R.P. Andrews's Blog, page 71

Is Masturbation Going The Way of the Landline Phone?

Can we talk?

You know and I know nobody knows how to get you off better than you.

But according to a study conducted by Indiana University, masturbation, if not a dying art, may still be in trouble. In its survey conducted in 2013, 16.5% of males 25 to 29, at the peak of their sexiness and testosterone levels -that’s almost one out of 5 – NEVER masturbated the entire previous year. And the numbers get worse the older you get. Twenty percent of guys in their thirties admitted they hadn’t shot a geyser the whole year, and with 50+ guys it was one out of three.

Hell, when I was in my twenties and thirties, I was jacking off twice a day. Even today – well, let’s just say I’m not in the 28% of guys over 50 who are keeping it in their pants.

OK, though, even with those percentages, the vast majority of us apparently still know how to make ourselves feel good, real good. But considering all the exploding 24/7 avenues for getting up and getting off, streaming porn sites, hook-up sites with their alluring profile pix, camming, etc., etc, etc., etc., you would think the numbers would be going up, not down.

Does that mean the rest of us masturbate at least once a year or don’t need to masturbate at all because we having in-the-flesh – S-E-X? With our partners or gentleman callers?

I doubt it given all the guys I encounter on Manhunt or bear411 or adam4adam, with and without other halves, who say they like me and I like them and the distance between us is a few miles not light years, yet who flake out when you ask the burning question: when and where?

(Methheads don’t count. They’ll pulling on their dicks feelin’ good as they dirty talk to you, but nothin’s happening downstairs with Willy.)

So what’s the problem?

Are we becoming increasing jaded to sex because of all the titillation everywhere we look that’s supposed to horn us up and is actually having the reverse effect?

Has stress and bullshit overtaken our lives?

Are we playing with our phones when we should be playing with our pensises?

Are more of us taking an oath of chastity? (Who says the priesthood is dead?)

Are guys waiting for that phone app still being kept under wraps by the gurus of Silicon Valley that they’re gonna call, “Beam Me up Scotty!” Where you’ll be able to cum without an erection and without touching yourself. (technically not masturbation, right?)

Or is it true like a pharmacist friend of mine has theorized that all that dumping meds down the drain and down our toilets that can’t be filtered out of our water supply is fucking up our libidos?

Who knows? All I can say if and when you can do – do it! Not only is it good for your prostate to shoot a wad on a regular basis (that’s why priests have a higher rate of prostate cancer than the rest of us):

As the old saying goes, use it or lose it!

Or if you ain’t pleasuring yourself anymore, sell it to a transgender who’ll be delighted to have a real dick, and at least make some bucks for your 401K.

What’s Gauche in Straight Land is Hot in Gaydom

Unless you’re being kept (lucky bastard!), you have your work-a-day world and your “out-to-score” life. Same person, two personas. And isn’t it funny how things that are considered totally gauche in straight circles are prized in gaydom? And how we shift gears to accommodate both?

In straight life, you’ve got that three piece suit and fuckin’ tie (that never fits right), or if you’re fortunate to work in a more casual environment, a polo shirt that you open only part way not to show too much skin or chest hair.

In gay life, you can’t wait to tear the shirt off and show as much skin as the law will allow, ass crack and all. And then some.

In straight life, you make sure to shake your dick real good after you take a whiz, so, heavens, you don’t stain your pants. You want to be the center of attention at a board meeting for professional reasons, not your crotch (that is, unless a member of the board likes what he sees and can help you get ahead).

Fast forward to Friday night. Out on to the town, who wears underwear? And the bigger the wet spot bulls-eye, the hotter you look. Ditto with that semi-hard-on.

A close shave for that 9 a.m. Monday morning meeting is a given. A two day growth on a Saturday night and, man, do you look rough and ready to fuck.

And deodorant? Well, you’ll get a dirty look on the subway on a July rush hour if you aren’t wearing any, but come the bar or bath house, deo is a definite no-no.

After all, he wants to sniff and lick your armpits for the sweat, not the Calvin Klein, stupid.

Summer Time Dry-Out

Grabbing some last rays of Florida sunshine before I head up the end of this week to spend the summer with my other half at our new home in northeastern PA. What I affectionately refer to as the Betty Ford Clinic for Recovering But Unredeemable Lauderdale Sex Addicts. No bars to speak of, no sex clubs, no book stores or truck stops, and tricks on the web or phone apps are scarcer than blow at the end of Miami’s White Party.

But my soul needs cleansing and my dick needs a rest, though there are a couple of past summers’ country buddies eager to get reacquainted in between me whacking off to the humps on boundjocks-dot-com. This while George sits in our new Florida room mesmerized watching his beloved Mets. And I’ll be working with my publishers on final edits of my two new books so they’ll be plenty to keep me occupied.

When one of my publishers asked me for promotion purposes whether my books should be classified as erotic gay fiction, my reply was, “Sure, serious plot, fucked up, complex characters and LOTS OF SEX.”

Coming Later this Month From Kokoro Press …

…my latest erotic novel of drugs, sex, deceit and betrayal, set in in Fort Lauderdale’s Wilton Manors, Gay America’s playground from a writer who’s lived it. Lived it all.

Jonathan Antonucci, a 21 year old, barely-out-the-closet gay man from suburban New York, overnight finds himself a multi-millionaire, thanks to a bequest by his late gay great uncle. Uncle Charlie has unexpectedly died of a heart attack, leaving him the sole owner of several of the most successful bars in Wilton Manors, Fort Lauderdale’s gay ghetto. Flying down to Lauderdale to claim his bequest, Jon encounters Uncle Charlie’s dubious friends and business associates, and is immediately submerged in Lauderdale’s scene of unbridled sex and heavy drugs. He also discovers his great uncle’s memoirs which reveal truths not only about Jon’s own past but also what may have really happened to his uncle. In the end, Jon is torn between avenging Uncle Charlie’s death or loving the man responsible for it.

Available this summer on amazon.com, for Kindle, bn.com, for Nook, and kokoropress.com. Watch for details.

He Looks Like a Great Catch, But …

They’re out there in the thousands, those super handsome, super personable guys with great jobs and sound finances still searching, so they say, for an LTR at 42 or 52, you know, the guys you wonder why they haven’t been snatched up a long time ago.

Why? Because they often carry a lot of excess baggage which may not be noticeable when you see them on the beach or in the bar attracting stares like a magnet.

Like Jack, a trader in a Lauderdale branch office of one of the big Wall Street firms, and Men’s Fitness cover material, who’s so likeable it hurts.

Til you find out he also loves his coke.

Or Carlos with the body, face, dick and butt of a porn star who owns a string of restaurants and a South Beach condo on the water whose definition of a romantic evening is you fisting him all night til your carpal tunnel syndrome acts up while he lays there showing as much emotion as a dead goldfish.

Or Ted, a multi-millionaire real estate developer, tall, beefy, hairy – you get the picture – who says he loves you to shit on the first date, then proceeds to tell you how to run your life. Down to what color underwear he’ll allow you to buy. A control freak’s control freak.

How do I know? I fucked around with the first two and almost married the third.

But almost is a real big word.

So the next time you see one of these Beautiful People with the oh-so-sexy graying temples, take a deep breath.

It may all be skin deep.

The Supreme Court “Abortion” Ruling: Are WE In Trouble?

Here’s my take on the Supreme Court’s rather split ruling that allows companies whose owners have strong religious beliefs to sidestep Obamacare’s birth control provisions (not that I’m planning to get pregnant any day soon):

First, where will it stop? I know the Court earlier ruled businesses can’t discriminate against gays just because they don’t like us, but if companies start using religion as the reason why they can’t or want to do something, where does it end? Or where will it lead to? Even if discrimination happens and individuals and groups win in the courts, aren’t we gays wasting enough money going through all these test cases re. gay marriage in states who still haven’t woke up? I think the only ones making out with all this are the lawyers.

Secondly, the Court – at least its tight-assed male justices who outvoted the females– justified their decision that if Obama gave exemptions to faith-based organizations, like Catholic hospitals as just one example, how could he not do the same for companies whose owners hold strong beliefs?

Frankly they’re right.

Like I said before, NO business regardless what its mission has a right to refuse services on religious grounds IF it accepts federal dollars, be they business loans or grants, or Medicare/Medicaid funding if it’s a hospital, or business write-offs on its federal tax return. OK, have the customer/patient/client sign a statement where they acknowledge that you don’t condone XYZ service, but as a secular business or community organization you WILL provide XYZ service in the interests of EVERYONE.

Period.

Hope not just women but gays and others around the country who agree boycott Hobby Stores till they go out of business.

Or file Chapter 11 first – and, of course, get federal protection.

Stonewall: My First Gay Bar

Today is the forty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots which gave birth to the whole Gay Liberation movement that has brought us to an era where gay marriage will soon be legal everywhere. Think about it: back in 1969, the challenge was trying to have sex or more with another man without it wrecking your career and your life.

I have a very personal connection to Stonewall for two reasons: it was the very first gay bar I ever walked into, and it was that night that I had my first sexual encounter as a gay man.

Living at home in Jersey while I was completing my degree, I was working to pay for college at a now defunct retail store chain called Two Guys where my boss was a dead ringer for Jackie Gleason, that rotund, wise-guy comedian. Only there was something a little peculiar about Charlie. When he said he wanted to do something special for me for my 21st birthday, I figured we’d go out for dinner at the local Italian restaurant where, for lunch, Charlie would have a gargantuan meat ball sub and a “diet Coke, please” since he was on a perpetual nowhere diet. I had convinced him to hire Rob, a crush of mine from college, but I was surprised when the two of them pulled up at my parent’s house to pick me up that Saturday night.

Driving into the City, Charlie revealed his true persuasions to me and Rob (we soon came out to him, too), and how he had been a headliner drag queen entertainer in the ‘50’s. So where did we end up but in the Village and Stonewall. I’ll never forget the beads you had to walk through after the bouncer let you in, and the go-go boys dancing on the bar. It was years later that I read how the place had been run by the Mafia and how it was constantly raided if the payoffs weren’t enough. Had I known then, I would have hightailed it to Port Authority Terminal that night and taken a bus home.

I had hoped I would make it with Rob, but in the end he fell asleep after his first drink, and I ended up getting picked up by some older guy (probably 25) in a white suit who took me back to his apartment a few blocks away. Naïve me, when he whipped it out, my first reaction was, what am I supposed to do with it?

But, I’ve always been a quick study.

Like almost everything else in this once secret life that has gone mainstream, the huge Stonewall parade down Christopher Street in the heart of the Village is no longer our party. The last time I attended was back in 2002 just before I left NYC for Fort Lauderdale, and frankly I felt like an outsider at my own affair. There seemed to be as many str8’s as there was us, and at one point as I was making my way through the crowded streets, a str8 married couple gave me a look as I accidently bumped into them as if I was occupying THEIR space. But at least the NYC parade as I remembered it was more of a celebration sprinkled with reps from a myriad of support organizations; the Fort Lauderdale Pride Parade, held about the same time as New York’s, is much more commercial with mostly bar floats and politicians in mile-long convertibles trying to woo our votes.

For all we’ve achieved in the last four and half decades, I still wonder if we were better off when we were all members of a secret society of brothers (and sisters), and not just another demographic for Mad Ave to hustle.

Hey, but that’s the price of progress, huh?

The Warren Beatty Complex

Remember Warren Beatty? No, not the aging producer of today, but the Warren Beatty of the 60’s, (rent “Splendor in the Grass” to see what I’m talking about), the boyish, incredibly handsome actor who flicked from one beautiful woman to another, never considering any long term relationship until Father Time began to take its toll on his once hunky looks, and he decided to get legally hitched to the attractive but not all that beautiful Annette Benning and sire some kids. The rumor that he was actually gay I don’t think was ever substantiated, but whatever his true motives for marrying the first and, so far, only time in his life when he was well into his fifties, it seemed he had decided to “sow his oats” until he had exploited every last drop of his to-die-for looks and overt sexuality before taking himself off the market.

There’s also a theory among some sociologists that beautiful women will fuck their youth away with super-masculine men, but when that biological clock for having kids starts ticking down, they choose the nerdy, pseudo-effeminate nurturing type. My gay neighbors told me they were the butchest guys among a sea of heteros at a birthday party for the son of a straight couple they knew.

Well, as a gay man on the north side of 50, I seem to see what I call the Warren Beatty (is George Clooney next in line?) in a lot of gay male pairings. Sure, you’ll have your share of thirty-something, forty something dynamic duos that may last a few years before threesomes no longer work to revitalize the romance; but when it comes to something more permanent, more and more what, at least, I’m witnessing is the still pretty-but-beginning-to get-haggard guy settling down with some much older and grayer Plain Paul. The ones where you ask yourself, “what the fuck does he see in him?”

When sugar daddyism isn’t in the equation, it’s either the mirror and former pretty man’s psyche telling him he can no longer live up to his once wild reputation as a heartbreaker; or he’s decided voluntarily to hang up his jockstrap, at least publicly, and spend Friday nights at home watching TV with his designated partner, tired of having to be endlessly “on,” looking for some stability in his life, and finally waking up to the fact that a gym bunny lover isn’t necessarily the secret to happiness. And probably is as fleeting as confetti on New Year’s.

These guys I classify as the lucky ones, the ones who’ve played and played and played, and just when the needle in that long playing record gets stuck, “find” someone as a companion/lover for their – should I dare say it? – old age.

But I think for many gay guys, pretty or not, the scenario is not all that rosy. Waiting for Mr. Right, or I should say, Mr. Perfect, often an illusion colored by our own sub-culture’s perpetually adolescent fantasies, they, in the process, pass up decent guys who could really care for them for some empty-headed humps who can’t even spell the word commitment. Then, one day – in their late forties or late fifties – or for the well preserved among us – in their sixties – they wake up and realize Time has run out and they are no longer partner – or bedroom – material.

They’re the guys you see hovering around the bars and sex clubs, thin and brittle, or swollen and triple-chinned, but with a shadow of past sexiness lingering in their faces, still trying to play a young man’s game, still thinking they look hot in their leather harness, blotting out reality with too many rounds of two-for-ones.

They’re the guys on the hook-up sites who, at an admitted 55, say they are still seeking an “LTR.” Or are still waiting for “Mr. Right.”

Is it that Beatty had his epiphany before it was too late?

The Inferiority/Superiority Meter: Our Fragile Egos in Overdrive

Most of us deal with it every day of our lives, straight and gay, but because we gays are just a teeny weeny bit more concerned about our appearance, we tend to suffer with it the most. It’s the Inferiority/Superiority Meter or I/S for short, which can twitch quicker than a dick coming down from a Viagra high.

You know exactly what I’m talking about. One moment you feel like Hot Shit, on a scale of one to ten, a thirteen; a microsecond later, you just feel like Shit. A minus five.

Sure, there are some ugly sons of a bitch who have the ego of the Empire State Building (I used to say the World Trade Center), and some hunks men and women would give their right ball or tit for who are quietly comfortable about themselves, and never realize what a powerful tool physical beauty can be. But I think they’re in the minority. For most of us, our personal I/S meters are fluctuating constantly.

Of course, for gay guys it’s often set off by our environment, i.e., how we feel we are being perceived (not necessarily the reality) by the men around us.

You’ve been cruising some hot guy all night and by his looks and body language you think you have the deal almost clinched when he gives you that stomach wrenching dead glance just as you’re moving in for the kill. That’s when your Oscar winning acting skills help you save face and you walk by unperturbed.

Ah, but inside, you feel like Shit.

Or the glow after you’ve had terrific sex with some fuckin’ hottie who, though he’s had his fun, and you yours, still goes on to tell you how fucking hot you are. Or having all eyes suddenly turn on you when you decide to take your shirt off in a bar. You feel like Hot Shit, like you’re a porn star par excellence, jerked off over by millions of adoring fag fans.

That is, till one homely queen snickers at your unabashed exhibitionism.

While external forces (a hot, cruisy stare, a stranger’s disparaging whisper) will trigger the twitch of the Inferiority/ Superiority Meter, its roots are deep seated in our respective psyches. Many folks reflect on their high school years with nostalgic fondness. Me? When they had a class reunion a few years ago, all I wanted to do is go back and pull a Carrie on the whole fucking bunch, bolt the catering hall doors and saturate the place with gasoline. My adolescent years were pure hell: I was the shortest guy in my class, unathletic, the last to be picked for teams, a nerd, not interested in girls nor them in me, and hairy as hell to boot. Fast forward to my early twenties when I started hitting the scene in L.A. where I was going to college, and discovered guys accepting, desiring me, simply for what they saw. Shallow, sure, but also deeply elemental.

Yet, for most of my adult life, no matter how successful I was in my career and in getting men, I never really outgrew the feelings I had when I was fourteen. It was classic manic-depression on some level I guess, or what I like to more glamorously refer to as the Marilyn Monroe Complex. The bitch goddess seemingly had it all, yet could never abandon or move on from her fucked-up childhood (raped by step-daddy, etc., etc.).

Am I alone in this? Aren’t so many of us fixated on how we look in that next mirror or glass door reflection or check the scale three times a day, or spend money on clothes we don’t need to look good? Or throw that $40. T–shirt we wore just once in a Salvation Army clothes bin if we think it did nothing for us?

It wasn’t until much later in life that I realized we all have our strengths and weaknesses, and that confidence in oneself comes from within and is not dependent on other people to make it happen.

Only then can we dump our respective I/S meters on the top of the junk pile.

And move on.

Gay Society’s One Percent

A few Saturday nights ago, I was prancing around shirtless at the Pig Dance at my favorite watering hole, the Ramrod in Lauderdale, where the median age is 43, watching all those fellow aging leather men, some hot, some just delusional, shake their steroided bods like they were 20, while the physically less blessed ogled. Wondering when we were all going to finally grow up, and wondering whether these creatures were among our culture’s one percent. The guys who some, or maybe many of us revere or place on a pedestal at the very pinnacle of our gay sub-culture:

The incredibly handsome who forget they got their looks by a roll of the genes dice.

The incredibly wealthy, some earned, others born into it, who make sure everyone knows they’ve got it, from their quarterly visits to the cosmetic surgeon they boast about, to their beachfront condos in Lauderdale and Puerto Vallarta, and, oh, yea, the young hottie (a new one each season) by their side.

The massive muscle men who spend four hours a day in the gym or every discretionary dollar on steroids because they either have mindless jobs or no job at all and live on the dole – disability check, 74 year old lover – take your pick.

The cute guys with the fifty dollar haircuts, 22 inch waists, washboard abs they were born with and, when they aren’t prancing around near naked on the beach, sport the latest overpriced GQ outfit – all on a Macy’s clerk salary.

Humpy porn stars, responsible for thousands of dirty cum rags every day, but who can’t or won’t work at much of anything else and whose nine inch dicks are worth selling replicas of – to use as paperweights of course.

The hot numbers cruising in those hot sports car convertibles, courtesy of Daddy.

The guys who live, breathe and shit The Life from RSVP cruises to the latest Leather Fest, but don’t know or care where this country is headed.

Look, I’m not saying that it’s bad to look your best, take care of your body, or have some fun. But after awhile, doesn’t ego for ego’s sake and deifying male perfection become just a little tired?

I mean, shouldn’t our one percent include or even be dominated by:

Couples who lead quiet, unassuming lives, work hard, spend sensibly, with the only difference between them and the rest of the world is that they’re two men?

The white middle class gay man who adopts a black 17 year foster kid with autism because he wants to?

The guy who has nothing to monetarily gain from caring for a dying parent or partner but knowing he did right?

The guys who don’t make much in education or health care but do it because they want to actually help somebody else – people they don’t even know?

The lovers who grow old together without caring about their crows feet or other men?

So who’s your one percent?

You decide.

I know who mine is.