Queer Scribbles

Bad sex was ironic: Tom Wolfe

2004-12-22T10:41:00.000-08:00

CBC News: Bad sex was ironic: Tom Wolfe:

"Slither slither slither slither went the tongue."

The 12 STIs Of Christmas

2004-12-22T10:36:00.000-08:00

Make Love Not War?

2004-12-22T09:00:00.000-08:00

News & Politics:

"A National Guardsman who pleaded guilty to killing a 17-year-old Iraqi soldier said he shot the young man after they had consensual sex in a guard tower, a newspaper reported Saturday, citing court-martial records. "

Recipe

2004-12-20T17:52:00.000-08:00

Who Knew?:

"· ascorbic acid (vitamin C, for tissue maintenance)
· blood-group antigens (from immune system)
· calcium (mineral)
· chlorine (oxidizing agent)
· cholesterol (steroid alcohol present in body fluids)
· choline (base, part of the vitamin B complex)
· citric acid (occurs during cellular metabolism)
· creatine (nitrogenous substance found in muscle)
· deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
· fructose (sugar used for energy)
· glutathione (peptide amino acid)
· hyaluronidase (enzyme)
· inositol (sugar found in muscles)
· lactic acid (byproduct of muscle use)
· magnesium (mineral)
· nitrogen (gas found in all living tissue)
· phosporus (mineral)
· potassium (mineral)
· purine (compound of uric acid)
· pyrimidine (organic base)
· pyruvic acid (formed from either glucose or glycogen)
· sodium (salt)
· sorbitol (body alcohol)
· spermidine (catalytic enzyme)
· spermine (ammonia compound found in sperm)
· urea (from urine)
· uric acid (from urine)
· vitamin B12 (for proper function of nervous system and metabolism)
· zinc (mineral)"

The Boy And I: We Delivered

2004-12-18T13:21:00.000-08:00

Nelson opened up even more last night. We both did. I can't get over how comfortable I was, how deep the conversation got. I noticed he was wearing the faded, skin-tight jeans that highlight his amazing ass: I used to make such a fuss over them, but now it felt inappropriate to comment.

He talked a lot about his out-of-town boyfriend. The problems all sounded typical, surmountable. I could hear how Nelson's insecurities and needinesses—which had been an issue in our fling earlier this year—were manifesting with this new guy. And I fucking adored listening to him. His new boyfriend sounds somewhat like me, emotionally and neurotically speaking; perhaps in my feedback last night I was able to shed some light on where this guy might be coming from, without defending him (or myself).

Above all, it was how my eyes felt. They held nothing back as I looked at 23-year-old Nelson; the beam was palpable, intense. I've (literally) never seen him like that before.

I kept hearing Nelson blame himself for the problems in his new relationship. He did that with me—with us—too. Last night I challenged him not to take it so personally. I had never challenged him like that, and I kept repeating it: finally I exclaimed my challenge loudly, beaming at him, wanting to hug him.

He paused, looked at me vulnerably, made some wisecrack and changed the subject. Oh well, I tried, I thought.

Our conversation hummed away, and then around 11 pm Nelson said he'd better get going. As he walked through the living room he glanced down and saw my DVD of The Pizza Boy, He Delivers on a pile beside the TV. I leave stuff like that lying around all the time—if I ever had to "straighten up" my place, it would be empty!—but Nelson has always ignored the homoerotic stuff. Last night, he picked up the DVD box—I told him this was an important porn for me back when I was about his age—and to my surprise he asked if we could watch a bit of it together.

A most interesting turn of events. What would happen now?

We sat back down together on the couch. The first scene of the movie features two delivery boys going for beers after their shift ends; they're drinking and yakking on a picnic table until one guy seduces the other. Once we'd seen both their huge dicks, Nelson said he wanted to see an actual pizza-boy-gets-picked-up-while-delivering-a-pizza scene. I skipped ahead. Conscious of how gropeable the distance was between Nelson's luscious young body and mine.

The pizza boy rang the doorbell. The hot blond stud answered, wearing tight jeans and a white tee-shirt. He was drinking beer, and his girlfriend had stood him up, he said: would the pizza boy like to have a beer with him? Sure. Fast-forward to when the blond stud pours the pizza boy another glass of red wine, "accidentally" spilling it all over his crotch. "Oh, red wine really stains bad," blond stud says, caressing pizza boy's groin with paper towel: "we better get these clothes off and into the washing machine right quick!"

It was fairly predictable—and totally hot—from there on in. Never would I have predicted watching this, um, seminal film with young Nelson; he's always been so uptight about sex.

As the pizza boy rimmed the blond stud's splendid ass, Nelson said: "If that was being done to me right now, I'd be making a lot of noise!" He added that he also wouldn't be able to hold still like the blond stud was; he'd be wriggling all over the place. It was all I could do not to gasp. I'd so wanted to lick Nelson there; his callipygian curvaceousness is breathtaking. But this was one of those intimacies he would allow only within a monogamous relationship.

Was he hinting?, I wondered, as we watched the pizza boy munch away. Was he waiting for me to make a move? Perhaps. But no: sex would prevent too much. I didn't respond to the ambiguous signals, and Nelson didn't transmit any more of them. We watched the scene until it got to the boring Tab A/Slot B close-up.

As Nelson left, we hugged and he said "I feel like I'm starting to get to know you now." I agreed. "And it was really powerful," he continued, "when you said 'Don't take it personally!' earlier. I really needed to hear that."

I'm not much into Yuletide anything but I felt downright Christmasy after he left. As the spasms in my crotch subsided, Nelson's parting words rang in my ears.

For a few moments, everything connected. The stopped-up places in me began to flow. I'll probably never be a conventional guy, but last night my body sang its truth: friendship is radical.

Emancipating Lincoln?

2004-12-16T07:12:00.000-08:00

The New York Times > Books > Finding Homosexual Threads in Lincoln's Legend

December 16, 2004
Finding Homosexual Threads in Lincoln's Legend
By DINITIA SMITH

Was Abraham Lincoln a gay American?

The subject of the 16th president's sexuality has been debated among scholars for years. They cite his troubled marriage to Mary Todd and his youthful friendship with Joshua Speed, who shared his bed for four years. Now, in a new book, C. A. Tripp also asserts that Lincoln had a homosexual relationship with the captain of his bodyguards, David V. Derickson, who shared his bed whenever Mary Todd was away.

In "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln," to be published next month by Free Press, Mr. Tripp, a psychologist, influential gay writer and former sex researcher for Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey, tries to resolve the issue of Lincoln's sexuality once and for all. The author, who died in 2003, two weeks after finishing the book, subjected almost every word ever written by and about Lincoln to minute analysis. His conclusion is that America's greatest president, the beacon of the Republican Party, was a gay man.

But his book has not stopped the debate. During the 10 years of his research, Mr. Tripp shared his findings with other scholars. Many, including the Harvard professor emeritus David Herbert Donald, who is considered the definitive biographer of Lincoln, disagreed with him. Last year, in his book "We Are Lincoln Men," Mr. Donald mentioned Mr. Tripp's research and disputed his findings.

Mr. Tripp was the author of "The Homosexual Matrix," a 1975 book that disputed the Freudian notion of homosexuality as a personality disorder. In this new book, he says that early biographers of Lincoln, including Carl Sandburg, sensed Lincoln's homosexuality. In the preface to the original multi-volume edition of his acclaimed 1926 biography, Sandburg wrote: "Month by month in stacks and bundles of fact and legend, I found invisible companionships that surprised me. Perhaps a few of these presences lurk and murmur in this book."

Sandburg also wrote that Lincoln and Joshua Speed had "streaks of lavender, spots soft as May violets." Mr. Tripp said that references to Lincoln's possible homosexuality were cut in the 1954 abridged version of the biography. Mr. Tripp maintains that other writers, including Ida Tarbell and Margaret Leech, also found evidence of Lincoln's homosexuality but shied away from defining it as such or omitted crucial details.

Mr. Tripp cites Lincoln's extreme privacy and accounts by those who knew him well. "He was not very fond of girls, as he seemed to me," his stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, told Lincoln's law partner William Herndon. In addition, Lincoln was terrified of marriage to Mary Todd and once broke off their relationship. They eventually had four children.

But in "We Are Lincoln Men" Mr. Donald wrote that no one at the time ever suggested that he and Speed were sexual partners. Herndon, who sometimes slept in the room with them, never mentioned a sexual relationship. In frontier times, Mr. Donald wrote, space was tight and men shared beds. And the correspondence between Lincoln and Speed was not that of lovers, he maintained. Moreover, Lincoln alluded openly to their relationship, saying, "I slept with Joshua for four years. " If they were lovers, Mr. Donald wrote, Lincoln wouldn't have spoken so freely.

Mr. Tripp charts Lincoln's relationships with other men, including Billy Greene, with whom Lincoln supposedly shared a bed in New Salem, Ill. Herndon said Greene told him that Lincoln's thighs "were as perfect as a human being Could be."

Lincoln's fellow lawyer Henry C. Whitney observed once that Lincoln "wooed me to close intimacy and familiarity."

Then there is Lincoln's youthful humorous ballad from 1829, "First Chronicles of Reuben," in which he refers to a man named Biley marrying another man named Natty: "but biley has married a boy/ the girles he had tried on every Side/ but none could he get to agree/ all was in vain he went home again/and sens that he is married to natty."

Mr. Tripp tries to debunk the popular opinion among scholars that Lincoln's lifelong depressions were caused by the death of his first love, Ann Rutledge. He writes that at the time she was supposedly involved with Lincoln, she was engaged to John McNamar and that her name appears nowhere in Lincoln's letters.

Mr. Donald also takes issue with the conclusion that Lincoln had a sexual relationship with Derickson, his bodyguard at his presidential retreat, the Soldiers' Home, outside Washington. Mr. Tripp writes that their closeness stirred comment in Washington, and cites a diary entry from Nov. 16, 1862, by Virginia Woodbury Fox, wife of Gustavus Fox, assistant secretary of the Navy. She recounted a friend's report: " 'There is a Bucktail soldier here devoted to the president, drives with him, and when Mrs. L. is not home, sleeps with him.' What stuff!" But Mr. Donald writes that "What stuff!" meant she was dismissing the rumor.

Mr. Tripp cites a second description of the relationship in an 1895 history of Derickson's regiment, the 150th Pennsylvania Volunteers, by Thomas Chamberlain, Derickson's commanding officer: "Captain Derickson, in particular, advanced so far in the president's confidence and esteem that, in Mrs. Lincoln's absence, he frequently spent the night at his cottage, sleeping in the same bed with him and - it is said - making use of his Excellency's night-shirts!"When Derickson was to be transferred, Lincoln pulled strings to keep him. But Mr. Donald wrote that if their relationship was romantic, they would not have separated so casually when Derickson finally left Washington in 1863.

Despite Mr. Donald's criticism, Mr. Tripp has won support from other scholars. Jean H. Baker, a former student of Mr. Donald's and the author of "Mary Todd Lincoln: a Biography" (W. W Norton, 1987), wrote the introduction to the book. She said that Lincoln's homosexuality would explain his tempestuous relationship with Mary Todd, and "some of her agonies and anxieties over their relationship."

"Some of the tempers emerged because Lincoln was so detached," Ms. Baker said in a telephone interview. "But I previously thought he was detached because he was thinking great things about his court cases, his debates with Douglas. Now I see there is another explanation."

"The length of time when these men continued to sleep in the same bed and didn't have to was sort of an impropriety," Ms. Baker said.

The question of Lincoln's sexuality is complicated by the fact that the word homosexual did not find its way into print in English until 1892 and that "gayness" is very much a modern concept.

Ms. Baker said the focus of 19th-century moral opprobrium was masturbation, not homosexuality. "Masturbation was considered more dangerous," she said. "For homosexuals, there was a cloud over them, but it seldom rained." People, she noted, "were accustomed to these friendships between men."

In researching Lincoln, Mr. Tripp created a vast database of cross-indexed material, now available at the Lincoln Library in Springfield, Ill. He began the book working with the writer Philip Nobile, but they fell out. Mr. Nobile has charged that Mr. Tripp plagiarized material written by him and fabricated evidence of Lincoln's homosexuality.

"Tripp's book is a fraud," Mr. Nobile said in an interview. He declined to say what was fraudulent, however, because he said he was writing his own article about it.

After Mr. Nobile made his charges, Free Press delayed publication. "We made some slight changes," said Adam Rothberg, a spokesman for the publishing house, "and we are satisfied that we are publishing a book that reflects Mr. Tripp's ideas and is supported by his research and belief." The manuscript was edited by Mr. Tripp's friend Lewis Gannett.

Larry Kramer, the author and AIDS activist, said that Mr. Tripp's book "will change history."

"It's a revolutionary book because the most important president in the history of the United States was gay," he said. "Now maybe they'll leave us alone, all those people in the party he founded."

Michael B. Chesson, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and another former student of Mr. Donald's, wrote an afterword to Mr. Tripp's book supporting his thesis. The book is "enormously important to understanding the whole person," he said in an interview. He likened the criticism to early objections to Fawn Brodie's 1974 biography of Thomas Jefferson in which she claimed that Jefferson had children with his slave Sally Hemings; later genetic studies suggested that they had at least one child together.

Finding the truth is a sacred principal for historians, Mr. Chesson said, adding, "It's incumbent on us as scholars to present to readers material if historians have ignored it or swept it under the rug because they don't agree with it."

Still, if Lincoln was gay, how did it affect his presidency? Ms. Baker said that his outsider status would explain his independence and his ability to take anti-Establishment positions like the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation. As a homosexual, she said, "he would be on the margins of tradition."

"He is willing to be independent, to do what is right," she said. "It is invested in his soul, in his psyche and in his behavior."

A Flu(mmo)x of Selves

2004-12-13T15:08:00.000-08:00

This is where I once was. Funny it's taken me so long to link back. The urge to reinvent oneself is human, I guess: and silly.

Curiouser, still, that what I most wanted to leave behind—in terms of blogging anew—was the assault. That's beyond silly. Suffice it to say that, a year and a half after the ordeal, I'm coming along fabulously well. Scathed, yes, but not too diminished.

Sometimes I feel lonely, having endured something that few people can relate to. A big reason I've recovered so well is because of the love and support from family and friends. Occasionally, though, I've encountered overt criticism and misunderstanding from people who don't know me yet, or well; when meeting new folks, it's the awkwardly silent reactions I sometimes encounter that bother me most. I shouldn't worry so much about that. We all have experiences—facets of self—that discomfit others. But more positively, I feel challenged to give words to the awful, beautiful, ordeal I survived, to communicate this to folks who don't already know me well, who aren't able to fill in the blanks.

I'm working on that, and my selves are getting a workout in the process. But I don't plan to do much about it here. I'm doing some other writing about the assault which is immensely healing; the succor comes from crafting, from feeling more deeply into the words I find.

What I've been through doesn't matter so much as how I'm being. Today's usually always about yesterday; an open moment refers only to itself.

Yesterday, today, this moment: it's all so fucking important.

Homoerogenous Zones

2004-12-11T11:55:00.000-08:00

When Kamal suddenly spread my buttcheeks apart, I gasped.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Um yes, I most certainly am," I said. He carried on.

Kamal advertises his massage service in the "non-sexual" category of the gay classifieds. Me, I can't imagine a man's touch being non-sexual. Ever. Besides, it's the massages not specifically advertised as "erotic" that most arouse me. Often, all "non-sexual" means is "I don't have to jerk you off unless I want to!"

The suspense—of what might or might not happen—wriggles me up into a dither. And if Kamal—a gentle, muscular, attractive late-20s or early-30s East Indian guy—keeps teasing me like this, I'll be his loyal client for years to cum....

I've now been to see him for a half-dozen or so rub-downs, and each time he pushes the envelope another millimetre. A millimetre. Fuck!

He works out of his apartment in my neighborhood. I strip off my clothes, lie on the table in the living room, incense and eastern music wafting. Kamal drapes my extremities with sheets, but always leaves the centre of me bare.

During the first session, while massaging my inner-inner-thigh, maybe once or twice Kamal jostled my balls with his fingers. Each massage since then has contained an utterly brief, intensely erotic surprise. I go for 90-minute massages—wouldn't you?—and I swear, he now spends 40 of those minutes rubbing my butt! Including, last time, a traversal all the way up and down its cleavage, right across my magic spot. Boy, did I squeal.

I'm getting a woody as I write this.

After the massage is over, it's all I can do not to masturbate like a fiend the moment he leaves the room. We have this little ritual now: Kamal goes into the washroom, then comes out a minute later and offers me a glass of water. I hoist myself off the massage table to accept the glass, woozy and naked and, usually, still throbbingly erect. But by then Kamal has always reverted to benign friendliness: I have trouble pinning the quick and dirty jostlings onto the thoughtful, kind man he turns back into.

But then, ball and ass play's a type of kindness, no?

(I think I'm going to have to book one last rub with Kamal before I go home for Christmas...)

What Do You Say?

2004-12-10T17:42:00.000-08:00

Marn's Big Adventure:

"It's not supposed to be like this.

We talked about it all the time as we worked out together at the gym. They were going to put another couple of years into the bed and breakfast, sell it and spend the rest of their lives kicking back. They'd been saving. Planning.

Then a month ago a blood vessel exploded in Michael's brain and when it did, it blew up all their dreams, too.

The brain is an amazing thing. For a while it looked as if a recovery of sorts might be possible, but those hopes have faded now. They've taken Michael off life support and now all that's left is the wait.

What do you say to someone who is about to lose the man they love?

What do you say to someone who's forsaken all others for almost 20 years now, endured the for better or for worse, the richer or poorer and is just a few years short of the big shared dream?

What do you say to someone who has spent a month looking over the precipice of what the words in sickness or in health can become?

Someone, please, tell me what to say. I've had my pen hovering over a card for an hour now. I just can't get the words to come.

Glen and Michael were married, even if they couldn't have the piece of paper."

A Day Off

2004-12-10T17:10:00.000-08:00

Two men are sitting at the table, a birthday cake is flaring. You can see the back of a third person's head poking out above the lap of one of the gents. The other guy exclaims: "No, sweetie, I said blow out the candles! The candles!"

Nate loved it. His birthday card, that is.

I just got back. It worked out well: I booked today off for no special reason, and it's Nate's 38th birthday. Went over at lunchtime, with flowers and the goofily perfect card. His trill of a Caribbean laugh fills me with joy.

As do his big sensuous lips, those dreadlocks, that ass.

Who knew? Almost a year later, we still ravish and excite one another.

After lunch at Nate's place, and then "dessert"—which, sweetie, most certainly did not involve birthday candles—we sticky boys had a nap. I don't think I've napped so deeply in years. At 4 pm we finally roused ourselves.

I'm in such a good mood: it feels like my birthday.

What happens when....

2004-12-10T09:34:00.000-08:00

"...a sexually free-spirited, HIV-positive dentist becomes the unofficial custodian of his 9-year-old nephew?"

Spanish film 'Bear Cub' defies expectations

Flirting With Disaster

2004-12-09T13:16:00.000-08:00

I don't intend to sleep with my (sort-of) boss, but it's fun flirting. (He started it!) More fun than working for him - a bit disgruntling having to provide a few hours of admin support each week to a man almost ten years my junior. But no matter: for the most part Alan—a totally hunky gay Asian guy—and I get along great. We've become friends, even hang out a bit outside the office.

And he's got an absolutely amazing physique.

Yesterday he told me I should unbutton my zippered sweater, show off my chest hair. "Yeah right," I said, blushing. Just now, Alan told me he had to pee and I asked if he needed any help. He said "sure" and traipsed off to the men's room. "Would I need one hand or two?" I called out.

"Depends," he said, grinning.

I swear, if one or the other of us ever leaves our job, I'm gonna have to jump him.

Nuts About Laptops

2004-12-09T10:02:00.000-08:00

The Globe and Mail: A low blow from the laptop:

"Research published today in the journal Human Reproduction has found that laptops, combined with the thighs pressed-together posture needed to balance them, give off enough heat to raise the temperature inside testicles by nearly three degrees Celsius (5.4 F)."

Queerying 'Dude'

2004-12-08T16:54:00.000-08:00

CNN.com - Dude -- professor studies 'dude' - Dec 8, 2004:

"the word ['Dude"] derives its power from something he calls cool solidarity -- an effortless kinship that's not too intimate.

Cool solidarity is especially important to young men who are under social pressure to be close with other young men, but not enough to be suspected as gay.

In other words: Close, dude, but not that close.

"It's like man or buddy, there is often this male-male addressed term that says, 'I'm your friend but not much more than your friend,"' said Kiesling, whose research focuses on language and masculinity."

Pot(Un)Luck

2004-12-08T13:10:00.000-08:00

Xmas potluck at the office just now. I usually skip such silly functions; I'd usually much rather read in solitude. But today I opted to be sociable. Why oh why didn't I refrain?

Brenda, the President's Executive Assistant, and I are always kibbutzing. We act like we hate each other—and sometimes we do—and entertain everyone with our put-downs and our tauntings. When Brenda walked in with her slow-cooker, I yelled out "What a crock!" And when I came in with my two dozen dinner rolls, she told me—exclaiming loud enough so everyone could hear, of course—that I had really nice buns.

Eating—all 20 or so of us who work on this floor, including all the corporate big-wigs—in the main boardroom, Brenda and I sat across from each other. At one point I caught her eye, then leaned over and gawked provocatively under the table. "Did you spill something?" Brenda asked, sarcastically, trying to get one over on me in front of everyone.

"No, actually," I replied, dramatically. "I was just trying to look up your skirt!"

Brenda stuck her tongue out at me, and the Vice President of Finance almost peed his pants laughing.

Later, I asked the East Indian lady from Finance, sitting beside me, if I could have the empty tinfoil thingey her pastry had come in. Looking a bit disturbed at the request, she said sure. I turned it upside down, and finger-snapped it across the huge boardroom table at Brenda.

But it veered off to the right, shuffleboarding into the lower left breast of our (female) Vice President of Communications.

My face is still red.

But Never Graze It

2004-12-07T15:58:00.000-08:00

I'm reading The Salt Point, an early novel (1991) by Paul Russell. He's one of my favorite queer novelists, and I rank him so highly because he writes so awesomely about sex and desire. In this scene (which I loved when I read it the other night in bed) Anatole, a 25 year old gay man, is infatuated by 18 year old Leigh, of undetermined sexual orientation. He invites Leigh home, along with a couple of Anatole's friends, for a nightcap after an evening out at a straight nightclub. They get even drunker, and most everybody passes out. Then the others depart, leaving Leigh behind:

"I should leave too."

"No. It's late. You should stay here."

Leigh settles his head on the back of the sofa and starts to pass out again.

"Come on. I'll help you to bed."

He helps Leigh up. The boy's docile, lets himself be led by the hand down the hallway to the bedroom, the big double bed that used to belong to Anatole's grandmother. "We'll crash here," he says, as if it's an ordinary thing. He tries to be as unalarming as he can.

Leigh kicks off his loafers, slips his T-shirt over his head. His chest is smooth, nipples brown as pennies. A feathering of light hair under his arms. He unzips his jeans and slides them down, almost falling in his attempt to free himself of their embrace. His eyes are closed, he is dreaming this, dreaming these actions, this being. Anatole stands breathless, afraid to move. Then quickly, Leigh is beneath the sheets, his body surrendered, his mind sunk too deep for harm.

Anatole collapses into a chair and puts his head in his hands. Suddenly he wants to cry, the world is so huge and empty. He thinks of his childhood—how once he was a little boy who had a mother and a father. He feels completely alone, the way people who are about to die must feel alone. There's nothing to tell him what to do. There's nothing except this stillness here in the middle of this night that may never reach the other side of its journey through the desert, the mountain, wherever it is the dark night journeys.

.... [THE NEXT MORNING]

All morning he's felt the incredible fragility of physical objects. It's part of the dream he's moving in, both awful and strange—like being suddenly holy, touched by God's fire and so removed just a little from the mundane comforting things.

Waking up sometime in the stingy light of dawn, raising himself up on his elbow to gaze at the boy: not touching him. The way a cat's nose, quivering, will sniff right up to a surface but never graze it. Memorizing the details of his face—rim of eyelashes, sweep of nostrils, parted lips, various inessential blemishes in the impeccable skin. When he'd drunk his fill from the inexhaustible well of the boy's appearance, he got up and went into the bathroom, where, sitting on the toilet, he closed his eyes and re-created the boy's features and masturbated. Afterward, he felt completely empty, ashamed, scared. Making his way back to the bed he slid in beside Leigh carefully, sleeping for a couple more hours till daylight made it impossible to lie there anymore.

It's Not The Heat It's The Humidity...

2004-12-07T15:17:00.000-08:00

"settle an argument: I say jacking off with other guys at the gym in the sauna or steam is NOT cheating if there is no touching. Its like 3-D porn. BF says he thinks it is cheating.

Discuss"

Joseph Hansen

2004-12-07T14:30:00.000-08:00

RIP, Joseph Hansen:

"Award-winning mystery writer Joseph Hansen, who created one of the first gay protagonists in the genre, died of heart failure on November 24 after a long respiratory illness. He was 81 and lived in Laguna Beach, California."

I'm not into mystery novels—not even queer ones—but I have a collection of Hansen's early queer-but-not-mystery fiction written under the pseudonym James Colton. One, Strange Marriage, is no doubt autobiographical: about a lifelong happy marriage between a gay man and a lesbian... Maybe I'll read some of those old books now.

Interplayful

2004-12-07T11:07:00.000-08:00

They say it's the province of teenaged girls. A temporary infatuation. They say crushes don't lead to anything.

Bullshit.

Every close friendship I've ever made began as some sort of crush. (Which is not to say that every crush turns into a close friendship, but you get my meaning...)

So yeah, I have a crush on someone, a new friend. There's no chance of it turning into any sort of romantic or even sexual connection. I doubt I'm his type at all. I don't think he's my type, either—not in the sense of boyfriend or lover compatibilty—but I absolutely fucking adore him.

It's been a long time since I've felt this quickening, a tug deeper than lust.

For me at least, intimacy is always uncategorizable, always quirky. There's nothing to figure out anymore. From here on in, it's all about opening and flowing. Sex and love don't fit together in any conventional way in my life, but that means diddly squat. "Fitting together" is overrated. What matters is the interplay: the irrepressible, inexpressible, unquantifiable interplay.

He's intrigued; he's drawn to me. There maybe a little bit of sexual something-or-other going on for him in that propulsion, but I'm 99.9% sure it's minor compared to the friendly intellectual emotional pull. No matter. He's totally hot, fun, and a tad mysterious. I'm hooked.

Damn, it's good to be alive.

The Supremes rule against cop's sex tapes

2004-12-06T13:52:00.000-08:00

CNN.com - Supreme Court rules against ex-cop's sex tapes - Dec 6, 2004:

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that San Diego, California, officials were right to fire a policeman who sold sexually explicit videotapes of himself in uniform.

(Damn, wish I'd seen that eBay auction!)

Kinsey Report

2004-12-05T20:33:00.000-08:00

Having seen the Kinsey movie with Joey last night, I think I'm now ready to read the 800 page biography that's been sitting on my shelf for five or so years.

The movie's pretty good, with a couple powerful moments: when Kinsey's aged father shares a shameful childhood secret with him, and at the end when the elderly liberated dyke (played by Lynn Redgrave) thanks Kinsey for his ground-breaking work. The homoerotic bits were well-done too. (I popped a woody or two.)

Sexual politics in the US of A is really fucked-up right now. Not that it's going to be watched by any of the right-wing freaks who need to watch it, but this film comes at the right time.

In Whole Or In Part

2004-12-05T18:59:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching Larry King's interview with Kyle Maynard, a stunningly beautiful 18 year old hunk, born a "congenital amputee" and now a wrestler, Abercrombie model, and motivational speaker. What a sweetie.

I'd do him.

More. I'd do more than that. He insists on wholeness, his, everyone else's.

I'd believe him.

Fell Down On My Knees

2004-12-04T22:17:00.000-08:00

As Joey and I ducked out of the rain and into Starbucks last night, I squealed at our good fortune: a beautiful young black man was sitting there with his girlfriend. He didn't pay us the slightest bit of attention, but I had a great seat from which to enjoy the view. He looked vaguely familiar; I assumed I'd simply seen him around the ghetto. There aren't nearly enough black men in this town; I tend to notice—and in this case, "notice" can be an extremely active verb—what few there are.

What a beautiful young man: shaved head; intense, dancing eyes. They danced gay, too, I thought. Or hoped. The girl sat riveted as they talked. I knew just how she felt.

Then after a nice, long overdue chat with Joey—yes, we did talk about other things besides the beautiful black man in our midst—we were ready to go. As I walked by the beautiful black man on my way back from the men's room, he beamed me a huge smile.

All of a sudden it dawned on me.

"Remember that picture I emailed you Thanksgiving weekend after my night out in the bushes?" I whispered to Joey.

"Yes....." replied Joey.

This smiling beauty at the next table was none other than the owner of the humongous penis I'd knelt in the mud to worship that night!

And that muddy night, it wasn't until it was all over that we realized we'd already met two months before, through friends of friends, on Pride weekend.

(My favorite part of the night in the bushes, as recorded in my journal the next morning: We stood there kissing and laughing and talking. I suggested we jerk off. We did. I came, cataclysmically. Spurted a bit on the sleeve of his red jacket. He laughed and laughed and laughed, showing me the white stain. I absolutely fucking adored him when he laughed like that.)

It seems like every two months this beautiful guy and I keep crossing paths without immediately recognizing one another.

It didn't feel right to go up and speak to him last night, although Joey thought I should. Joey and I kept running into him and his girl-friend as we shopped. In the last store, I almost got up my nerve to wander right up and say hi. But I didn't.

Besides, I'm going to cross paths with him again in a couple months: we'll talk then.

We have a lot in common, actually. Important stuff, like writing and reading. And cock-sucking.

When I next run into him—in early February—I'll have difficulty deciding whether to talk books or get my knees dirty again. My favorite kind of indecision.

All of the above?

Hard One/Won

2004-12-02T21:55:00.000-08:00

I'd never cum quite that way before—with Nate, or with anyone else for that matter. Hot!

"You're so fucking beautiful," I cried, in medias orgasm. Dripping sweat down onto him.

This has been going on for almost a year now, the longest-term sexual friendship I've ever had. One of the more obvious reasons we're lasting is that Nate too is in his late 30s. I'm so rarely attracted to guys my own age but, luckily, Nate floats my boat in a big way.

We're getting friendlier and more sexual all the time. Second last time we got together, I wasn't in a sexual mood. In a sense, that was a test for us both: did I really want to see him if I wasn't horny? Would he be insulted? It all worked out. We cuddled and kissed and chatted.

When I start talking about what it is I want—what I'm starting to build with Nate—lots of gay guys think "fuck buddy". But no. I understand "fuck buddy" to denote a relationship that's based solely on sex. I don't particularly want that, or find it a viable way to build anything long-term. (Sexual desire is utterly unpredictable, no?) A "sexual friendship" seems more precisely descriptive of what I'm after. A friendship that flowers out of an original attraction, that may—hopefully will—have an erotic dimension over the longer term.

I'm lucky. Sex is everywhere; the challenge for me as a erotically-enthused gay man is to realize that friendship is, too. Like more conventional romantic relationships—which so many loved ones around me are seeking, embarked upon, or grieving—sexual friendship is a challenge.

I might just be up for it.

In Praise of Layering

2004-12-01T20:49:00.000-08:00

The slim bespectacled guy behind me in line at the hamburger joint, chatting and laughing with his buddy, wore umpteen layers of clothing. A downfilled vest, pullover sweater, lord knows what else underneath. He was certainly cute, brunette, maybe about 24 or 25, an intriguing jock/nerd thing happening facially.

I sat down to wait for my burger. Noticed Jock/Nerd's black track pants, with a white stripe down each leg. After the guys ordered, they sat down near me. JN unzipped his vest, slipped it off. As he began wriggling an intention to go further, my crotch wriggled too. Off came his pullover, up—a few delectable inches—went the white tee-shirt beneath. A ring of taut belly skin, bottom-fringed by a black Prodige waistband, flashed momentarily.

Oh my fucking god.

The curtain went down on the show split seconds later. Then I noticed his arms. Or his arm, rather, the one closest to me, spilling out of its t-shirt sleeve. What a bicep! The kind you want to slap and chew and hug. And a fancy string of calligraphed letters descending down it. BFNP, I think. His initials?

The belly flash inspired me to look up a passage this morning from Stan Persky's Buddy's: Meditations on Desire that I've often recalled since reading it way back in 1989:

Sememe

Peter, an attractive hustler shooting pool at Buddy's stretches his body over the worn felt-covered table to make a shot. As he does so, his jeans pull tightly around his ass while his black T-shirt draws upward in the reaching movement of his arms. Unexpectedly, an inch or two of tanned flesh flashes before our eyes in the space between the two items of apparel. A moment of stasis or still-life: Peter is sprawled/taut; vulnerable/poised; then there's a click of pool balls. He straightens up, his T-shirt readjusts itself, skin disappears, he steps back into the shadows. If the smallest unit of meaning in the science of signs can be called a sememe, then the glimpse is the smallest unit of meaning in the composition of desire.

Or: "Is the most erotic portion of a body where the garment gapes?" asks Roland Barthes. "...skin flashing between two articles of clothing...it is this flash which seduces, or rather: the staging of an appearance-as-disappearance." The conjunction of reading that fragment (the other day) and of seeing Peter appears to me as a demonstrated proof of Barthes' assertion, almost a replication of scientific findings.

Plato's Charmides: "...at that moment, my good friend, I caught a sight of the inwards of his garment, and took the flame. Then I could no longer contain myself."

And Then There Is Nakedness

2004-11-30T10:53:00.000-08:00

Nelson and I decided this summer that we wanted to be friends, and if we were going to be friends, getting naked together any more was out of the question. Damn, haphazard adulthood is cramping my sex life.

Platonic friendship is a rule, not an exception. (And there's nothing wrong with holding out for those fabulous exceptions to the rule!) Nelson wanted more—commitment, monogamy, boyfriendship—none of which I was interested in and/or capable of. So we've gone platonic.

I still lust after him, of course. Nelson's sexy as all get-out, and it's difficult to think of him, much less spend time together, without his perfect ass stiffening me right up.

So the other night—our second get-together since foregoing the carnal—Nelson and I stretched in a different direction. Chatting here at my place--on the same couch where conversation used to get cuddly and kissy and whatnoty, we sat far apart.

Wanting to touch this beautiful young man, but not, was easier than I'd expected. The conversation grew deep, became risky. He told me about his new out-of-town boyfriend, the confusion and insecurities this new relationship wrought (which, I silently noted, resembled those elicited by our recent fling).

The distance we used to bridge with our bodies got closed a different way.

I've been through this before. Where intimacy is possible with young gay men, it's almost always of the post-sexual variety. Unless I'm willing to do the boyfriend thing with these beautiful young men—and I rarely am—it's difficult to get naked and get close.

It feels good that, often, when push comes to shove, I'll choose the latter.