, Ralph called Gary’s cell but got voice mail. He could sense from the growing din outside his room that guys were coming in off the street for the bath house upstairs. It was getting to be Prime Time and Ralph needed it bad. At nine thirty, with Gary still MIA, he left a message for Gary to call him on his cell when he got here. That is if he was even coming.

Donned in one of his favorite slightly stretched old white Haines jockey underwear and black boots with white crew socks, Ralph ventured up the stair case to Room 202. As he walked briskly around the labyrinth of corridors, he saw little to get him hard. Even the young ones were, well, ordinary, but, hell, the night was young, right? He positioned himself on the concentration camp mattress and with his door flung wide open and his cock feeling the effects of 50 mgs. of the Blue Pill, he waited for his thrill of the night to walk right in.

Instead, Ralph lay there for almost half an hour until a cramp in his left calf forced him up. Just then his cell rang. It was Gary. He had just arrived – traffic, he claimed – and he was heading upstairs. Ralph was sure of one thing – Gary sounded drunk. Fortunately, he was able to find him first before he discovered Ralph’s room. Dressed in a baggy black T and loose jeans, he was heavier and older than his pic and without a beard, his face looked as bloated as the rest of him. If there was an anything Ralph couldn’t stomach it was a guy who had to get plastered to have sex with another man and he had no problem telling him that. Unflustered, Gary staggered back down the stairs to the courtyard below, and Ralph went back to his room and shut the door.

When he felt comfortable the coast was clear and seeing not much traffic on his side of the corridor, Ralph slipped downstairs to his laptop and checked his mail. There was only one message that had been posted on butchbobsbottomboys.com just a few minutes before by some guy with no pics and practically no info on his profile except that he was from Tampa. Ralph could tell by his message he had seen Ralph upstairs:

“Think you’re so hot marching around in your tighty whities and your butch boots. Well you aren’t, you little fuck.”

Ralph e’d him back: “It’s easy to dis somebody when you don’t have the balls to even post what you fucken look like? Afraid you’d sink the site?” Then he blocked him.

Ah, but there was still the Eagle right next door, right? Quickly, Ralph pulled off his underwear and slipped on his tight gray jeans (he never wore underwear under his levis when he went out for the night), threw on his favorite K-mart red tee that he had worn in high school, stuck a grin on his face, and trotted over to the bar.

He expected that with it being almost midnight and a Friday night, the place would be packed with some hotties but all he found were a few over 40 kind of ordinary looking guys with glasses dressed in Ralph Lauren polos and slacks, chitchatting with the shirtless bellied bartender. He bought a Bud Lite which he nursed until 12:30, when he reluctantly went back, stripped down, now with only a towel around his waist, and canvassed the bath house again.

A few fem-fatties and a scrawny, pock-marked black guy were sitting in the lounge area watching some porn on the big screen above. He ventured into the almost pitch black orgy room and could hear some sucking and moaning but was afraid what might decide to grab him. The sauna and steam room were deserted and the only other room with the door open contained an old guy on his stomach in the shadows, his prune butt facing the door.

Then he spotted them. Two forty-something guys, friends, lovers he wasn’t sure, tall, smooth and sinewy, with tight crews and a day’s growth on their tough faces, trotting with that typical butch strut down the opposite end of the corridor. Ralph stood his ground and kept his eyes fixed on them. But as they passed, there was no reaction, not even a side glance. Nor any reaction when, a few minutes later, as Ralph lay slovenly on his mattress, they passed his room twice.

Around 2, as he rambled back down to his suite, realizing his only sexual salvation was some laptop porn, Ralph wondered whether the weekend – and Ybor City – had all been one big fucken mistake.

Part II, Wednesday …

 

 

 

It’s Love Week With Ray: There’s Just Sex and Then There’s Intimacy

It’s Love Week With Ray: There’s Just Sex and Then There’s Intimacy

There are those of us who have been burnt in relationships where one loved more than the other, who are tired of the emotional roller coaster ride relationships can bring, or who have a significant other who no longer gives us what we need in the way of sex and intimacy but who we stay with for other practical reasons – co-mingled lives, financial realities, or just the desire not to grow old alone. But our need for intimacy remains and so we turn to sex to compensate, since sex, in the end, is so much easier to find. The more men we have sex with, the more we’re loved, right?

I’m also convinced guys use coke and meth during sex to heighten the experience and put them in some state of euphoria so that the guy they just met – and who they may not even be strongly physically attracted to – suddenly becomes the love of their life.

That is, until the drugs wear off.

The same holds true with the loneliness I sense in all these guys on the cyber hook up sites that hit me up to either fantasize about having sex, sex that conveniently will never happen because thousands of miles separate us, or who just want to shoot the breeze with a fellow brother. And not just guys in the boonies where you would expect it, but also guys in some of the largest urban gay meccas where men are as plentiful as cockroaches, who ironically, either by choice or by default, are as isolated as some farmboy in the middle of Nebraska. We all know technology has killed most bars (and even most bath houses) as cruising grounds where you could look the guy in the eye before you grabbed his crotch. Just count the number of men the next time you’re out who are on their smartphones GPS’ing their latest hottie who is sitting on a toilet seat ten and a half yards away. Instead of catching the eye of the guy across the way who wants them. And who maybe, just maybe could change their lives.

Could it be all that soulful hugging we see in the bars when buddies get together, whether or not sex has been or is in the picture, could all this genuine camaraderie be their way of expressing an intimacy they don’t experience much anymore between the sheets?

Instead, too many of us sit alone in the dark by our laptops, content to conduct our social and sexual lives on a screen, where fantasy is better than reality because we can mold our fantasies into just about anything we want, create personas that make us more desirable than we could be in life, or have 10 message sexual encounters, laced with virtual intimacy. Jerking off with a guy in Dubai somehow makes you feel connected even if all he and you are are 0’s and 1’s

Maybe it’s a sign of the times, a fall-out of living in such a modern age, that true intimacy between two human beings has been lost when we need it the most.

For me some of the most satisfying in-the-flesh sexual experiences I’ve had have had little to do with hard cocks and hairy butts. It’s when the two of us, obviously turned on by one another’s physicality and masculinity, can just lie there silent in one another’s arms and forget for a brief moment the outside world exists.

It’s Love Week with Ray: Loving A Fuck Buddy (Or Two Or Three)

It’s Love Week with Ray: Loving A Fuck Buddy (Or Two Or Three)

Can you love a fuck buddy and still stay fuck buddies?

Sure you can.

Once or twice, you’re sex mates. But when you continue to enjoy one another, the third, fourth, and fifth time, even more passionately than the first, you’re closet lovers with no baggage.

So what’s so wrong with that?

Like I told you earlier this week, I’ve had a partner for more years than most str8 marriages have lasted, but how many of us with a long term other half – str8 or gay – get the attention or affection or just plain sexual release we still crave after the blush is long off the rose? Maybe that’s why – no, I know for sure that’s why – we attempt to find all that in the arms of a stranger we barely know, and being selfish about it, not wanting to lose whatever we have in a relationship that still makes sense – financial security, companionship, or just plain someone to argue with. Whether it be at work, on vacation, off the web or in a whorehouse. As long as it happens and the chemistry is there.

If you’re like most sexually active guys, rolls in the hay come and go like yesterday’s news, but there are a handful of men who forever linger in your memory bank, like the dozen or so iconic furry men I ever slept with that I talk about in my memoirs, “Journal of a Furry Man,” (available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.) Back when I lived in New York, I had a trio of regular fuck buddies, two of them partnered like me, but down here in Teflon Lauderdale, most guys, even those you really like or say they like you, turn out to be one fuck wonders. So that’s why I’m surprised that just in the last year or so I’ve been able to develop continuing relationships with three objectively handsome guys, all about my height, and all essentially into oral sex, who when we’re together are as passionate as first time lovers.

BTW, as a local sex and love advice columnist put it, ”There’s a mistaken tendency to believe that penetration is the only act worth performing … part of the wonder of sex is discovering your partner’s body ..”

Top on my A list is fifty something Ted, a very furry, beefy, regular guy with an impish, boyish smile, a high school drop-out from Tennessee, who served in Germany in the Army, where he got his GED and fucked around in Berlin where he went from being a neg country boy to a poz one, then came back to work for a car dealership in North Florida. He soon got the itch, like many who long for the warmer weather and breezy lifestyle of South Florida along with the liberal benefits for HIV poz guys, and moved to Lauderdale where he got hooked on meth. The first day on his new job, he was so wired he barely finished his first sale when they gave him the boot. It was soon after, three months behind on his rent and ready to be evicted, that Ted, oblivious to his pressing reality, reached out to me on Manhunt. “I think we could have some fun,” he wrote.

He was dead on right about that.

Funny how you know whether you click with a guy within three minutes of meeting him, and both of us, maybe because we were kinda clones of one another, fell for each other in a blink. The furry beefy bodies we rubbed and stroked and licked, the hairy manholes that made my rim chair a throne of pleasure, nicely proportioned cocks and our laid back demeanors made it all deliriously delectable. And it remains that – yes, as hot as ever – almost a year later. Ted now works as a security guard for one of the universities and could be drug tested on the spot at any time, but whether at my place or the one bedroom he rents in a house just ten minutes from mine, the lust is as strong as the first time we laid eyes on one another. Ted’s no dummy, but I’m continually amazed by so many guys I encounter down here like Ted who, at an age when I was eyeing retirement, have virtually NOTHING, and view the future with a blank stare.

Ever have a guy with a body as tight as a drum and not an ounce of fat anywhere on him? Huh? Well, that describes Matt, my fuck buddy who’s a very close second to Ted who I met on nastykinkpigs. Uncharacteristically furry for a Columbian, a six-day-a-week gym rat, and an educated fuck, he’s a physician assistant who left Southern Cal for South Flo and is preparing to take his P.A. exam for here. A flicker? You know, a gay guy who always thinks the grass is greener elsewhere? Maybe, but who cares?

Jet black hair with matching eyes and a hot goatee, Matt has a tight furry hole I could lose my tongue in, and have a few times He’s 42, and likes his daddies (he lives with one), and thinks I’m the hottest daddy he’s ever bedded down with. Should I complain coming from a guy who’s old enough to be my son?

Fuck no!

The most elusive of my current trio of fuck buddy/lovers is Doug, who’s an exec at a local advertising agency. The first time we connected off Adam4Adam, he was so aggressive the instant we entered my bedroom, I threw him out. A month later, he hit me up again, apologizing but blaming lust for his behavior, and I reluctantly agreed to give him one more shot, but with the some cautionary advice, “Let’s take it slow this time.” And that made all the difference in the world.

He had just turned 50, about five eight, smooth, with rugged good looks and a shock of sexy steel gray hair, but when I rubbed my fingers across his chest and down his abs, I felt stubble. “Don’t fucken shave if you want to see me again.” He hasn’t, and while not as hairy as me has enough fur to keep my fetish – and cock – very happy.

Our sex is mainly frottage, he playing my coach, the two of us in jock straps and cut away tanks, working one another’s super sensitive nips that are hard wired to our cocks, his a bit bigger and thicker than mine. But outside of what he does for a living – “”You have a real job,” I told him – – I know little else about Doug, and I wonder at times if he’s married – to a man, or maybe a woman, maybe even has kids – but it’s not my business to pry. After all, we ain’t exchanging diamond studded cockrings. All I know is, like clockwork, I’ll get a text from him around six on a Friday night checking to see if I’m free and end up playing till 1 when he claims he has to leave to walk his two dogs

Yet my liaisons with this elusive fuck buddy/lover are hotter each time we connect, and I think it was after the fifth time that I jokingly quipped, “You know, I usually get bored with a guy after the second go-around. But, you, you keep it interesting.”

“Ditto,” Doug replied and it’s been “ditto” eight times since.

It’s Love Week with Ray: (You Haven’t Finished Off All Those Chocolates Yet Have You?) So Let’s Start with George …

It’s Love Week with Ray: (You Haven’t Finished Off All Those Chocolates Yet Have You?) So Let’s Start with George …

.. who I’ve been partnered with longer than most American marriage have survived, George, a Syrian-American, who obviously has influenced a great deal of my writing and has ended up on the pages of my books in one form or another. But the real surprise is how and why we stayed together.

It was 1971. I had been in L.A., completing my master’s degree at the University of Southern California, but unable to find a job on the Left Coast, ended up back living with my overbearing folks back in Jersey. Well, Sunday afternoon beer busts in Manhattan’s West Village were perfect for gay boys like me who still lived with their parents. You could hit the bars around 5 or 6, and if you got lucky, connect with a guy with a place nearby and be home like a choirboy by 9.

I think we all know the type of guy who turns us on from the first nanosecond our cock stirs when we see him, and for me Club Med men were my drug. Italian, Greek, Middle Eastern, as long as they were shorter than taller, beefier than skinnier, with plenty of dark body hair and at least a Mark Spits moustache to match.

And for me on that balmy August Sunday evening, that guy’s name was George, the man who I would spend the next two thirds of my life with, even if those years were far from perfect.

I spotted him in the back of the Roadhouse, a popular guy’s bar, munching peanuts from a barrel and bullshitting with some other guys who looked like buddies. Average height, he had a face that was a cross between a young Omar Sharif and a young John Stossel, black curly hair, thick black moustache, with square shoulders and a beefy demeanor like James Caan and, if his half unbuttoned flannel shirt didn’t lie, just as hairy.

I kept staring his way, off and on for the next half hour, as did he, that is, once he realized I was looking his way. But no grin or smile or dead stare to tell me he was interested. I guzzled another beer, and when I saw he was all alone, I swallowed my pride, and took off my two dollar K-Mart red T-shirt to see if all my fur would get his undivided attention.

It did.

Then, pretending I was on a movie set doing a scene with the crane camera following me across the bar, I walked right up to him with a pick-up line he never let me live down:

 

“What’s a good looking guy like you doing in a place like this?”

He laughed, I think more at my unoriginality than anything else, introduced himself and, in a Brooklynese accent that made my Jersey twang sound like the King’s English, asked if I wanted to go for coffee across the street. He was all guy – no nelly handsome hunk here – and I flipped my T-shirt back on as out we strolled.

For the next half hour or so over coffee, we chatted about the things two strangers chat about. George worked in the back offices of one of Wall Street’s brokerage firms, and lived with his older sister, Jeannie, in Bay Ridge, a neighborhood populated by second and third generation Syrians just like him. It was Jeannie who with his brothers raised him, a change of life baby and ten years younger than his youngest brother, after their parents died in a one-two punch when he was 5.

But all that kept going through my mind as I stared at his hairy, hairy chest and into those deep, brown eyes was that I wanted him, wanted him bad – even that fucken Brooklyn accent was a turn-on – and there was no place for us to go.

Finally, I popped the question.

“Listen, sexy man, you interested in playing?”

“Maybe,” he replied with a sly but hesitant grin.

“Well, since I live at home and you live at home, maybe we can sneak down to the trucks.

I hear sometimes one of them is open and guys will go down there …”

Those were the days when the trucks lined the Meat Market section of West Street on the river, not the sleek sterile condos of today, and I had gone down there a few Saturday nights but hadn’t been courageous or stupid enough to explore what all the moaning inside in the shadows was all about.

“No, not for me.” He answered strongly back, almost as if I had insulted him.

“I’m sorry, I just thought … ..”

“Listen, give me your number, I’ll call you during the week. There’s a flophouse hotel in the twenties I’ve taken some girls to. Maybe we can go there.”

“So you’ve seen both sides of the fence?” I replied, me a guy who had never even dated a girl.

“Yea, I gotta be honest with you, I’ve only been out a few years, still kinda closeted, and frankly most of this fucken life you can shove down the toilet. But I’ve fessed up to myself that I like guys more than girls, and like Willy Sutton once said, I rob banks ‘cause that’s where the money is. I go to gay bars ‘cause that’s where the men are.”

I learned later George had almost walked down the aisle twice but, unlike a lot of guys pressured by family or friends, had managed to escape the ring boy.

We shook hands like two str8 guys, then I went on my way and he on his. I hit a couple of more bars, felt both elated and depressed, and drowned that bittersweet ache in my stomach with a few more drinks before I aimed my Chevy Vega for the Lincoln Tunnel and home.

I didn’t expect to hear from him again, but was pleased I had not stood like I usually did, like a cigar store Indian all night, cruising, wondering, hoping but doing nothing. At least I had made a move.

But two days later in the office, I got the call.

It was George. He gave me the address of the George Washington Hotel and asked if I could meet him after work around 6 the following day in front of the place.

“OK, once I know the room number, I’ll come down in about ten minutes and let you know, then we both go in acting like we don’t know one another and go up the elevator.”

These were the days before cell phones, and Gay Liberation was still in diapers.

Inside, behind the locked door and windows shaded in plastic shower curtains, George went from hesitant to horny, enjoying my fur as much as I did his. We sixty-nined on a bed with yellowed sheets smelling of urine and a thousand musty johns. He lit up a cigarette when we were done – he wouldn’t give up the weed for another year when his asthma got the best of him – then gave me a kiss which I didn’t expect from a guy who was a fart from being bi-sexual, and said energetically, “I think I just might fall in love with you, cute guy.”

GW became our default address for a few more romps – oral sex was fine by G, who even loved to rim but never brought up the f word. Then came a weekend at a gay resort in upstate New York called Roundtree which, while not exactly in terrific shape, gave us a chance to be together for more than a few hours. It was at Roundtree that I also met Charlie, G’s lumbering beagle, who would be the first in five generations of dogs we would own, love and bury in the decades ahead – all told an even dozen.

By now we were talking about getting an apartment together, G to get away from his clinically diagnosed schizophrenic sister Jeannie who he was left with after all three of his brothers had moved out of their Bay Ridge, Brooklyn walk-up and married; and me from my hyperactive, slightly psychotic Jersey parents.

So what was a middle of the road place to move to for a guy from Brooklyn and a guy from Jersey? Well, of course, NYC’s forgotten borough, Staten Island, which I had never heard of before. And we landed a two bedroom, two bath apartment with a terrace and a to-die-for view of the Verrazano Bridge for just six hundred dollars a month. And the landlord even allowed pets. It seemed perfect.

I had less of a problem cutting the apron strings since my parents were about ready to sell their house in Wallington and take early retirement in a 55 plus community in South Jersey. But though G’s sister was stable, on meds and collecting SSI which her brother had fought hard for her to get, George still felt a ting of guilt about leaving her all alone and made his weekly visit to her a given til the day she died, prematurely at 57 and alone, from I what still believe to this day was a fucked-up combination of heart meds and psychotropic drugs her docs never picked up on. I saw her frequently and found her to be a very quiet, deeply introverted woman, almost an echo of myself years before I broke out of my shell. Over the decades ahead, we would share in the deaths of his brothers, their wives, my parents and my aunts and uncles. Til no one was left but his adult niece and nephew and my sister, brother-in-law and their kids.

Which meant quite simply there was no one we could really count on but one another.

Just before we moved to SI, G coaxed me into taking a long weekend to P-town which he had apparently gone to almost religiously every July Fourth week with some gay friends from work who he claimed were the ones responsible for bringing him at least half way out of the closet. I found the drive, particularly those last miles on Rt. 6, to be an eternity and the quaint seashore town a bore by the second day. But that weekend did give me an opportunity to find something out I had been meaning to ask G for a while but didn’t have the balls to.

So one afternoon, while he was taking a nap, I snuck into his wallet and pulled out his driver’s license.

Shit, he was 35!

Older than he looked and almost 10 years older than me. At that point, I thought it wouldn’t make any difference, but as we co-habited I found this generation gap was a serious canyon to cross in our relationship.

For you see, I had come out on the cusp of Gay Liberation and had no real hang-ups about being gay or about the gay scene. Meanwhile, George had had his first fuck – with a woman – when I was still in grammar school, and had entered young manhood in the ‘50’s when “The Life” was still hush-hush, a stigma he never outgrew.

Then there were our differences in interests. He was a fanatical New York Mets fan, and when he was watching a game, (often 5, 6 times a week), I couldn’t say a word. I, being the nerd, found sports, particularly baseball, and a yawn and, interested in infant technology, gravitated to collecting mechanical antiques like Edison cylinder phonographs, turn of the century typewriters and old cameras. All of which G thought was junk.

After we had just moved to SI I, by luck and timing, landed an assistant director’s job in the PR department of a local hospital, St. Vincent’s, which cut my commute from an hour and half by ferry and subway to fifteen minutes in my car, a reality G, wedded to Wall Street, envied. And as I began to make some real money, I decided to pursue long time wanderlust: travel. Ah, but while couples would automatically travel together, I soon realized I was with a guy who among his many phobias couldn’t eat foreign food (not even a cake made in Canada), nor fly. In the beginning it was awkward and a little scary to travel alone to strange, often forbidding places, but as I got more seasoned at it I came to prefer the solo route. During the 70’s and 80’s, when it was still cheap and airport security was a kiss on the wrist, I went all over the world, playing strictly tourist -no sexual dalliances – in Egypt, Greece, Russia, Italy, Europe, Central and Latin America, Australia, even Slovakia, the land of my grandparents birth, when it was still Commie and your life was neatly laid out for you. All while G munched pretzels watching his beloved Mets, Jets, Islanders – name the season, he had a team.

About the only quirk we had in common, besides a conservative political streak, atypical for two gay men, was that we were both Type A’s, all CAPS, which didn’t always work well either if we didn’t agree on what was worth getting Type A’d over.

Now if sex were still in the equation, maybe the rest wouldn’t matter that much. But by six months into our cohabitation, George showed less and less interest in me or frankly anybody else though in our later knock-down arguments about my fucking around he would admit boldly to a tryst or two along the way. Saturday nights he preferred watching TV to going out, but I, who had worked all week in the burbs, needed the decadence of the West Village streets. So I went out alone.

Picking up a gay rag one night in the Eagle, an iconic Village levi/leather bar, I noticed an ad for a place called “Man’s Country.” It was a bathhouse in the West 20’s (easy parking) and for two bucks on a Tuesday night you could get a locker and play for four hours.

I had never done the bathhouse scene before, not even in LA, but used the excuse of running evening community seminars at the hospital as my cover. And there we were – all of us young, virile gay boys, in the prime of our sexiness, screwing like there was no tomorrow – all for the price of a light bulb. It was there that a trick introduced me to poppers which to this day I am psychologically addicted to and associate with good sex. He also gave me the tip on how to avoid a headache if you did too much of the shit – drink plenty of water.

Had I known about the baths before G and I had met, we probably would have lasted two weeks. Looking back now, I was never the marrying kind.

And raising the issue of an “open” relationship or even just a plain buddyship was never in the equation with G who abhorred gay culture and would take an argumentative stance on almost everything. Most guys – and str8’s – would argue about money and infidelity. We would argue about what plants to put on the terrace. It was either G’s way or the highway.

But stay with G I did, maybe because he was responsible and did his share of the shopping and cleaning and all the other shit that goes along with living; maybe because we’ve buried family and ten dogs, and gone through health care crises together. Or maybe because we shared financials which just made it easier.

Or maybe because, to this day, I never met a more str8 gay man or more real guy than G.

And after forty three years, I know I never will.

 

What Scalia’s Death Means For Us

What Scalia’s Death Means For Us

You know the lyrics to Rihanna’s top ten hits but you don’t know who Scalia was? Get your head out of the gay pop culture sewer and wake the fuck up.

Scalia was a Supreme Court Justice, an arch conservative who was dead set against the Court approving gay marriage, who died in his sleep Friday night. Given his rotund physique it was probably death by pasta. But up to now the Court has been split down the middle, half conservatives, half liberals, with the very independent Justice Anthony Kennedy often providing the deciding swing vote. It was his vote that made gay marriage a reality. So whoever nominates and gets his – or her – pick through the Senate and tips that scale one way or the other, can influence Court decisions long after half of us are dead or drooling in a nursing home, and you young hotties are collecting Social Security. (Scalia was nominated over thirty years ago by Reagan, who won the all-time Oscar as best performance by an actor in the most leading role possible. President.)

If Obama can get the Senate to agree with him, that pick will surely be a liberal. But that’s a plot line out of one of those dewy-eyed gay love stories. That’s because the Republican controlled Senate has already vowed to stonewall him and delay the appointment until the next President who they hope will be one of their boys. If that happens and a tight assed conservative is appointed, liberal causes will have as much a chance of passage as you picking up a hottie in a gay bar on a Monday afternoon.

Or Obama could just appoint someone when Senate is in recess and tell them all to go fuck themselves. He’s got less than a year left, and they’ve fought him on everything else. So what has he got to lose?

Let’s see what happens.

Okay, So Today’s Valentine’s Day…

Okay, So Today’s Valentine’s Day…

… and all the gay rags here in Lauderdale, and I’m sure elsewhere, ran story after story of local “true loves.” Now I’m no angel, having been a partnered philanderer for years (hey, he don’t want it anymore and I ain’t ready to hang up my jockstrap), but I know at least three couples profiled that fuck around like bunnies together and solo. How do I know?

I’ve had ‘em.

One profiled couple included one of my doctors who I ran into the other night at the Ramrod, our leather bar. While I chit-chatted with Mr. M.D., his other half, after giving a quick hello kiss, continued negotiating a threesome with some bodybuilder.

Okay, so is love and marriage and recreational sex on the side mutually exclusive? Hell, no! According to some unidentified survey info, again published this week in our gay pubs, 8 out of 10 guys are looking for an LTR (only 41% want to get married), but it seems once they find one, they can’t wait to fuck around again, of course, without letting go of what they have for social, legal and/or financial reasons.

According to my own very unscientific survey based on my sleeping around, I’d guesstimate at least one out of three guys on the web which is where most guys seek non-anonymous sex, are partnered. How do you know? Most of the shit on-line is flirtatious, guys even settled down do it to feel they are still desirable. But the big deal breaker when the two of you sound like you really want to get down and dirty is that neither of you can host (granted, sometimes because your forty something hottie still has four roommates), or the poor guy tells you his other half practically has his chastity belt key around his neck. (My other half lost mine a long time ago when he was walking the dogs.)

Yet those who have their shit together – have a good job, are a professional, or have their own legit business, (dealing meth is not one of them) own their own home or condo, etc. – find it hard to identify a guy of equal quality. And the older you get, no matter how you wail on about wanting an LTR, the less likely you are to compromise and give up your side of the bed.

One of my gym buddies, single, summed it up this way: “Most of the guys in this town are paired off. But that doesn’t mean they still have sex with one another. Hell, one couple I know just got married and they’ve got separate bedrooms!”

So on this Valentine’s Day, when guys are supposed to vow true fidelity to one another, is monogamy just another gay myth?

Now I’m a traditionalist: I define monogamy very strictly. You have sex with one another and only one another, not together with another guy.

And God bless those who can live that gold standard. But I’m fucken tired of the gay fantasy propaganda that depicts two guys in forever monogamous bliss. Or the whole gay marriage movement which implies monogamy is good. And the only way.

So where does all this “till death do us part” monogamous mental attitude come from? A rip-off of str8 society mythology that some of us still think we need to emulate to be truly happy? The gay media that again like this time of year shows beaming young and no-so-young lovers? Gay fiction, the kind my publisher presses me to write, not my rough and ready reality stuff? Gay fantasy? The lesbian component of our grand community since two women tend to be more loyal than two guys? (Like a gay female faculty member when I was teaching college put it, “When two guys get together, it’s sex. When two girls get together, they’re married.”)

Who knows?

I just think those who hold this monogamy sword above our heads as something we should strive for should cut the shit. That’s not what many of us want nor should we need to.

So are people like me really scum, when we “fuck around on the side?” (And I’m not looking for forgiveness or acceptance. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a fuck.) Or are we just looking for transitory physical release, a momentary recreational diversion or ego kick, but recognize we have much more in our relationship? After all, in the end, finding sex is easy. Finding someone on your life wavelength is a miracle.

I’ll be kicking off my “Love Week with Ray” tomorrow with a profile of my other half, how we met and why we’re still together (no, he’ not supporting me, I’m the one with the money); how you CAN love a fuck buddy (or two or three), the difference between intimacy and sex, followed the week after by a serialization of a love story from my “Basic Butch” anthology.

Now go out and hug/kiss/suck/fuck somebody, even if it is love in the fast lane.