Group Sex: do you rhyme banal with anal?

Group sex is one of those fantasies that rarely lives up to one’s expectations. Many people don’t know this because it is something they will never experience. They might find themselves in an impromptu threeway or fourway, but that doesn’t qualify in my estimation. I think of a group or an orgy as containing 8 or more bodies. The bigger the group, the bigger the fantasy, and the bigger the let down if it were to ever happen. This especially goes for porn.

I get the opportunity more than many gay guys to join an orgy because I make porn videos. Some guys on Grindr, eager for their first group scene, hit me up for an orgy when in fact they want me to organize it, because of course I have on speed dial, numerous porn stars willing to join impromptu 8ways on a Tuesday afternoon. 

Want to do a threeway?

Who is the other guy, I ask.

I thought you could get one.

He can’t see my nearly audible eye roll. 

I won’t deign to arrange even a threeway with an unknown app hookup. It’s a hassle. First, I don’t have available men on call for impromptu meetups. Second, I don’t know this asker’s preferences. What are the chances that any guy I corral would interest him? And what are the chances my selection would be interested in the guy who messaged me? 

I can tell you from experience how things would proceed. I tell him I can get a third. The first guy wants the third’s photos for approval. I ask the third guy if I have his permission to send his photos to the first guy. If he says yes, he also wants photos of the first guy for evaluation. If the first guy consents to the limited distribution of said photos, then chances are one will reject the other. Possibly both reject each other. Time wasted: 20 plus minutes. 

Now multiply that by the number of guys desired for this fantasy group. If a group does come to fruition it can be very fun, especially if someone else arranged it. Assuming a good mix of tops, bottoms and verses, there is near constant stimulation of and by different body parts. Cocks entering your mouth while one or more are in your ass and as you feast your eyes on similar visions nearby is a pleasant sensory overload. 

The exception for me is when there is one bottom and numerous tops, if I am one of the tops. Now the sensation is consecutive not concurrent and waiting time can be dull. If I am really into the bottom – say that he is my boyfriend – I love watching him receive mountains of pleasure. That someone I love is the center of attention and enjoying every minute of it, makes me happy and horny. But otherwise it’s a snooze. I hate waiting in lines, even for a chance to fuck a hot guy. Some tops take too long to cum or just have no conception that there is a group of men surrounding him waiting for seconds or thirds or fourths, ad. infinitum. I’m likely to lose my erection if he’s a boring top. When I start thinking about what I want to eat – actual food, that is – it’s time to leave.  

When it comes to porn orgies, the above scenario is at least easy to film. There is one focal point which one cameraman – or even stationary camera – can catch. The tops waiting in line are probably out of shot and can break character if they want. They don’t have to pretend to be interested, much less aroused. Fondle your flaccid dick; pick your nose. The viewer won’t know. 

Other porn orgies, however, can be as unsatisfying to watch as they are to perform. Maybe I’m going to town, pounding a sexy, moaning bottom – hips gyrating, leg muscles flexing, back heaving – only to later watch the edited version and see that the cameraman panned off of us during the best part. You can sort of see us going at it in the background while another pair or threesome has taken center stage. One of us is ready to cum, but wait! The camera won’t capture it. Hold off. 

This is more true of a fans site porn video. Studio orgy scenes are more or less scripted and no one cums without the director getting some advance notice. Since they are scripted to some degree, very little great action goes unrecorded. Fans site porn, on the other hand, is a free-for-all of random copulation. If I’m watching it, I often don’t see what I want to see – what I would have filmed. 

Further, consider that if I’m uploading an orgy scene with 5-10 guys on my fans sites, I basically know what my subscribers want to see: me. Me and a sexy top. Me and a sexy bottom. Not a bunch of guys with me as a supporting actor. This is not conceited. I know when a co-star releases a movie with me on his fans sites, his subscribers want to see him. So my subscribers may be aroused by some of the guys in my orgy scene, but maybe not. 

So for most people, the idea of group sex surpasses the actuality of it. Since most people haven’t done it, it remains in fetish/fantasy territory. Whether filmed or not, it’s greatest value is in voyeurism. If you like to watch numerous naked bodies writhing together, watch a group sex porn or strand off to the side at an actual orgy. Unlike couple or throuple porn when many viewers imagine themselves in the place of one of the participants, orgies don’t require vicarious imagination. You are the watcher, the cuckold, the peeping tom gawking at the debauchery. And when you shoot your load, you aren’t picturing it going in someone’s hole, or shooting on your stomach as your prostate gets massaged; you simply are a pervert spilling it on the ground before pulling up your pants and walking away disgusted with the scene or yourself. Your dripping cock symbolizes redemption, like rainfall at the end of a film. 

What did you call me?  

When I was in the sixth or seventh grade my social studies teacher called me the most humiliating epithet which I imagined I could have been called. I must have been acting a certain way in class so he barked my name, paused and said “You should have been a woman.” The class laughed and I was mortified. Up to that point, my friends and I just thought of him as a bad, boring teacher. After that, I hated him. 

It used to be common – and you still hear it today albeit less frequently – for straight, possibly homophobic, people to insult males by calling them girls and insult females by calling them males. Why is it less common today? Because more and more humans have the confidence and determination to see and present themselves in a gender they feel right in, regardless of what is on their birth certificates. So now, straight homophobic people – and some self righteous, indignant homosexuals – refuse to call a trans female “a girl,” and vice versa. 

They cite science or “common sense” in refusing to call someone what they want to be called. Some of the same imbeciles who doubt science in matters like climate change and vaccinations now expound the infallibility of science to justify not honoring someone’s preferred pronouns. Their ilk was only too eager to call effeminate boys “girls”, and butch girls “boys” when that was taken as a slur. It’s obvious the only reason for the change is that the true goal is to hurt people. Marginalized people are always a favorite target because it’s easier to get away with it. The ratio that will defend or at least excuse your behavior is in your favor. 

Humans – Americans in particular – are adept at looking the other way at things which they don’t understand or which are uncomfortable: from the sublime (police brutality, racism, human suffering) to the ridiculous. If a biologically born male lives their life as a female and wants to be called that, how does that affect anyone else in the least? Is it because we’ve taken away a slur they liked to use, the same way some straights are probably mad when gays call themselves fags or queer? 

It doesn’t affect your life. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. Just don’t bring science into it. Save me that bullshit red herring. Own your hatred. You wanted to call a girly boy a “girl” and a tomboy girl a “boy” to hurt them. And now you’re refusing to call them that to hurt them.

When the bottom is attivo

Just as a martini tastes better in a martini glass, and a sad song sounds better when you’re maudlin, an orgasm feels better to me when it’s going into an ass. Cumming on an ass, cumming on a face, cumming down a throat are all wonderful, but the feeling I get when I’m pumping a load deep inside someone’s ass is paramount. It’s not just that the cum is being extracted by the bottom – because that’s also happening when you jizz in a mouth; It’s the unseen coating of a mysterious part of a body. We can only imagine what it looks like exiting the cock and filling this dark, wet cavity. It’s a foreign liquid and it’s being accepted willingly by another human. (And yes I can appreciate that piss fucking can hold the same mystique.) 

There is a feeling of totally using this man’s cavity for my own pleasure. And yet, we know that the bottom is also using the top. Indeed, as a vers, I fully grasp this phenomenon. The top is the one experiencing the orgasm. He should get the most pleasure out of seeding a hole. Ah, but it should be obvious to any sentient top that some bottoms live to take loads. They get as much pleasure admitting the cum inside them and letting it soak into their membranes and/or leak out and drip down their balls and legs, as the top gets from the spasming of his cock. Even though I experience this often, it still puzzles me. What is so exhilarating about getting bred? 

Some bottoms love to get bred. It’s why they don’t want condoms. It’s why they want the load more that the fuck itself. It’s why some bottoms don’t mind a top that cums quick. They get the load and have time to get more. Forget the attivo/passivo dichotomy. A cumdump bottom isd always in control. He is getting what he wants – the cum – and the top just thinks he is getting what he wants. Actually, he is just a character in the cumdump’s story. If the top takes too long to cum or can’t cum at all, he is worthless to the cumdump. The bottom receiving the load is the star in this drama. 

Look at the face of the bottom getting seeded.. When I watch someone getting bred – and when I film that blessed moment – I want to focus on the face of the breedee. Cumming is a profound, energetic event which is further mythologized when the cum is thrust into the body of another. It’s dynamic, exciting and, when it’s a man depositing his life force into the ass of another man, it’s subversive.

It’s the top giving his DNA, his essence, to another. It could be a lover, a friend or a stranger he might never see again. Each situation has its own primal power. We can see the release of this power in the face of the breeder: the ecstasy which resembles pain in a sense. There are no good analogies. It is unique in our existence. 

I prefer to study the face (and the moans coming out of the mouth yet emanating from deep inside the essence of the bottom – his sexual soul as it were). It’s the top who directly feels the orgasm – that surge of dopamine and oxytocin and prolactyin. The bottom is releasing none of these chemicals, and yet if you look at the face of the guy getting inseminated, it looks like they are. 

I was asked once by an inexperienced top who wanted to wear a condom, why I preferred raw sex. Didn’t it feel the same to me, he asked. On the surface, yes it did. But on a deeper level, hardly. First, it’s hot when you can feel the pulsing of the raw cock and the warmth of the cum entering your body. Second, the idea of the cum going in is as powerful as any physical feeling. You are accepting someone’s DNA into yourself. You are a vessel taking that precious semen. You are supremely powerful in taking the power of the top, like a vampire gorging on the blood of a victim, the breeded bottom is absorbing that other precious liquid which men create. 

Even when – perhaps especially when – I am not the bottom being impregnated, I exalt in watching the face and hearing the moans of  a bottom taking seed. His eyes may open wide with the knowledge that he has won his prize. The eyes may roll back in the head in triumphant relief that the prize is captured and protected inside.  His mouth opens in a gasp-like response, mimicking in a way the face of the top but with more potency. You see the jaw open almost in surprise. He was expecting the load but its arrival is still exhilarating. Whether he can feel the cum entering doesn’t matter. He understands that it is shooting inside him, coating the walls of his colon. The gooey substance has been coaxed out of the top into his body. The bottom has taken it. It is his cum now. The moans of anticipation of being knocked up yield to noisy exhalations and even a quiet “fuck.” It’s over and he has his reward (or one of many rewards that day.)

Watching this rapturous capturing of that sticky, white concoction turns me on. Even more so if the bottom is the person I love most in the world – the person who I want to see happy and fulfilled in every way. He looks insanely hot when he’s getting bred, and it doesn’t matter if it’s me or someone I’m watching doing the breeding. His pussy is truly a pussy in these situations, milking cocks of their elixir. He is not just accepting cum, he is taking it. He is the furthest thing from passive. He is drawing that seed into his own corporeal existence. It is his now and he can do with it what he wants. Keep it for a while, flush it out, or let me eat it out. 

NOT quite unrequited

How rare it is for two people to love each other equally. Has it ever happened? Maybe a close approximation, but if love could be measured in hundredths or thousandths of some indicator, would it be possible for two people to have exactly the same amount of love for each other? 

In practice, such precision is not necessary. Love is not something that can be measured in minuscule increments. It can barely be defined. Many couples likely do love each other with relatively the same intensity and depth. Yet many pairs who claim this goal, may be engaging in wishful thinking or carefully constructed chimera. Of course if someone loves you very much, you would be inclined to express a compensatory amount in return – out of guilt or a desire to protect the other’s feelings. To employ an old nursery rhyme as a template, if someone loves you a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck, are you prepared to say that you love that person just a bushel? 

Yet, it doesn’t matter if couples are in eros discordant relationships. The idea that two people have to love each exactly the same sets one or the other up for disappointment if not depression. These discordant relationships can be wonderful things. Imagine loving someone with such intensity that you constantly think about them and truly want the absolute best for them. When you adore someone that much, you don’t love them in spite of their flaws, but because of them; or rather, they are so perfect in your eyes that there are no shortcomings. You see them as exactly the way they should be. 

In this scenario, how can you fault the other person for not quite loving you to that crazy level. You couldn’t even expect it. If it borders on obsessive, be happy both of you aren’t obsessive because that candle could burn out quickly. If you truly love that person so incredibly much (no, not flames, flames, flames, at the side of your face, breathing, breathe, heaving breaths) there is no way that intensity could be duplicated. It is, in fact, a badge of honor that you love someone almost more than is possible. We’ve heard couples, or maybe said it ourselves to a partner: Initial sentiment “I love you.”  Response: “I love you more!” 

I am not thinking of unrequited love – loving someone who doesn’t have any feelings for you. That’s a terrible, gut-wrenching and pathetic situation. But if you love your partner so incredibly much that they can only love you back to a slightly lesser degree, that should give you a warm feeling. Having that intense love for another person is an endorphin rush. It’s an emotional orgasm. It makes you feel incredible. People who get more joy out of giving gifts than receiving, or of doing favors rather than getting them, will agree. 

Let’s debunk the RuPaul aphorism “If you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you gonna love somebody else?” Many people love someone dear more than they love themselves and it’s an incredible high. It’s the joy of giving something and expecting nothing in return. People suffering depression can love someone very much, while holding themselves in poor regard. It’s sad, but that intense love for someone whose welfare and well-being they want to protect may serve as a protection against suicide. I am not an expert here, except to acknowledge that at times when I was very depressed and thought fleetingly about suicide, the thought that I needed to take care of my mother and that my absence would have devastated her, kept the thoughts at bay. 

Further, being at the other end of the emotional discordancy – if your partner loves you more than you love them (assuming you do love them a lot) – is also a win. How wonderful to have someone in your life that thinks so highly of you. 

It would be fascinating if there were a way to measure a person’s complete capacity for love. Could it be that some people love a few people and so that capacity is split among all of them? Someone who doesn’t have a family and friends to love may find that they have their full storehouse of adoration available for that one special person in their life. 

One could argue – as many of you readers may be ready to do – that my level of love is extreme, bordering on obsessive. If true, that validates the notion that the other person is not to be faulted for not being so extreme or obsessive. At least half the couple would be rational. This would only be a problem if the obsessive one expected the other to match the excessiveness. My obsessiveness – if that’s what it is – is a product of too much idle time, which provides opportunities to think. When one is alone, without business to distract, one wishes to not be alone. Physical presence of the other person is not essential. Just a text, which lets the lonely soul know that he is being thought of, suffices. But alas, the subject of the lonely soul’s love is not thinking about texting because he’s busy. 

I’m sure you are thinking of many things wrong with this scenario. I think of two: first, my overwhelming love for this man could be consuming and could inadvertently pressure him where he feels he needs to cut me off before any breakup would become more traumatic for me. That is the peril of having someone love you enough to not want to hurt you, but not enough to go the long haul; second, my unrelenting need for affection could annoy him and cause him to break it off. 

So I need to turn down the volume and intensity and let him breathe. I’ll express my love for him without superlatives so it doesn’t appear that I require superlatives back. Fortunately he won’t read this because he’s busy and because very few people read my stuff. This was a cathartic exercise only. No egos were harmed. 

I will re-read this to keep the overt devotion in check. I will think about how I want my man to feel loved, not how I love him. There is a difference. You, my dear readers, do what you want with this. 

Thirsty for accolades

“I’m very depressed how in this country you can be told “That’s offensive” as though those two words constitute an argument.” – Christopher Hitchens 

They lurk in the margins of social media waiting for their chance to post about how superior they are.They wouldn’t see it that way and their posts often appear genuinely helpful with just a hint of outrage. The outrage is the important thing here. 

When someone posts a comment or thread suggesting shock over some indiscretion, some folks post comments, not about the bad behavior, but rather about themselves and their own piety. 

It goes like this: OP chronicles some terrible thing X did – not judging, they assure you, just commenting that they wouldn’t have done such a heinous thing. Comments follow on a spectrum of indignation. Commonplace Twitter fodder. Tedious. But one type of comment stands out for the smirk it delivers to my visage. It’s from the people who make the post about themselves and about how moral, righteous and superior they are. The comment can be boiled down to this essence: I would never do that! I always do the right thing. Look at me, I’m perfect. 

An example: on Twitter, someone posted about some guys who had tested positive for MonkeyPox and who may or may not have fully recovered (we don't have medical confirmation but that’s just a formality on Twitter) when they attended a crowded, gay (read: shirtless) event. Various comments followed condemning the actors and the poster for motives unknown. Then we have this gem: “I haven’t been to a party in over a year.”  What gallant, courageous behavior. What a shining example for humankind. What a pathetic cry for accolades. 

It’s like announcing to anyone within earshot that you don’t run with scissors. OK. But no one thought you did. Do you feel better proclaiming such nonsense? Does it make you morally superior to those who you imagine do run with scissors? 

It reminds me of a girl I coached on my swim team years ago. We had a station in our morning power and speed circuit where swimmers would walk to the far end of the pool attached to a rubber stretch cord, and then swim back while a teammate pulled them – speed assistance training, it’s called. It’s a way of practicing race speeds (and the accompanying technique) that swimmers are trying to attain in competitions. I checked the cords before every use and was constantly replacing them at the first sign of wear so that they wouldn’t snap. Even so, a break was possible. Also possible was the belt around the swimmer’s waist sliding off and flying back to the start end. Some of these high school swimmers were skinny bitches. In those cases, the stretch cord would rebound with lighting speed toward the person pulling it. To prevent possible injury, the swimmers pulling the cord were instructed to crouch behind the starting block with their head down to avoid getting hit by the cord. And most important, they had to wear their goggles. I had heard of a Cleveland area coach who almost lost an eye when a broken stretch cord smacked him full force in the face.

In fact, bystanding swimmers, waiting their turn were told not to wait anywhere at the starting end unless they wore goggles. Walking around the various stations, I paid close attention to this and often reminded swimmers “If you’re going to be behind the blocks, you have to wear your goggles.”  On one such occasion, a girl – one of our All-Americans – replied back to me so that all could hear: ``I always wear my goggles.”  I was too far away for her to see my eyes rolling, but you can imagine the groans from her teammates who were accustomed to her goody two-shoes persona.  Being one of the best swimmers on our team wasn’t enough. She had to announce how superiorly cautious she was. 

This! This is what you sound like when you declare on a thread that you would never  do whatever bad behavior is being adjudicated. Go one step beyond for good measure. You would not just not attend a party after a recent MonkeyPox or Covid infection; You would not attend any party anywhere at any time.  Thank you for your service. Now if you don’t mind, even though I won’t run with scissors, I have no intention of throwing them out. 

Three Men and a Troll

Unsolicited internet hate is best ignored and forgotten. But I like remembering one particular example of mindless vitriol because I am perpetually puzzled by the defective deductions of humans who undoubtedly think highly of their cognitive skills. 

A man once commented (“replied” is not the word because nothing in my statement invited discourse) on a throwaway description for a hookup app – you know, one of those spaces you’re supposed to fill in with details about your existence that will make people want to contact you, if not fuck you. This is the space where some people who think they’re clever will write I never know what to write here, or I’ll fill this in later.  We expect few will read it so we put anything down that shows we are living beings and not bots. 

Some people write Miss America type descriptions of their version of long walks on the beach. Some compose a litany of qualities they hate in people, thus making it easier for people to avoid these neurotics. I now have a quick caveat for racists to not contact me. But there was a time when I wrote about a dating goal I had. Wish is a better term than goal, because a goal is something you actively pursue and I never did anything constructive toward my wish. It was just an idea which seemed plausible and plausibly fun: a polyamourous thrupple. I followed a few people in such relationships and I enjoyed the notion that I could be in loving, sexual realtionship with two men with all of us loving each other fairly equitably. That idea that two men I cared for would care for me back was intoxicating. I imagined days when one of the three wouldn’t feel like having sex, but the other two could fullfil each other’s needs. Different options for cuddling! Harmless stuff, really. 

Ah, but one gentleman was grievously harmed by my words and admonished me for them. How dare I, he fumed, strive to take two hot men off the market when so many single gay men like him struggled to find a mate? 

I believe he blocked me before I could elucidate why his sentiment was so incredibly silly. So here it is for a general readership: (these are not in order of importance or relevance because none of this is important or relevant, just merely intriguing)

First, he assumed that if I had two lovers that would be one less for him. Rather, it would actually be two less for him. If he couldn’t get a boyfriend, why not be mad at me – and every other gay boy – for even having one boyfriend. In the Game of Zero Sum, every hitched gay boy could have been the one for him, if only he had acted quicker, or if evryone else just stayed single. The idea that the second guy I hitched with would have been his beau if only I hadn't been selfish is laughable. Why not the first guy? And if I had hooked up with an existing couple (logically the most common method of thrupple construction) there had never been any free floating atoms existing before I bonded with their molecule. Perhaps he thought one of the atoms would be ripped off like ATP becoming ADP during muscle contractions.  

Second, he was confused about his odds. If I was in the market for two guys, that wasn’t necessarily one less opportunity for him; it was one more. Let’s say I have a boyfriend, and my hate spewing app friend has none. If I then look for another boyfriend, doesn't that increase his chances? 

Third, perhaps the scenario above wouldn’t apply to our protagonist because he might not be interested in me. Nevermind that he contacted me. Despite being drawn to my profile photo, once he read everything he needed to know about me, I was plainly not his type. But if that were true, then what are the chances that anyone who would be in a relationship with me would be his type also? Me scarfing up one, two or three significant others would not impact his potential dating pool. 

It’s all so confusing, except when viewed through the following lens: Some people like to be mad at things. Any things. They expect to see examples of bad behavior which they know are the causes of their angst. Like the two travelers in a story by Kahil Gibran, they find exactly what they expect to find. In the story, the title of which escapes me, the first traveler enters a new town and sees an old man sitting in the square. He tells the old man that he is looking for a new town in which to live and inquires what this town is like. First, tell me what your former town was like, the old man says, and the traveler explains that his town was full of friendly, helpful people who showed him love and kindness. 

You will find this town exactly the same, the old man tells him. So the traveler is happy to hear that news and decides to make this town his new home. A while later, a second traveler enters the square, sees the old man, and tells of how he, too, is looking for a new place to call home. What is this town like, he asks the old man. The old man asks the second traveler what his former home was like. It was miserable, the traveler answers. Jealous, back-stabbing people who only want to make things hard for me. I’m sorry to tell you, the old man says, that you will find this town to be exactly the same. Disappointed, the second traveler hangs his head and continues on with his travels. 

A bystander, witnessing both interactions  approached the old man. Why did you tell each of those travelers two different impressions of this town? Because people will find exactly what they expect to find, the old man answered. 

ANNOYING LYRICS

For a brief time in my early twenties, I was a huge fan of the Doors. It was well after Jim Morrison had died and had become iconic as only dead poets become. The Doors had been elevated to mythic status on Classic Rock radio stations. I bought all their vinyl albums since CD’s hadn’t yet been invented, nevermind digital. 

After perhaps a year or two of buying Doors records and having them in heavy rotation on my Pontiac’s 8 Track player, my devotion waned. Now I seldom hear a Doors song because satellite radio and streaming services ensure that one doesn't hear anything outside of one’s chosen genres. Further, I rarely think of the Doors, except when something reminds me of one of the most annoying lyrics I have ever heard. 

When I mention the most annoying lyric, you will understand that these intense responses are irrational and derive from a hatred for bad English writing. My most hated lyric is from Live and Let Die, the bloated, turgid, and smug James Bond song by Paul McCartney and Wings (you know, the McCartney who nearly ruined the best Beatles song – A Day in the Life – by adding his peppy, drippy stanza to Lennon’s dirge).

The line that I hate so much is: “And in this ever changing world in which we live in.” Did you catch it? He writes the line and then remembers an archaic, random grammar rule which says that one must never end a sentence with a preposition. In some cases, this makes sense, but in others it is preposterously ludicrous (which is the whole problem with most random grammar “rules.”) 

So Sir Paul corrects the imagined problem by putting the preposition first “in which we live.” But he leaves the redundant “in” at the end, ending the sentence with a preposition anyway. In which we live in? Fuck, that’s annoying! Do you know about what I’m talking about? Cringe.

So if that’s number one, what is the second most annoying lyric belonging to Jim Morrison? Understand that the reason this one bothers me is because Morrison is often hailed as a poet as well as a sensual rock star. True, many of his lyrics are emotive in a poetic way. But consider this phrase from Peace Frog: “Ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind.”

We don’t need fragile. Or we don’t need eggshell, although that is metaphoric. Or at least it would be metaphoric if he hadn’t ruined it by describing what eggshell means. It would have been emotive. It would have been poetic. And it would have let the listener feel good about inferring that the child’s mind was fragile. 

We know what eggshell implies. The tale of Humpty Dumpty taught us that in pre-school. Eggshells are fragile. We get it , Jim. I feel genuinely insulted when he puts fragile before it. What is the point of referring to the child’s mind as eggshell-like if you’re going to tell us it’s fragile anyway? 

Imagine if, after writing “books are the mirrors of the soul,” Virginia Woolf felt the need to explain to you that books reflect who we are? You would feel talked down to and you would understand how much I hate that Jim Morrison lyric. 

IN DEFENSE OF PUBLIC INDECENCY

As Pride month approaches, queer discourse turns increasingly to what behavior is acceptable in the public square. OnlyFans doesn’t allow videos of public sex; Christian hegemonists don’t want talk of anything gay in schools, libraries, or frankly anywhere; and buttoned-up queers don’t want to see dog collars and ball-gags at Pride. Self-policing queers don’t want any images or actions which may offend people who hate us anyway. What is one to do as Pride Month approaches? 

We can turn to Twitter in order to debate, in limited characters, what non-straight behavior is acceptable in the public square. These discussions typically germinate from the point of view of the actor – the person doing the thing “in public.” The scare quotes are because the word Public is misrepresented by author and audience alike, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes deliberately. 

Let’s briefly address the purveyors of the notion that there is such a thing as being too openly gay. The authors identify as part of the LGBT+ community but seem more concerned with straight society. They tell us to tone it down at Pride. Think of the children, even though straight media never think of the children when they show straight sluttery. These self-policing prudes (desiring to police the rest of us) want straight society to like us, to approve of us, to tolerate us. Imagine if someone said “I tolerate you.” It’s condescending. The pride pearl-clutchers are saying that straights will like us to the degree we don’t act gay at all. 

There are those who oppose  couples (even straight ones) making out in public. “Get a room,” is the trite advice. Those who attack PDA (kissing and beyond) and public displays of faggotry (including – gasp! – thong wearing!) are terribly concerned what average folk will see. 

I argue that we should draw unnecessary attention to ourselves, now more than ever, as the emboldened christian crypto fascists and their enablers seek to reverse the progress we have made. Drawing attention is the definition of flamboyant. 

This argument has been advanced and pilloried ad nauseum. Rather than approach the issue from the view of the actors at Pride, I prefer to address the audience of said public flamboyancy. The scandalized who want us to tone it down claim to speak for this audience, but do they even know the audience?  Authors should always know their audience. When we are being gay – really, really gay – who is watching? Saying The Public is about as helpful as the vague phrase In Public.

The connotations of the word Public are as vast as the non-private spaces on the Earth. A monument, a city street, a coffee shop, a prairie, a mountain, a bathhouse, a park after dark, the dumpster behind an interstate rest stop, and Folsom Street are all public in different senses. Yet a known cruising spot at the gay section of Black’s Beach is hardly public in the same way the parking lot of a supermarket is. Sex outside feels very organic and primal to me. I love fucking near trees and sand and oceans, with birds flying by and little critters scampering about. It makes me think of Bambi. It is natural in every sense of the word. It removes vestiges of civil approbation which stem from religious stigma. Sex is healthy and should be removed from guilt and sin which are tools of the indignant who are disgusted by penises and vaginas. Imagine being disgusted by body parts which – aside from important bodily functions – provide us with so much pleasure. But it is the pleasure that drives them crazy. H.L. Mencken described Puritanism as “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

It is the equivalent of nuns telling me and my classmates to “wipe that smile off your face!” The religious don’t like happiness –  not true, raw happiness. From the joy denying goals of lent restrictions to self-flagellation, it’s just steps on the continuum of joylessness. 

So when I’m fucking outside, I revel in the animalistic quality of it, removed from the disapproving eye of society. The animals don’t kink shame me for licking asses and balls, taking multiple dicks in orifices, plunging my dick into men in heat with barely an introduction, and having cum cover all parts of my body. If the animals are judging, they keep it to themselves. I will not give a damn what the Holy Ghost or some other mythical, spiritual Big Brother is supposedly thinking. 

In some communities, dancing naked in your home in front of a curtain-less window could be judged to be public indecency. I’ve read of a case of a dad who took his little boys behind bushes to pee when there was no other good option and who was then charged with public lewdness. While some would find those instances of societal intrusion wrong,  certainly few reasonable people would accept fucking in a public library as acceptable. So where is a good line? 

The active ingredient in whether the behavior is outrageous is expectation. No one expects two humans to get naked and go at it in a restaurant. But most aware humans venturing into the Meat Rack on Fire Island have an expectation that they may see gay sex. I posted an unscientific poll on Twitter (because that’s where much of this discourse germinates) asking what people would do if they came across two guys fucking while on a hike in the woods. I take into consideration that my followers have mainly signed up to see nudity and sex, so the sample is not representative. Still, for sheer fun, 87% would be turned on, 10% would be embarrassed, 2% would be angry, and 1% would be offended. 

But wait, the sample is fairly representative of the people who venture into the back rooms of gay clubs, and of the people for whom Pride is designed. I understand that straight people (sometimes with their children) attend Pride parades. Here again though, they should expect to see queer behavior. They don’t go to New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade and get shocked by drunk behavior. 

This is where the truly annoying bring in the subject of consent. When the prudes protest that many Pride attendees didn’t consent to see nudity or PDA or more extreme images of gayness, they are diluting the meaning of consent. We should accept that consent is necessary before someone does something sexual with you, or even touches you. To say that you need to consent before seeing something diminishes the power of consent. 

When I was walking home last Saturday night along Santa Monica Boulevard, I didn’t consent to see a girl puking onto the sidewalk. It was gross. There might very well be a law against it but no one expects enforcement of such. 

People who pass MAGA flags, Nazi flags and Confederate flags may not have consented to see such images of hate, bigotry and idiocy. They are also gross. Yet there are first amendment rights that allow that. 

I didn’t consent to the homeless man talking loudly at me as I was organizing my thoughts for this piece and who thereby distracted me from remembering some points.  Yet I understand that when walking in my neighborhood, there is a reasonable likelihood that distractions like this will happen. I sort of expect it. 

In fact, when one is in public, there is a reasonable chance that one will experience unpleasantness – the degree and frequency commensurate with where one is. 

So if you don’t want to see impromptu dick sucking at the bar, don’t peer over the stall wall. If you don’t want to see three guys pull a train on a bottom in the Rambles, don’t go to that part of Central Park after dark. And if you don’t want to see men in leather harnesses and latex body suits and tiny jock straps having fun with other sexual freaks, don’t go to Pride. If you made a misjudgement and went only for the AT&TComcastGoogleFacebookBankofAmericaDeltaAirlines floats, maybe leave. If you can’t leave when the floats from Ramrod Bar and Steamworks go by, don’t look. 

I’ll try to look away when you're vomiting at the St. Patrick’s Parade. Actually, I won't be going. I know what to expect. 

Every man is my type if he’s anonymous

Sometimes I’m in the mood for anonymous sex. It fills a hole in my psyche besides filling my physical hole. Further, it makes hookups easier on my end. I don’t have to ask for a photo. When a guy messages me and - four lines of dialogue in – has still neglected to show me anything besides his dick, I assume he wants anon. Occasionally when I ask if they want anon, these mystery men feign shock and some disdain. What did they think was going to happen? That I was going to invite to my apartment, sight unseen, someone who I could find ugly? I didn’t say they would be objectively ugly, but that I wouldn't find them unattractive at that moment. What then? Do I tell them the hookup is off, meaning they wasted their time traveling to me? Do I resign myself to sex with someone who turns me off out of graciousness? Do I just go face down and pretend they are someone else, or that I’m a worthless sod being used by some brute?  

If it’s the last option, well, then, you understand the appeal of anonymous sex. Sometimes guys are taken aback by the audacity of the concept. They ask questions. They seek clarification. Am I really going to leave my door unlocked to let a stranger enter my house, inseminate me and leave without any pleasantries? Yes, the lack of pleasantries is the selling point. 

Maybe they weren’t my type and this is the only way they’re sticking their cock in my ass. For example, they probably asked what I was doing. Then if I were horny, and then if I wanted their load. After saying: 1) not much; 2) yes; and 3) yes, what am I to say if you send a picture and I’m not feeling it? 

I have certain features I prefer in bottoms (mainly a bubble butt or muscle ass, but I digress). I don’t really have a type when it comes to tops. Or rather I have too many types that I cannot begin to categorize. Two guys could look similar to most people and I could see them entirely differently in terms of desire. If a guy puts out a weird energy, or looks like he might be an asshole, or lacks confidence, or exudes confidence incompatible with and in excess of his physical appearance and prowess, then I’m not interested. 

These are characteristics I don't have to consider if my ass is up and my face is in a pillow. I can imagine that you are gorgeous or that you are a bridge troll (both are exhilarating to me) while you use me like a fleshjack. In that moment, I am both pitifully subservient and exceedingly powerful. Much of these encounters is my choreography. I choose to wear a blindfold because besides adding to the visual, it allows me to suck the guy when he first arrives. Usually the image of me ass up and vulnerable is enough to stiffen cocks. But if they need help, I can roll over and get face-fucked until they have achieved penetration solidity. It’s an unfortunately awkward situation when a guy tries to squeeze limp flesh into a tight hole, determined to not leave without getting inside. When their tenacity turns the scenario into a flacid dry hump (and I wonder: does he know his dick isn’t inside me?) it may, or may not be a good thing that he can’t see my eyes rolling outside of my skull. In this case, I’ll cut the charade short, let him hump my oral cavity with his limp meat, and allow him some face-saving satisfaction. I’m not being generous. I’m protecting his ego in case he’s psychotic, so that it doesn’t set him off. (I’ve seen Waiting for Mr. Goodbar)

In most cases, however, it’s quick seeding, the way I prefer it. I’m not a power bottom. Oftentimes, I am turned on by the idea of taking dick – even large numbers thereof. But many hours of getting my colon assaulted? Not usually, unless I love you. In which case (if you love me back) you will likely fuck me erotically, with slow and fast strokes combined – not the jack-hammer pounding which some “total tops” think is alpha. Violent fucking that breaks furniture like backroom fuck benches and plywood walls is different than that which damages my sofa or bed frame. So assault me for a few minutes and leave me my reward – deep in my guts or dripping down my ball sac. Then leave quickly in case there is another human dildo arriving soon. 

Just don’t talk.  Saying something lame destroys the fantasy playing in my head. If you start asking me if I like it, if I like that big dick, if it feels amazing, then you have punctured the fantasy. I now realize that you are a putz who substitutes inane play-by-play for real passion. I don’t mean emotional passion. Fuck that. I mean animal lust. Alphas don’t have to tell you they are alphas. Mark your territory with your seed. Bonus points if you piss in me afterward without asking. (You should, however, give me a quick warning so I know to hold it in and not make a mess that I’ll have to clean along with the dirt you tramped in with your shoes, which – of course – you didn’t remove.) Just announce: I’m going to piss in you. I’ll both appreciate and respect the gesture. 

I like playing this subservient role, but at the same time, I have the power. I have made myself an object. The top thinks he is making me his object, but remember that it was I who invited him in. I control the situation. I am using my body, and specifically my hole, to enthrall him. He is a slave to my body. He can see me and desire me. I cannot see him. In that moment, he is a tool – a disembodied cock – which I am using. He thinks he is in control and yet I know exactly how this is going to play out. If he is thinking how lucky he is, I can sense this when I ask online if he wants anon and he replies “really?” These fellas behave as if they have hit the jackpot: a scenario they have seen on porn but never thought they could experience. When they arrive, I typically hear them whisper to themselves joyous surprise at the treasure before them. My senses tingle and my cock hardens as I feel their breath getting closer and their touch alighting  on my legs and ass. They often dive face first into my ass,  unless they immediately plunge their cock into it instead. It doesn’t take long. This is something else I control. I can make them cum whenever I want, typically. I can be pretty quiet at first, then I increase my breathing, followed by moans of increasing volume and intensity. Once I start verbalizing how great their big cock feels and how I implore them to just use me, their orgasm is close behind. I can reach back and fondle their balls if I need to.

Lest you think this is human connection of the weakest and saddest sort indicative of pathetic intimacy issues, let me assure you that it is, just as most casual hookups are. If you think making eye contact is the sign of a meaningful interaction, perhaps you should look in the mirror and assess your own feelings. Maybe I’m feeling inadequate and depressed and I am looking for pseudo validation, or maybe I am feeling confident and happy and looking for mindless fun. I’m sampling all the product variations in a supermarket aisle without any brand loyalty. A repeat purchase of one brand means one less new brand that I could have tried. 

Still, I have had repeat anonymous suitors: guys who message me telling me how hot the encounter was and can we do it again. A few times, guys told me I could take the mask off and when I did I was pleasantly surprised – they were hot. I even have a semi-regular who sometimes likes anon and sometimes likes face-to-face sex. He’s gorgeous. One time, he messaged me about hooking up and I got my wires crossed and opened the door for him. He was taken aback because he was expecting an unlocked door and a waiting hole. I asked him sheepishly if I should put on my blindfold and he said no. The sex is always great either way. 

Transcending guilt

Being raised and educated Catholic, guilt was integrated into my psyche. In school and church we were constantly told that we were born sinners and had to beg for forgiveness. As suburban, middle class children, we never really did anything very wrong and so confessions were an exercise in creative guilt. What could I confess? I hadn’t done anything, other than being born a sinner (a convenient stunt to make us all seem inferior). Thank my lucky stars (and not Heaven) that I hadn’t suffered SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) before my parents could get me baptized. Otherwise, my tarnished soul would be relegated to Limbo, that ethereal place for dead babies, until such time as God found enough compassion (through the prayers of the faithful/gullible) to remand us to Heaven. Or until the Church decided that, on further examination and consideration, Limbo never really existed after all. 

My school mates and I were in good company. The priests and nuns often told us that they were sinners too. All God’s creations were (at least the human ones). The Christian God doesn’t believe in a tabula rasa. The nuns’ sins I could definitely believe. These were maladjusted sick bitches. They hit children and had terrible tempers. Did they dare confess these transgressions to the priests? 

I didn’t hit anyone. I could have, I suppose, confessed lying to the priest in confession because, lacking any real sins to tell him, I invented ones like lying and being rude to my parents. I didn’t do either, but I had to tell him something. To be thought of as not a sinner was worse than being one. Pride goeth before a fall, and all that. 

We were conditioned – indoctrinated – to see ourselves as flawed, guilty bastards. So when high school came, well, now I really had something to feel guilty about. Sex was bad. All Catholics know that. And thinking about sex is just as bad because God deplores thoughtcrime just as much as Big Brother did in 1984.  Now add thinking about sex with other boys and I was the worst sinner imaginable. (I couldn’t imagine anyone else in my class being gay).  

I have since overcome all this guilt to the extreme where I can not be made to feel guilty about anything. True, I would feel guilty about committing murder, or arson, or any number of terrible acts which I would never do. In my real life though, what is there to feel guilty about? A guilty pleasure? If it gives you pleasure, why feel guilt toward it?  Sex is the main thing religious zealots want us to feel guilty about. They hate sex, or at least they hate the sex that other people are having. It is an odd notion that sex among consenting adults could in any way traverse a moral spectrum. There is good sex and bad sex, just as there are good meals and bad ones. Neither ventures into the realm of morality. In exalting virgin births — from Ra to Horus to Attis to Dionysus to Romulus and Remus to Buddha and to Jesus — the religious, as Christopher Hitchens noted, treat the birth canal “as a one-way street.” Naturally, they see the butthole the same.

Judging sex through a lens of moral teaching is nothing more that an exercise in power of the religious over the hedonistic. Hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. This goal is an anathema to the religious who see pleasure as a sin in itself and who think it is virtuous to suffer pain. The Catholics canonize martyrs for christ’s sake. The vilification of pleasure in general and sex in particular is about the religious asserting real power over others in the here and now. Nuns at my school would often say Wipe that smile off your face! Being miserable was being righteous. Giving into pleasure was giving in to the devil (another church manufactured term, like Limbo). Evangelicals and other religious fanatics still use sex as a weapon to assert superiority (and power via the political system) over the carnal lumpenproles. It only works, however, if those enjoying sex can be made to feel guilty about it. 

Overcoming this guilt took me a while, and I curse the church and all its minions for truncating the sexuality of my youth and early adulthood. This is why I can’t be shamed for being naked in many situations; for having sex in unusual locations; for being open and proud about the amount and type of sex I have. It’s about disarming idiots who have nothing other than indignation to justify their imagined superiority. They are intellectually weak with no talents by which to claim a higher ground. Merely professing outrage over another’s enjoyment of sex is their only weapon. But that weapon is a pea shooter to me who is wearing a guilt-proof vest. Sex is great. Cocks and asses and nudity in all its forms are glorious. Cumming inside someone and having someone cum inside me are magical. Sex outside in nature is powerful. Public sex is a political statement of independance against moral indignancy. Being a slut is a vague term because a slut is just someone who has sex more than you. So in that sense, most of us are sluts to someone. We are all sluts to the religious despots. Being a slut is empowering. We take the power away from the morally indignant and use it ourselves.  

Porn and the Premise

I saw a twitter post recently about a performer who had checked a box, as it were, on something he had wanted to do for some time – a sort of minor bucket list item, a fetish realized. He had fucked the package delivery guy. As a corollary, how many of us have actually had sex with a pizza delivery guy, the premise of porn legend? This cliched setup has appeared in variations in so many porns that it has become a self-parody, like the casual neck massage that leads to office sex, the job interview that would need to be reported to HR in the real world, or the doctor’s visit that would really end with the loss of a medical license.

Viewers of studio porn have come to expect these far-fetched scenarios as the price to pay to get to the sex and the money shots. Many likely fast-forward – to use an archaic reference to the VHS tapes of porn of yore – to the good stuff, but the studios keep giving viewers several minutes with clothes. Are they just padding the scene to make it look long enough to purchase? Is it necessary to establish story structure and get nominated for awards? Perhaps it is to get placed in the award category of best feature. Otherwise, the film would be nominated for best All-Sex Feature. We know those movies: the set-up, if there is one at all, might simply be the protagonists talking on the bed or sofa about how they met and what they looked forward to doing – a kind of presage of deeds to come. And still, even those setups start with clothed models.

I was about to film with another model recently and a discussion ensued about whether we should start naked or clothed. I typically start naked, having heard once by someone who might have heard it second hand, that those videos get more views, or prompt more likes and tips, or lead to more resubscribing. But on a less abstract level, starting naked seems more real – which is one of the attributes that makes consumers of fansite porn prefer it over studio porn. 

Based on conversations I have had, I know I am not alone in preferring to get off to more amateur type porn, because so much studio porn seems artificial and contrived. Fake. They even fake cumshots on occasion. They even start with the fake premise. When we hook up in real life, the premise was established previously – on the app or at the bar. We want to fuck and have already talked about what we’re into and who is hosting. Once we get in the home (or behind the dumpster, or in the alley or wherever), we dispense with clothes ASAP. It is an under-rated given that horny gay men can disrobe in lightning speed. They should give awards for that. Two or three fluid movements and pants, socks, underwear and shirts are on the floor. 

So I was in favor of starting the filming naked. The argument from the other side (either the other model or cameraman – I don’t recall – was that we should start clothed because porn studios do it and therefore fans must prefer it. I didn’t really care, but I think once we were ready to film we had started making out and instinctively doffed our accoutrements, making the discussion moot. 

So here we are, post cumming and upon reflection, wondering what is de rigueur. At this point, I want to gripe that when porn performers claim that their fans prefer one thing over another, it is seldom based on market research and rather on anecdotes. Some fans bothered to write a message saying what they wanted. You know the ones; those who suggest what performers you should film with. I and many performers welcome these types of comments because we want our fans engaged. Yet it is hardly scientific and exhaustive. Checking twitter analytics and likes and views is research of a kind, but it’s probably not that valuable. 

I am willing to grant that copying what the studios do may have merit because they are in positions to do more extensive, actual market research. I suspect they do some although I am skeptical of how far it goes. I have been on set with enough directors to know that some scripts are more detailed than others and some are less than rough outlines. Dialogue and set-ups sometimes approach the realm of improvisation. Granted, these are the films that will not be nominated for awards. Those features that will be placed in contest for nominations are generally highly scripted affairs. But then, those are the flagships for the studios, the haute couture as it were: designed to win awards and bring kudos and respectability to the brand, rather than to just get people off. 

So why does studio porn start most every scene with the performers dressed? Could it be to appear more polished and professional? Certainly many of the All-Sex studios are just as polished. While most fansite porn is less slick, there are striking examples – Rhyheim, Eye Films, Let’s Eat Cake, Rick and Griff – where the cinematography is every bit as good as most studio porn. 

The reason could also have to do with convention. Porn studios are creatures of habit. Formulas are tried and true and don’t run the risk of failure like a new concept or idea. This is why casting non-white models has long seemed like a gamble to so many studios. 

Still, I think the main reason comes down to The Premise. Why are these two (or more) men deciding to fuck here and now? B-roll gives us the reason. It could very well be that consumers of fansite porn want B-roll as well. They want to know how these guys became such very good friends. But some of you more vocal fans should know why we’re fucking. You asked us to. 

The Gentility of Hope 

     At the bottom of the box was a quivering thing. It’s body was small; it’s wings were frail; but there was a radiance about it. Somehow Pandora knew what it was, and she took it up, touched it carefully, and showed it to Epimetheus. “It is Hope,”  she said.

    “Do you think it will live?” asked Epimetheus.

Is there anything more depressing than hope? Posing such a question may indicate depression in and of itself. So be it. There. We now know from whence this piece derives. And yet, it must be asked, if not postulated: that clinging to hope is – to quote John Cale – “the last resort of the gambling man.”

Hope may seem, well, hopeful. Hopeful sounds enthusiastic. Promising. Energetic. Something is about to happen. Maybe not right away; maybe not even this year. But soon! Yet truncated, the word hope is dismal. It implies that all other avenues have been exhausted. Last resort indeed. It’s not a plan. It is the anti-plan. When even Plans B and C have failed, what else do we have? If you say hope, you’re counting on a Deus Ex Machina to save you. 

Hope is exactly better than nothing, which is why it is both depressing and the last thing keeping depression in check. I never know when sheets and blankets of depression will envelop me. I also cannot tell you why I am depressed. There is often no good reason. Oh, there are manufactured reasons: things I tell myself to justify the way I feel. Things to make sense out of the senseless, so that I can placate myself that I am not also losing faculties. A reason will at least make sadness seem authentic and not something that can be swatted away by being told to cheer up. It would be pretty to think that one could become happy by choice. This is the puerile advice offered by so many. Perhaps that works for some or even most people. Who knows? It’s not measurable by any device I possess, and people are known liars when it comes to expressing their true feelings. 

After a day or days of feeling lost, alone, empty and defeated, I sometimes rise out of it slightly by thinking of things that could happen in the (hopefully not too distant) future. It is hope that keeps me from completely giving up. 

Let me just say here that giving up is not synonymous with failure. Giving up for an interlude is healthy when defeat seems all encompassing. Defeat is rarely all-encompassing but perceptions are skewed in depressive periods. Trying too hard in sports (physically trying) causes muscle tightness, inexactitude, and incoordination. Mentally trying too hard does the figurative counterparts to those measurable things. Your vision (both actual and figurative) is blurred. You can’t focus. Goals and methods of achieving them are jumbled, pixilated. 

It is often when you say fuck it, I give up, that you can relax and see clearly. Muscles stop over-firing. Technique returns. When giving up goes beyond the temporary, however, death – the ultimate giving up – seems a plausible avenue. Perhaps this is where you need hope. Hope is a promise that one part of your psyche makes with another. Hope can be the package you anticipate in the mail. You think it will bring you joy. That’s what keeps you looking in the mailbox for a reason to go on tomorrow. Maybe it will arrive tomorrow. We know that the package itself is often a letdown. The anticipation was more glorious. The thing we were hoping to lift us up doesn’t. Hope disappoints eternal. Perhaps some people have the capacity for eternal emotional salvation: leaping from wish to trust with naivete – the little twigs one grasps when hanging over a precipice. You know they will likely fail but they are all you have, and thank Minerva there are more than one.  

What we really need when the twigs of hope buckle in strength  and dwindle in number is help: a hand or hands to pull us up. That’s what we needed all along, but our myopic search for hope told ourselves – and those waiting hands nearby – that we could do it ourselves. The ones among us who commit suicide have come to accept the Nietzschean notion that Zeus gave man hope so that he would not kill himself “but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment.”

In that case, hope can be at worst a distraction and at best a diversion from seeking the help we need. 

Literal, amazing daddies
(and other dumb things)

While Webster adds new words to its dictionary every year, the vox populi should agree to dispense with some meaningless members of our lexicon. First is amazing, which is now applied to mundane things which you just happen to like a great deal. Second is literally, which literally doesn’t mean what it used to mean. You are not literally starving. That would be figuratively. (Chanel Jujubee’s “Just say talk” here). The third is Daddy.

Now that twinks are calling twenty-somethings “daddy,” and that anyone who tops now can claim that title, it may be time to retire it. This article, however is not about figurative daddies, but rather the more literal ones: namely old people; specifically old gay men. Me.

Sure, sure, sure. 40 is the new 30; 50 is the new 40; 80 is the new 60, ad nauseum. Traditionally, however, gay years have been akin to dog years, where a low age can still be considered old. This is expositive dissonance with the reality that many gay men experience growing up (certainly gay men of certain eras): we got a late start on dating and other gay social interactions so that we experience things years later than straight people do because of societal improbations. Gay men are sometimes accused of being immature; of not acting our age; of prioritizing fun and adventure over more staid, straight activities (getting married, having kids, planning retirement, living within our means). I mean, shoes and sensible do not belong together. 

Sometimes I don’t mind being asked my age and sometimes it absolutely depresses me. My different reactions are based on perceived intentions of the asker. This is my perception and it may be wrong, but it doesn’t usually take long to find out. Some people will ask out of a genuine curiosity related to points of reference. Will he get the reference to an old TV show, a musical artist from a previous era, a political or cultural reference of more than 5 years ago? These are fair and justifiable reasons to ask the question.   

Some, however, ask the question to ascertain whether to include or exclude you from something. If I perceive this is the intention, it is disheartening. To be excluded from an event or conversation or even a friendship solely on one’s age is dispiriting. It is arbitrary; and it is nothing I can change.

To be excluded because I am boring, or annoying is understandable. I can be these things at times to some people. But I cannot change when I was conceived and delivered. I wasn’t consulted. Upon meeting someone, I find no use in asking the commonly delivered queries: how old are you; what do you do; and what are you? I figure that if I get to know the person as a friend down the road, I’ll probably find those things out in context. 

Yet people ask them not only as lazy conversation starters but also to put you in a category. As a conversation starter, asking someone what they do may help them relate if the asker or someone they know is familiar with the job. If they are unfamiliar, they can ask genuine questions to learn and engage.  But the other reason is nefarious. People ask what you do for work in order to decide how much respect to give to you. In most cases, they will respect a professional career like doctor or lawyer or banker (unless they have bad history or political grievances with such). They will place you in a lesser class if they deem the job demeaning or not worthy of respect. Therefore, the question of what you do for work is to establish quickly how much dignity they will grant you. 

This is true of age and ethnicity questions too. I rarely get asked my ethnicity because I’m white and white Americans assume I was born here. If they are ever curious about what western European countries contributed my progenitors, they get nothing. I couldn’t be less interested. 

The age question can take this tack. I have had guys on hookup apps tell me I’m hot and that they want to fuck. Then they ask me my age. What does it matter, if you found me fuckable? Further, I have had guys who have age restrictions in their profile that exclude me, hit me up. When I explain I don’t fit their arbitrary criterion, they usually tell me Oh, it doesn’t matter; you’re hot. I then spare them the cognitive dissonance and say bye. I imagine members of certain ethnic groups experience similar absurdity. I know of Asian men that were hit on by the no fats, no femmes, no asians crowd, because they didn’t look Asian. Once the ethnicity was ascertained, the hookup was off. You see how utterly ludicrous all these parameters are? Don’t ask what someone does, what someone is, or how old they are. Think of better conversation starters.

I will always be guarded at hearing the age question unless I can glean the asker’s intentions. Intentions, however, are almost never gleanable through text and social media. So if you want me to ghost you, ask my age. As always, no response is a response. 

Be Reasonable

Everything does not happen for a reason. I roll my eyes (surreptitiously) when someone says this. They think they are being profound, but I find it about as profound as “It is what it is.” Sound without fury, but still signifying nothing.

Life is more chaotic than humans want to believe, so we place meaning where there is none. We want to explain to ourselves -- mainly -- and to others as a means of shoring up our position of how things operate in our universe. People who profess this cliche that all -- All! -- things happen for a reason, typically do so after a serendipitous turn of events. A bunch of stuff happened and at least one outcome was beneficial to the principal telling the account. They seldom attribute the behoovement to a deity or spirit. Maybe in the back of their mind they believe it was an answered prayer or guardian angel, yet they want to avoid religion. Regardless, they suggest there is some cosmic force that controls events in their favor at least some of the time. Conversely, people sometimes use the phrase when something bad happens. A partner leaves them, they get fired, they get in an auto accident, they drop their phone in the urinal. I guess these things happen for a reason. In this iteration, the goal is to convince yourself that life didn’t suck as bad as you first thought; there will be a silver lining (get a better partner, job, car or phone). But you could have done that anyway without the trauma and in some cases the expense and paperwork. Still, it makes us feel better, as if we didn’t fuck up so bad after all. 

This is convenient and probably reassuring in a chaotic existence: convenient that the beneficiary of this good fortune deserved it; reassuring that there is some order to our world that only they and other enlightened souls recognize. You’ve witnessed this. Someone utters the maxim Everything happens for a reason, and listeners will nod their heads in wise concurrence. 

To quote Jake in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

The problem with this notion is that the omens were just common sense. Of course you should change paths, quit that job, end that relationship, move to that new city, do that thing you want to do but are just too scared to try. But how does everything happen for a reason if we know so many people who are frozen in fear of changing anything in their less than satisfying lives? It echoes the aphorism that no one lies on their deathbed regretting things they did; they typically regret the things they didn’t do. For these impotent souls,  there was no reason for what did or did not happen to them.

I have fallen into the temptation to think that the forces of nature (or perhaps a consortium of angels) have given me signs to take a certain course of action. Ignoring or dismissing these signs is -- in retrospect -- seen as hubris that will lead to unhappiness. Over the years -- in an effort to alleviate depressive bouts --I had read in various self-help tomes that the universe will give you progressively obvious signs that you should take a particular course of action. With every omen you ignore, more omens of increasing gravity appear, metaphorically hitting you over the head until you can no longer ignore them. 

For years, I had contemplated quitting my job of decades, moving, and doing something different. I liked my job well enough but it was growing tedious and I felt I had accomplished the goals I could. There were many reasons why I believed I couldn't take this course of action (some more valid than others). Finally I experienced a tragedy the same day I got fired and the “signs” could no longer be deferred. 

But were they signs or just stuff that happened to which I attributed a cosmic instruction? Things did work out when I veered off my well-worn path, such that it’s easy to deduce it would have worked out better had I switched paths earlier when I got those first “signs.” But maybe not. Maybe if I had taken these steps earlier, my situation would be worse now.

Second, I can only call those random occurrences “signs” because I want to give meaning to an existence that could very well be meaningless. First, I have no idea what would have happened had I done things differently. No one can know. We all make a myriad of choices in our life and live without the knowledge of what would have happened had we made different choices. We tell ourselves that this particular thing happened for a reason in order to console ourselves that we made the right choice.

It’s random. And it probably doesn’t matter. All that matters is how we choose to react to the stuff that happens. That we can control in real time. Not in hindsight. 

Rat Race

Many of us have heard the adage that no one lies in his death bed, wishing that he had spent more time at the office. Some of us may remember Emily’s line from Our Town: “does anyone ever realize the life they live . . . every, every minute?” The Stage Manager replies: “No. Saints and poets maybe . . . they do some.” And Sex Workers. Not just sex workers, though. Any iconoclast that declines to run the rat race of 40+ hour work weeks, grinding their body and spirit for decades under the shady promise of rest during retirement. Some die before reaching this elusive nirvana; others face poverty and stress as corporations lose their pensions to poor investment; others, still, face health problems that sap what little money they get while draining them of any energy to enjoy their time off for good behavior. Realizing that they don’t even have the money for a frugal existence, these wizened veterans of capitalism’s grist mill have to venture back to the work world which sees them as undesirable -- as pliable and desperate as teenagers. Minimum wage is good enough for them! They’re too old to learn the intricate skills required of jobs today. Greeter at Walmart. That’s their speed. 

Perhaps as a reaction to the Pandemic, perhaps as an inevitable awakening among the worker bees in a toxic hive, Americans today don’t want to work long, hard hours for shit. Traffic engineers long ago figured out that the more lanes you add to a congested thoroughfare, the more traffic you attract. The congestion is never alleviated, merely scaled upwards. The Rat Race is like rush hour. More work means more money, which means buying more and bigger stuff that never makes you happy and always keeps you in debt, under stress, and in greater dread of falling behind. We have to work to pay bills which will always grow in proportion to our income. 

So many people want to get off this route, but as Carlos Casteneda wrote “when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path.”

I think many Americans -- and other people in countries where productivity and GDP is valued over the happiness of its citizens -- are realizing with horror how they are fodder for the machine. Yet many cannot find the courage to choose an alternative.

Consequently they despise those that have. Ergo: “Sex Work is not work,” said with the utmost disdain. They further despise people doing an enjoyable job. Sex is enjoyable, so how dare we profit from it. If it’s enjoyable, it should be given away. Selling sex taints the amateur status in their eyes. To a lesser degree, some people disdain professional athletes, entertainers, You-Tubers et. al. The degree is lesser because society has largely accepted those activities as mainstream. Sex continues to have stigma attached due to the influence of the Christian Taliban. 

Iconoclasts living off what their naked countenances can fetch them, are a painful reminder to the lumpenprole that there is a better way -- one which decorum and improbation prevents them from taking. Of course society disapproves of those who don’t follow the 9-5, 5 days a week, 2 vacation weeks a year, template. That’s how capitalism keeps the proletariat in line. It’s a fanciful notion that we are all just one step from saying “Take this job and shove it;” It’s a grim truism that the next step is applying for a job just as bad as the one we escaped. 

Those who have checked out of the need to make profits for a master who they hope will benevolently shower some flotsam and jetsam upon them, come under withering scrutiny by the loyal minions still clocking in for the honor of making their car payment and watching their 401K creep lazily upward, while their health slides stealthily downward. 

Not long after we are put on this earth, we realize that we will depart it and that nothing we do will change that inevitability. Work for the sake of work may seem to give meaning in the guise of achievement; yet, is it really that terrible to just enjoy ourselves and each other while we are alive? We do have to work enough for basic needs and other pleasures that make life enjoyable. So many of us, however, lose sight of what makes life enjoyable. Being miserable in a job 5 days a week for the promise of two days of living; and by extension, 40 years of sacrificing our happiness for the promise of ten or so years of retirement living seems a bit too far in the delayed gratification scenario. 

It is admirable when people feel the need to accomplish something great. It gives their life purpose: the results can benefit society or even just a few members of it; the results can leave a legacy that lives on after one’s death (like a work or art, or a discovery). The vast majority of earthlings, however, get trapped into pursuing pseudo accomplishments. Like collecting items that have value to you but which no one will want after your demise, these pseudo accomplishments are like pissing yourself in a dark suit: they give you a warm feeling, but no one else notices. Too many of us feel the need to always be striving for some nebulous accomplishment which could be as mundane as simply completing a 40 or 50 hour work week. 

Athletes will often complain about grueling training sessions as a way to boast of how hard they worked and what obstacles they overcame. Perhaps it’s the same with tedious work for the sake of work. I have fallen into this trap before, boasting about how many hours I put in and how long I had gone without a vacation. I thought it made me seem stoic, but others probably saw it as pathetic. Way before I did porn, I created my own coaching job (and business) so I could do what I liked and could create my own hours. Then people would ask me (with disdain), what else I was doing besides coaching. The implication was that coaching itself was not sufficient for their view of productive labor. I grew defensive. I told people about the graduate classes I was taking, and the other side gigs I had, so that I would seem more productive. Over time, though, I saw through their thinly veiled indignation. 

“What else do you do besides coaching?”
“That’s it. Just coaching.”
“That’s all?”
“Yeah. Isn’t it great?”

If you can be resourceful enough to live comfortably with food, shelter, and a fun and fulfilling life, others will resent that. I don’t let jealousy bother me. I don’t have time for that.

Well, actually, I do have time for that. I would just rather use that time better. 

Thrupple

I once posted on one of those hookup apps which shall remain nameless (because who would want to plug them?), that my goal was to be in a thrupple. I thought it was an innocuous wish to speak into existence (using the mundane phrase so often employed by those trying to appear sublime). It was trite, not a goal for which one can work; it was a wish, fleeting and destined to be as unfulfilled as most of our sex app desires. 

So I wanted a co-relationship with two hot guys. Is that any more than just double the naivete of wanting to meet one great guy on a sex app? Yes, the second option happens. It even happened to me, until we broke up, acrimoniously, a year later. Gay relationships often blossom out of NSA hookups. You first crave his legs, or pecs, or eyes, but later discover you like the actual person. 

The reason my goal was so naive is the logistics of securing two attractive guys for even an NSA hookup are daunting. As you communicate with two potential temporary beaus, each one wants to see photos of the others. So you need consent from each to share his pics. They will have criteria that might differ and clash with yours. All three can’t agree with at least one of the possible fuck buddies, and the whole thing falls apart. I check-out the moment a potential hookup suggests I find a third. Too much hassle just to get off. Now imagine trying -- from scratch -- to score two guys who want to spend long-term time with me and each other. The most convenient way would be for a third to join a couple already in progress. Even that brings delicate dynamics. What are the odds that all three will love and want each other equally? 

I think of the scene in the film “All That Jazz” between Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) and the angel of death (Jessica Lange) when Joe tells how sad yet touched he was when one of his two girlfriends with whom he lived left him, writing a note saying something like I love you but I can’t share you. Joe tells the angel how the note made him feel hurt yet flattered.

“How do you know she wrote it to you?” the angel asks.  

The bottom line is that verbalizing a goal like my thrupple desire (verbalizing any goal, really) on a social media site is asking for disappointment. I get the fascination with “speaking it into existence,” but I find that aphorism silly. Any goal you announce to the public is not a true goal, but a pipe-dream. If you have a real goal, you write it where you can see it everyday; you plan ways to reach it; you obsess over it. You do not, however, tell anyone who can’t help you achieve it. The few people who can and will help you achieve your goal are surrounded and outnumbered by the legions who want to see you fail. Once they know your goal, they can sabotage it by deeds -- if they have the means -- or by words and negative energy. 

Indeed, a troll replied to me (as trolls are wont to do) about how selfish I was to want two boyfriends when so many (I assume him) couldn’t find one. His hatred for me was jarring. Why did he take my silly wish personally? Did he imagine that the second boyfriend I would add was the one who would have otherwise dated him? -- as if there weren’t enough single gay men available. Gay boyfriends are hardly a zero sum game. There is not one person for everyone, if we all just look hard and long enough. There may be dozens -- hundreds -- of guys for any one of us (which could be why we need to sample so many in dark rooms). There may be none. It’s not the universe that decides this. We make these choices, either consciously or unconsciously. 

So why did I consciously think a throuple was the relationship for me? I had just come off my third long-term relationship, which ended as its predecessors did: with me getting dumped. Since two of these relationships were monogamous and one was open mainly on his side (he could fuck whomever he wanted; my outside hookups were subject to his approval), I longed for a slut phase. But I also thought I missed waking up with a guy I loved, and sharing my life and adventures with him. A throuple seemed an acceptable compromise. There would be some variety along with the stability. Couldn’t I love two men equally? And more selfishly, couldn’t two guys love me equally? How quaint. 

In the past 5 years since I posted (and soon deleted) my faux dating app goal, I have seen on social media a few successful throuples and have been vicariously happy for them. I have also seen some failed threeways and felt bad that their experiment didn’t work. I, however, have abandoned that intention. Yes, I want two things: to love someone or someones, honestly and genuinely; and to have hedonistic, ass-pounding, throat choking, dick-throbbing, cum-spurting sex with lots of various men. This is not a dilemma unless you are hung up equating love and sex. Why do I need a relationship? I would much prefer to love friends with all my heart and fuck other guys (and some of my friends) with all my lust. 

Open relationships are sensible options for people like me, assuming you can find someone on the same page as you regarding love and lust. I admire sluts in general, and I especially love two or more sluts who find each other and revel in their mutually shared sexual abandon. 

Is this a goal of mine?
I’m not telling.

Not PROSE - A poem

The dearth of tears
Is not a sign
Of inner strength renewed
It tells instead
Of an inner dread
And a resignation

Crying shows weakness
While stoicism shows naught
And it is nothing I wish to show
Reveal mystery to those around
They can suspect a good life or bad
But no tears or smiles will confirm

An alabaster figure
Appearing hard
Until crumbling
Surprising some

Nobody loves me and other hyperbole

Let me first say that I don’t believe that nobody loves me; rather the fictional character in this story does. His name: My Insecurity. He has merely a minor role, but a recurring one nevertheless -- like a villain who appears when things seem to be going too well for the protagonist, or a jester who shows up when comic relief is needed. 

There are undoubtedly characteristics of my personality that make me unlikable. Not unlovable because people tell me that I am kind, considerate and nice to the extreme, such that some ne'er do wells take advantage of me. Like-ability is different. People can love you but not want to spend too much time with you if your personality is in some way insufferable.

Sometimes I think it’s drugs. I don’t do them. That could make me boring in the eyes of those who do. At parties I am comfortable being the only one not on drugs; I enjoy watching the show. I wonder, then, how the show views me.  

 I don’t think my personality is terrible, although that is for others to decide in their own myopic, tainted perspectives. Rather, it could just be dull, and even then, only when apparel is involved. I am far more outgoing, gregarious and fun when I’m naked. This might seem ordinary but I disagree. I know plenty of people who are interesting both naked and clothed and I make the same observation of individuals in the converse: they are boring even with their clothes off. When my clothes are off, I am everybody’s friend.

I am an introvert, and, like many introverts,  I can be very outgoing in situations even though I eventually crave alone time. I like engaging with people and even groups at certain times, especially when I am spurred on by a topic that thoroughly engages me. I become animated when discussing something interesting to me. Mere discussion is not necessary though, if an activity engages me. Dancing works sometimes, but nudity is always a potent force of conviviality.  Nudity is honesty and openness and lack of artifice. I am very interesting when I am naked in a group. 

I told you that this was about a fictional character, so I reiterate that this is a fictional story because it involves my distorted imagination of what others think of me. There is a clever aphorism that “your opinion of me is none of my business,” but that is just so much pablum. One’s imagination will not be placated by aphorisms. 

This story is going to seem silly. But of course. It’s about My Insecurity’s imagination. It’s a fantasy world that merits exploring like Alice’s Wonderland. I was snubbed by the hot gay couple at the gym today. This is the first time they have snubbed me together although they have snubbed me individually many times. I talked to them once at the market and they were friendly. This was after chatting with one of them online about a problem he helped me with. So my imagination wonders what happened. 

Plenty of people walk by me at the gym everyday and I think nothing of it. Indeed, I walk by as many or more with no attempt at interaction. Yes, an occasional smile or nod if eye contact is made, but largely indifference. My Insecurity can’t be indifferent because there must be some reason that these two, who once engaged in a conversation with me, now look past me when I say hi or offer a smile. I don’t care when someone doesn’t like me, and I care just a little bit when someone who used to like me no longer does. But in this case, there must be a reason why they see me with disdain. Did somebody say something to them about me? Did someone make up a story about me. Was I accused of saying something I didn't say? Maybe I behave in a certain way in the gym which they find off-putting. I put my weights away and clean the equipment after use. I don’t slam weights or obnoxiously drop equipment. Perhaps I seem too impenetrable. They could perceive this as arrogance. Friends have sometimes informed me that people are intimidated by me. Is it the way I carry myself? Do they see a chip on my shoulder when all that’s really there is the weight of diffidence?

I could ask them about this, and yet we all know I can’t. That would be so desperate. It would give the game away about My Insecurity. No. Better to write about it and realize in the editing and the rewriting how silly the whole thing is. How silly all insecurity ultimately is. How this story and stories like it are fictional. I made this up. It’s my story but it doesn’t have to be my reality. We never know for sure how others see us. That is their story. 

Fear of a pink thong

During Pride Month, I have some advice: Go to Pride events, or don’t. Celebrate or protest. March or watch. Wear a harness (and nothing else) or cargo shorts. Spend money on circuit parties, or purchase rainbow merch from lecherous, multinational companies, or buy bitcoin. Do what you want. But do not tell LGBTQ people how to behave in June whether you are straight or gay. 

Like the word queer, gays have taken the word pride and made it our own. Originally used as early as the 1500’s, queer meant peculiar or odd, according to the Columbia Journalism Review. By the late 1800’s in England and the early 1900’s in the United States, queer refered to homosexuals in a derogatory connotation. What does a group do when a word is used to try to hurt that group? Reclaim the word. In 1991, Newsweek Magazine reported on the group Queer Nation co-opting the word queer to disarm homophobes. 

You’re queer!

Yeah. Isn’t it fabulous?

No one can make you feel ashamed without your permission. 

No matter how irrational grammar nazis get about the true definitions of words (and the necessity of the Oxford comma - eye roll), language is a living, evolving entity. Words change meaning over time. A word is a symbol of that which it describes. If you understand what I mean when I say a word, I have communicated effectively. 

Enter the late George Carlin, who once did a bit on the word pride. Ever the linguistic champion, Carlin made a career out of language. He attacked euphemism, deploring words used to obfuscate real meaning. But his take on the word pride missed the point when it comes to gay pride. 

“To me, pride should be reserved for something you achieve or attain on your own and not something that happens by accident of birth.”

He was talking about national and ethnic pride primarily, but let’s consider why we adopted the term Gay Pride. Straights have wanted queer people to feel ashamed. After a police bust of a gay bar, newspapers would print the names of the arrested for the purpose of shaming them. Loss of jobs, family, and respectability followed. So what is the opposite of shame? Pride, naturally. 

This is why the resurgent (I could say regurgitated) discourse on proper behavior and dress at pride events is so exhausting. We’ve been through this. Those who lament at the sight (or thought) of men in thongs, harnesses, latex, leashes, nipple clamps, dog collars, or apparently anything that parents might have to explain to their children (because kids haven't seen weird costumes in Marvel and Disney films) is problematic. Well too bad. If I wear a head-to-toe pink latex bodysuit and make out with everyone wearing a jock, you will not shame me. To quote Harold in the film The Boys in the Band, “it’s nobody’s goddamn business but my own.”

For lack of a better word, I will be proud of my fashion and carnal choices. You can die mad about it, which I think is the whole point of the faux outrage anyway: to be indignant, because as Marshall McLuhan said “moral indignation is a technique used to endow the idiot with dignity.”

In the porn gutter,
looking at the stars

Porn Star is one of those platitudes strewn about popular discourse like celebrity and public servant. To some, everyone who performs sex on camera is a porn star. This can be said in a derogatory way to imply the person is not worthy of respect, as in, “Stormy Daniels is a porn star.”  This is then supposed to disqualify her from being taken seriously. Porn Star is also used as a generic term the way Kleenex is used for all facial tissue. So when does a porn actor truly become a “star?”  

One metric bantered about is awards. Some say that porn actors become stars once they win a GayVN or a Grabby. Perhaps this made sense years ago, but now there seem to be a glut of award shows and award categories which run the gamut from Best Performer and Best Newcomer  to Best Erotic Wrestler and Best Tattoos. Are all 50-60 award winners from the various organizations stars?

How heavy should studio work be weighted when determining star quality? It makes sense, especially during the pandemic economic recession, that those who haphazardly started fan sites as a way to pay bills, would not necessarily be called stars, especially if they're shooting headless solo scenes with bad lighting for 10 subscribers. Some fan performers, however, command huge followings due to frequent posting of lengthy, well-produced videos featuring accomplished performers. These people making excess of $30K a month don’t need the imprimatur of a studio brand to be called stars.

With more money to be made with self-produced fan content as opposed to studio paid scenes, many porn performers only do studio work for the cache -- and by cache I mean advertising, marketing and award mining. What are the value of porn awards if not for cache and the moniker porn star?

We could bestow the star label on those with more than 100 or 200 K Twitter followers. But what happens when their Twitter gets deleted and they start over from scratch? Or if they buy followers? Let’s please stay away from naming someone a star based on what top percentage on his fans site he says he is. 

The word porn star could be compared to the term celebrity. Celebrities are often people who are famous for being famous -- the career game show contestants of old and the reality stars of today. Star, however, carries more heft. It is an attitude more than a measurable quantity. We’ve heard stories of how famous and accomplished singers, dancers and actors were discovered while working their mundane 9-5 job, by some bigwig who could see they had had star quality. “You’re a star, baby,” is the classic line. In other words, people can tell when someone is a star. It is an ineffable quality that radiates. I have seen up and coming porn performers and thought, this person is a star (or will be one soon). Stars act like stars -- not by being arrogant, but by exuding confidence; by elevating themselves above the masses. 

Consider the way U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart defined pornography in a 1964 case: “I know it when I see it.” When it comes to porn Stars, we know them when we see them. 

The Heteronormativity of the cum shot

(When the climax is the climax)

A long time ago, someone decided that all porn movies should share the story structure of classic greek dramas. Or maybe it was chance that porn movies should have a rising action, a climax, and a falling action. The thing about the climax in Roman and Shakespearean five act plays, and even 19th century and modern drama 3 act plays, is that the climax is in the middle:  the place where the plot turns; where the hero’s weaknesses are revealed and things get worse (or if it’s a comedy, where things get better). The ending (also called the catastrophe or denouement) is when we see how the hero ends up. In a tragedy, he dies; in a comedy, the hero lives happily ever after.

In this sense, porn has truncated the falling action to just the flacid dicks; and the denouement to maybe some post coital cuddling. In porn, the climax is the ending. The goal. La raison d’etre. It’s the only  purpose of all the oral and anal action up to that point. In the mind of the porn director and the writers of the scripts (more outlines than literary construct -- I mean they always come with pictures), the whole video is nothing without the Cum Shot. It is revered in it’s all-important magnitude. It is the one thing all porn viewers wait for (or fast forward to), so the thinking goes. 

Is this true? Is this all, or even the bulk, of what audiences want? If the performers create a tour de force of cock-sucking, ass-eating, missionary fucking, pile-driving, planking, reverse cowgirling, bumper carring, and aerial thrusting, then is it all a waste if one or both (or all) don’t shoot loads? Porn companies think so, to the point of using fake cum and having the actors fake internal breeding. 

How much of this attitude comes from straight porn? Cumming is a great feeling, natch, but I have had great sex that didn’t end in orgasm for me, and I have had guys tell me the same thing. Sex feels good before the cumshot. Witness the desire for many guys to hold off cumming too soon. This is not just for the benefit of our partners. We know that once we cum, the sex might be over, and it was the skin-on-skin action which we found hot. 

Fans content is more likely than studio porn to omit a cumshot. Maybe one or both of the performers just couldn’t nut at that time and no one saw a need to chafe their dick for another 15 minutes trying to force one out. Nor did they reach for the cum lube that looks a little like real semen. I have talked with a couple performers who agreed that the sex is the important component and a culminating ejaculation isn’t always required.

In my recent, informal twitter poll, it was fairly evenly split: 44% said their own sex can be hot without cumming; 41% said all participants needed to cum for the sex to be good; 15% said they really wanted their partner to cum, but their orgasm wasn’t as important. Watching porn, however, elicited a different take: 66% thought there must be a cumshot, while 32% said it wasn’t necessary. 

What do you think? Do you need to see a cumshot? Would you rather see a top pullout and nut on the ass and hole? If the shot is internal, do you need to see the bottom push out the load? Shooting a load down someone’s throat or busting on their tongue? If there is no cumshot, are you disappointed and immediately cue up another video before you cum yourself? What about edging videos? Can those be hot without someone busting? 

Using the FOURTH Insight to justify blocking

One of the greatest inventions in the social media milieu is the block button. It’s a major eye-roller for me when someone brags online about being blocked. “I won,” the person rationalizes. He has to go online and tell strangers of his great victory over someone he was bullying, because the block button worked as designed. The target of his intimidation has exited the situation. The person blocked has not won. His efforts to intimidate have been truncated. He has lost at least that avenue to inauthentically obtain energy.

The Celestine Prophecy lists 9 Insights to make people more aware and ultimately more developed humans. The Fourth Insight deals with energy. We all need energy. The authentic ways to obtain energy are through food, sunshine, love. Energy also flows through people -- willingly as when one person loves another, and unwillingly as when humans compete for energy and power and try to control and dominate other humans. A bully, cyber or otherwise, tries to steal energy from his target. 

According to the Celestine Prophecy, there are four Control Dramas: Intimidator, Interrogator, Allofs, and Poor Me. Online trolls seem to fall into the first two Dramas. Intimidators yell or threaten violence in a way to get the abused to pay attention to them. They get energy from the abused who feels exhausted after the encounter. Arguing back is what they want, because it allows them to continue to intimidate. Interrogators asks many questions which imply judgement on you and your behavior. When you defend your motives and decisions against these trolls, they get more energy as you pay attention to them. Endeavoring to justify your actions or existence will drain you of energy, which is being transferred to the bully.

This is why the block button is necessary. You cannot engage with these trolls on their level. You will not appease them or convince them you deserve respect. They just want you energy. By blocking them, you cut off the flow of inauthentic energy. They are left powerless, which is why they need to seek out other online targets to boast over how they “won” by making you block them. They try to convince themselves that they have control (and the energy and power that go along with that). In reality, their energy source has been unplugged. 

In real life, this is cutting someone off who is toxic to you. 

THE PRofuNDITY of NUDITY

Being naked is subversive. In the time of ubiquitous porn and prevalent near nudity on almost all popular media, Americans still see nudity as a shocking statement. Witness pop music stages, where years ago Cher appeared frequently in risque Bob Mackie gowns which left nothing to anyone’s imagination, and yet where Janet Jackson was crucified for revealing a nipple for a few seconds. We want to pretend we’re shocked by nudity while simultaneously craving it.

The proletariat oggles beach bodies in bikinis and speedos yet cringes at the thought of attending a nude beach. They justify this cognitive dissonance by citing the merits of leaving something to the imagination. What bullshit. Skimpy suits are daring; nudity is disruptive. 

Haulover Beach in Miami was the seminal location for me. By Italian boyfriend had grown up with nude beaches on family holidays at Spanish and Greek islands. When we moved to Miami, I preferred 12th Street Beach to see our friends and strut with my cute swimwear. He preferred the nude beach to the north. The first time we went to Haulover together, I attended with my swim suit under my shorts. Not until the towels were laid out did it quickly slip off the suit and lay down on the towel. I was ok with walking the short distance to the water, which had a steeper depth than the beaches in South Beach. One could get waist deep quickly at Haulover. 

Of course I got hard, because my Corpus Cavernosum has retained its youthful inclination to engorge with blood at the slightest thought (and sometimes with no thought at all). Not sure what the etiquette of walking the nude beach with a raging hard-on, I would wait in the water until the throbbing subsided. Sensing my reticence, my boyfriend decided we would go for a walk down and around the beach. As I left the safe vicinity of our towels, my nervousness gradually faded. No one seemed to notice us. At a nude beach, wearing clothing is seen as radical. The nude blend in. 

Since that time, about 14 years ago, my exhibitionism has blossomed. I’ll lay out naked at beaches that aren’t officially nude. I pick spots so as to not offend anyone who gets offended. I take off my shirt and shorts on nature hikes. As an erstwhile amateur photographer, I used to take nude photos of my boyfriend who had been a model. When we broke up, I was my only model, so the self-timer became my collaborator. Taking nudes outdoors, I endeavored to choose times and locations where attendance by others is unlikely. Still, it has happened where I’ll be mid-shot when I notice someone in view, or walking by, or sailing by. Those on boats when I’m on a secluded beach can’t really do anything.  Yet it has been my experience that someone happening upon a nude person where they wouldn’t expect to see one is generally more surprised and embarrassed than the nudist is. They walk by, pretending they did not see you. Maybe they’re scared: either of a crazy person wearing no clothes in public, or by nudity itself. 

I posted nudes on Tumblr where the audience most definitely knew what they were getting, contrary to what Tumblr tried to tell us as they banned nudity and tanked the site. 

But I’m not a flasher. Forcing people to see your genitals when they didn’t sign up for that is bad taste and borderline sexual harassment. There are places, however, where passersby clearly did figuratively sign up for that. Think Folsom Street Festival. Anyone who goes there should fully expect to see not just cocks and asses but cocks in asses. And that’s the vanilla portion of the show. While I have never attended Folsom, I’ve frequented quite a few back rooms, circuit parties, and one gay cruise, where my senses are hightened by having people see me naked engaging in naked stuff with other naked men. It’s how I made the transition to shooting porn without any hesitation. 

Consumers of porn want nudity and sex. But most of those same people would be distressed to see just a nude body in real life. 

It’s not the amount of bare skin that frightens us; it’s the subversion of someone saying fuck it!, I’m not going along with the charade. Nudists may have been never-nudes at one time, but slowly evolved through a continuum of sedition. They thrilled when they abandoned pajamas, then even underwear when sleeping. I occasionally hear people practically brag about sleeping nude as if it’s radical. How quaint. They still walk to the gym shower in shorts, and exit in a towel which stays wrapped around their waste until they can shimmy their underwear beneath it to guarantee seamless covering. Usually the only men you see naked in the locker rooms are older gentlemen who sometimes engage in mundane conversations with their generational peers while water drips off saggy skin. They have reached the age of not giving a fuck. What a shame that it takes so long for Americans to reach that point regarding nudity. 

Certainly for many, body dysmorphia is an issue. Some guys leave on shirts during sex because they are embarrased of their physiques. But even men with classically accepted proportions wear baggy shorts in gyms. Especially telling are those who find the guts to buy compression tights only to wear shorts over them. They are deathly afraid someone might see a bulge or some ass contours. 

Some men - including gay men - evolve to wearing tight shorts and stringer tanks to workout, and small bikinis on the beach. Yet even many of these would be mortified if their suit ripped or was somehow lost in the surf. It’s about pushing the limits of societal acceptance without truly challenging it. 

Those who are bold enough to be naked not just at nude beaches but in less accommodating spaces -- hiking trails, back rooms, city streets, libraries, big box stores -- are insurgents of the highest order. Nudity is not sex and it is not dirty. It is art stripped of all artifice. It is all your vulnerabilities and strength laid bare for all to see. 

The only people ever truly cancelled is the magazine

Like many clever pop-sociology phrases, cancelling is open to mass misinterpretation, much of it deliberate.  Consider Defund the Police, which seemed a straightforward way to advocate spending less money on police forces and more on social services better able to handle problems with which police are untrained to deal. Right wingers soon mutilated the phrase into a threat to abolish all law enforcement in order to scare old people into thinking rampant anarchy was in the offing. They even claimed calling 911 would reach no one, as if 911 operators would no longer route calls to fire departments or ambulances either. True, a few people may want zero police, but the rest of progressives would be happy to just have a smaller portion of cities’ budgets going to arm too many cops with military gear to deal with homeless people, domestic disputes and citizens selling fake Rolexes on the street. In the same way, the right has co-opted cancel culture to be this season’s War on Christmas. Neither actually exist, but both are used to scare people who spend their days being scared (AKA watching Fox News).

Magazine and app subscriptions are cancelled. People? Not so much. Yes, some offenders adopt a low profile for a while. Some deactivate their social media or set it to private. Some of the egregious perpetrators lose their jobs (many justifiably so). A few might even face fines and jail time (not rich, white people though). Some, however, weather the storm and regain the follower count they temporarily lost. Others even gain followers by tapping into a new audience of awful people, not to mention sycophants who hope that if they defend the cad, the cad might fuck them. 

Since the Right is making Cancel Culture a bogeyman term, a more descriptive term is in order, like censure or repudiation. I know, neither word is as dramatic and catchy. 

I am all for awful people facing consequences, especially in our society where bad actors (especially politicians and government leaders) proudly act heinously for attention and reward. It may seem as though karma and hubris are ancient concepts, relics of a righteous past. So when the occasional scoundrel faces ramifications for shittiness, some order is restored. Provisional justice returns. Despite the right over-blowing the seriousness of cancel culture, the zeal to actually get someone, sometimes results in misdirected or misapplied punishment. Just as your relative on facebook reposts a false story which an easy google search would have discredited, so too our social media mutuals can jump to censure someone on flimsy evidence. Getting it wrong not only hurts an innocent person; it diminishes the just censuring of the truly terrible, by lumping misdemeanors and felonies together as equal crimes. 

Think of cancelling as disqualifications in swimming. In sports like football, basketball and hockey, penalties are loss of yardage (varying on severity of infraction), fouls (which only yield free throws after enough team fouls have been accumulated), and temporary ejections for several seconds. 

In swimming, the penalty is complete elimination from the event. You could set a world record and win by two seconds in the 200 breaststroke, yet lose all that with a one-hand touch on a turn. In 1996, the top American woman in the 400 IM had the fastest time by 4 seconds at the US Olympic Trials but was disqualified on an seldom-called stroke violation. She would have been a medal contender in Atlanta. 

Since a disqualification is so severe, the official making the call has to do two main things:  first, be in position to make the call (That means having a clear view of the entire episode so that nothing is missed); second, give the swimmer the benefit of the doubt. Since there is no recourse for a dq (except filing a protest over the first thing above), the official must have zero doubt. Even if an official is 99% sure there was a double dolphin kick on breaststroke or a non-simultaneous touch on a butterfly finish, a one percent doubt means he or she makes no call. 

I don’t have a suggestion of how to deal with people who do horrible things in public, short of personally shunning them, or voting against them, or not buying whatever they are selling. When someone advocates for you to join him or her or them in the censure, you could ask yourself: were they in position to assess what happened?; and is there any doubt, the benefit of which could go to the accused? 

My own tack is to hope that karma or hubris (or Jade) will get them. Even if it takes a long time, and even if I never hear of it, I will hope that it happens. I’ve witnessed enough of it to still trust in it. Otherwise, I don’t give it another thought. Thoughts are energy and I don’t waste my energy on awful people.  

Then I’ll sing a Smith’s verse: “I’ve come to wish you an unhappy birthday/ ‘cause you’re evil/ and you lie/ and if you should die/ I may feel slightly sad/ but I won’t cry.” 

SEXWork IS WORK. OBVI

As a way to disparage porn performers, misanthropes reflexively spout the aphorism that porn is not work. How can having sex be work?  End of the argument. They are confident that asking a question with disdain negates the need for an answer. 

 A simple retort of how can it not be work? elicits dismissive indignation. The posit, they imply, is self-evident. They assume “everyone knows” this and feel no need to elaborate. But when pressed, the evidence goes like this:
1) It’s something that everyone does for free so it can’t be considered work;

2) It’s not hard (either mentally or physically)

3) It’s sex, which our society has simultaneously glorified and vilified. We love porn and hate porn performers. It’s the same cognitive dissonance that allows people to be happy they can buy food in a restaurant while demeaning those who serve it to them. 

The speciousness of the argument lies in the definitions of work. Work can be defined as physical or mental effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result. This definition mentions nothing about money, and in that sense alone would negate 1) above. Yes most people do sex for free (not withstanding expectations of dinner, travel, wedding rings), but most people who sing or dance or write or create art do so without remuneration. This doesn’t mean professional singers and dancers and writers and artists do not perform work, although some philistines might argue that. 

Perhaps a better word to define would be labor. One definition uses the word work, so that doesn’t help. It does, however,  bring the element of difficulty into it: “physical or mental work, especially of a hard and fatiguing kind.” We can dispense with the definition relating to childbirth, except to note that physical effort and fatigue feature prominently there. Here, we can see why 2) above is brought up to disqualify sex work as work. But should it? Sexual activity is often strenuous and fatiguing -- at least good sex is. I can see how a passive recipient of a blow job would exert no effort, but I think we all want our partners to be engaged enough to produce sweat along with other secretions. It could be that those who claim sex work is not real work have just been having bad sex. They wouldn't pay for what they’ve been experiencing and they can’t imagine a scenario where the slamming was good enough to command monetary reward. 

Let’s move on to the etymology of the word labor, which is a latin word meaning toil and trouble. The problem with saying the porn isn’t sufficiently physically demanding is that it disqualifies most jobs as non labor. We can agree that porn is not labor in the sense that coal mining, or construction work is; but then, what jobs are? Certainly office jobs involve no heavy lifting. Neither do telemarketing jobs, although who would ever put themselves in a position to be yelled at over the phone by disgruntled folks without some compensation. Parking lot attendant? Gas station clerk? Cashier? Bank teller?  They have the potential to be boring with a side of “customer is always right” psychopathy, but not much strenuous physical labor. Imagine surgeons accusing family doctors who just order lab work and prescribe medicine as not doing real work. I think we accept that a job which requires mental effort is work.

Looking at the etymology of labor from the 14 century brings in words like strive, endeavor and copulate, so maybe here we see how sex work is labor. 

The issue, clearly, is that any job can be classified as more or less “work” than others. Effort need not be physical to be considered work. Another way to classify work is as “the amount of physical, mental and social effort used to produce goods or services in an economy.”  Sex work (whether on camera or in person) involves effort in all those three facets, it provides a service, and it impacts the economy by giving sex workers wages with which “ to buy the goods and services they don’t produce themselves.” 

Sex work is work because it’s in the damn description: Sex work. It would be like saying a baseball game is not a game. The word right there! For those who perform sex acts without getting money to then ridicule those who do is tantamount to aficionado of one sport deniograting other sports. This of course happens all the time. Football players and fans sometimes say that swimming is not a “real” sport. Their metric? There is no contact. Runners and triathletes might say that football is a game like bowling, but not really a sport because the players might not even be in great aerobic conditioning. 

These arguments, like the one against sex work as real work stem from jealously and hatred with a side of insecurity. If I have to get up early and put on clothes I don’t want to wear to perform a service in anticipation of a bimonthly paycheck, then yeah, I might be jealous of someone who ostensibly works for himself or herself or themself, wearing as little as they want, while enjoying scheduling freedom. 

Notice that the demeaning of sex work is limited to semantic play. They don’t argue that sex workers don’t contribute to the economy; that they are not providing food, shelter and other essential needs for themselves; that they are ripping off customers; that they not performing a service valued by many in the market. No. They take the lazy tack. Saying sex work is not work is as intellectually vapid as saying that Pop Art is not art; that Electronic Music is not music; that Fast Food is not food; that a Porsche Cayenne is not a Porsche. 

Make your points as to why you don’t like it or value it. Otherwise, shut up. 

The fact that some don’t like it, doesn’t negate the efforts and value of those who make it. Sex work is not work is not an argument. It is a statement without evidence. And as Christopher Hitchens said: “what  can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”

Greatest fan

STEP ONE: A random person comes into my DMs and professes his love for me. He says he is my biggest fan. I say thank you.
STEP TWO: Said fan, having received a response from me, now engages in 20 questions with me, accompanied by poorly lit and tragically composed photos of either his hole or his flaccid, dry dick. I do my best to ignore the artistic submissions and answer a few questions that don’t seem too personal or weird, even though I have things to do.
STEP THREE: My Greatest Fan (who has seen ALL my movies) wants something from me — either a custom video saying his name; or a FaceTime call; or some other time-consuming gesture. I politely decline, citing a busy schedule.
STEP FOUR: My Greatest Fan, who loves me unconditionally and would do anything for me, persists, demanding just a short video chat. When I inform him that I would do that for monetary compensation, he tells me: A) He’s broke; B) He has neither credit cards nor PayPal, nor Venmo, nor CashApp. When I ask him how he watches my videos, he lists pirate sites which stole my content.
STEP FIVE: Not getting the video he wanted, my Greatest Fan now wants a photo of me at the moment he is wasting my time to verify that it is actually me and not a catfish. Having been catfished many times, I am amazed at how many people think this is a clever ruse: to get a photo from a recalcitrant performer by daring him to prove his credentials — as if I care if he believes me or not. Since I am not a lapdog, I refuse his request, saying that this exchange has already taken too much time and I need to go. Nice talking to you, have a great day! (Smile emoji).
STEP SIX: My Number One Fan calls me: A) a faggot or B) a douchebag; and wishes that I die of A) COVID or B) AIDS.
STEP SEVEN: I block my Greatest Fan, who I imagine tells his 13 followers that he got blocked and therefore he “won.”
STEP EIGHT: The next time I go down the list of post comments, doling out hearts, I see a comment that reads: “Why don’t you answer my DM?”