Showing posts with label backroom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label backroom. Show all posts

Monday, 20 May 2013

To Be Or Not To Be....Slutty(er)


Am I the best slut I can be?  That is the question...

When you’re a sex blog writer, and your blog depends to a degree on your identification as a proud slut, these are the types of questions you ask yourself.  Even with all my constant self-analysis, I still, on some deep level, harbor some crazy notions.  Here’s one crazy notion:

I might meet the man of my dreams at a sex club or bar or bath house.  But if I act too slutty, he won’t think I’m relationship material.  So there I am, in a sexual environment, and I’m holding back, especially if I think a certain guy in particular is amazing.  What do I mean by acting too slutty?  How do you act too slutty at a bath house, for god’s sake?  Is jacking it in the XXX room too slutty?  I’ve gone to bath houses and acted almost demure, as if I accidentally wandered in and don’t really know where I am, because I’m such a good boy.  Almost as if I was above it all.  At sex parties I frequented in Montreal, I would never be the first to unleash my dick and start jacking it, or be the first to go down on someone, because what would people think?  Instead, I’d wait for those men with no social decorum to start the night off and I’d join in since I’m there already, so I guess I’ll try....

Just who the hell do I think I’m fooling?  Would anyone believe that because I hold back and am not the first one to whip my dick out at a sex party that I am somehow better relationship material?   There is no logic here.   This is extra super insane since I don’t think I’m necessarily looking for a relationship anyway?  So what is holding me back from my slutdom?

What’s holding me back is Josh.  And Brokeback Mountain.

Josh was my first love, at sixteen.  He was straight, a year ahead of me in high school, a distant friend, but treated me like gold when our paths did cross.  It was unrequited love, but it opened my flood gates, a true watershed moment, with my tears over him shed at a rapid rate.  In spite of everything, I’ve searched for Josh in every man I’ve met since, to no avail.  I don’t know if he exists.  I don’t even know if the Josh I put on a pedestal exists.  In my mind, he was perfect.  Perhaps he’s not.  I did not know him well enough to ever find out for sure.

Brokeback Mountain did to me what I think Titanic and Harlequin romances do to girls.  They all create a mystique around finding “the one”.  I wanted to find a Jack or an Ennis while herding sheep.  I saw the movie seven times, each time alone, to revel in the fantasy of true love.  But after seeing the movie for that seventh time, I had a dream one night in which I saw the faces of Jack and Ennis.  The two faces merged into one, and then transformed into my own face staring back at me.  And I realized that possibly, just possibly, the greatest relationship I may have is the one I’m having with myself.

My true self wants to free my inner slut.  Does my need at times for hardcore sexual degradation stamp out the possibility that love could be found there as well?  What if my dream man (if such an animal exists) is a slut aficionado?  Because whether you are the type who is the first to brazenly pull your cock out at a sex party, or the shy last one, it won’t make a shred of difference as to whether you are this so-called relationship-material type person. 

I realize that I am both a victim of and a perpetrator of slut shaming.  I have avoided men who seem to be having “too much fun” at the baths, making all kinds of assumptions about them (“too easy” “probably doesn’t play safe” “probably this” “probably that”).  Conversely, I envied the freedom of those men with every pore in my body.  I could offer a course in hypocrisy 101.

Men who have moved past shame are my heroes, because of the courage is takes.  For some reason, I’m afraid to let other men see my unbridled sexual desire, even in environments where it is damn well expected!  I hereby declare that I am taking the shackles off.  I need to amputate that shame so that I can be open to the joys such sexual openness might bring.  After all, who the hell is being served when I shackle myself?

Saturday, 20 April 2013

Sex Club & Leather Bar Fail


I had never been to a strip bar that had backrooms for the patrons to play – with each other.  But this strip club that I went to doubled as a sex club.  I got there before midnight, before the cover charge doubled.  Greeting two shirtless bartenders on the main floor, I grabbed a beer and wandered as the club began to fill.  On the main floor, I found there were backrooms meant just for the strippers and their clients.  On the second floor was another bar, impromptu go-go dancing stages, and a backroom for the patrons to get it on together.

Upstairs, a stripper was working a small, raised area, barely a stage at all.  He was a college type, but unremarkable looking, and he worked the stage unremarkably.  He eventually dropped his pants, revealing a flaccid, unamused cock.  After his song was over, another dancer took his place.  This man was in his mid-twenties, hot, and very hairy – a major plus for me.  You so rarely see a hairy stripper.  His bubble butt was very furry and I wondered if he realized that he was very appealing to an underserved market (hirsute lovers).

The club began to fill up, both upstairs and down.  But not a single soul ventured into the backrooms.  I know this because I did venture forth and found them empty.  I watched as men furtively watched the strippers, as if they weren’t supposed to enjoy it or appreciate it too openly.  There was a reticence in the air, a holding back.  A conservatism that felt dangerously contagious.

I stayed for about an hour, but the place began to thin of people before last call was even anywhere near.  And so I swallowed the remainder of my beer and went next door to a leather bar.

Being a Saturday night, the place was busy, on both floors.  I bought a beer and bypassing the backroom, I headed upstairs where I discovered that an S&M show was in progress.  Shackled to and facing the far wall was Mr. Leather.  He was being flogged by a stout woman in glasses.  She and he were trading jokes as she flogged him, light banter that had nothing to do with the flogging per se.  After she was through with Mr. Leather, she looked out at those paying attention in the crowd and invited someone to have a go at being flogged.  A young guy waved his hand to have a shot at it.  He removed his shirt and giggled while his friends encouraged him.  The mistress joked around with him while flogging him and they had a grand old time.  When it was over, the young man jumped up and down, clapping his hands and saying that S&M was really neat.

The display of sadomasochism was missing two vital elements – a sadist and a masochist.  What I saw was a pastiche of S&M, not the real thing.  It was akin to buying a jacket in a bargain-basement store, knowing that it descended from high fashion but watered down many times over.  I wanted to see and sense danger, not the recreation of danger.  I saw the Disneyland version of what should have been transgressive.

I went downstairs, hunting for men who wanted the real deal.  I headed into the back room.  But before I had made three or four steps in, the smell of shit hit me like a brick.  Someone back there had had an accident while presumably being fucked.  Bracing myself against the smell, I noticed that the pervasive scent of excrement was not stopping the full crowd back there.  The place was jammed.  Overpowered by the smell, though, I had to leave.  I left the bar entirely, feeling that tonight I’d been abandoned by the sex gods.  Not every night is going to be a winner.  The trick is to accept this and know when it’s time to go.  But you know that you’ll return, and that when you do, the sex gods might be on your side and give you the transcendent gay bar experience that you seek.  You will return to the hunt, you will return to the night, and it will be resplendent.

Saturday, 23 February 2013

Amsterdam


Amsterdam.   The city famous for its red light district.  However, one lane over, and you are in the blue light district – the gay section.  Picture it – Summer of 2002.  I was wrapping up a three month run in a production of “Singin’ in the Rain” at a theatre in Western Canada.  Just the chorus, nothing to get excited about.  I decided that I was long overdue to have a Summer (or at least three weeks) in Europe.  (My last time in Europe was at age 16 as an exchange student in France.  This time, I would be seeing and experiencing it through adult lenses).   Being the slut that I am, I was going to hit two of the biggest gay meccas Europe had to offer – Amsterdam and Berlin.  From the tour guides that I read, it seemed that every bar in those two cities had backrooms, and I intended to get to know each one.  So I packed my sexiest clothes, my leather, and those tour guides, and flew across the Atlantic.

In Amsterdam, I had booked a bed and breakfast, The Golden Bear (men only).  I was staying on the top floor, and like you see only in Europe, I had to ascend up the narrowest staircase I had ever seen.  After freshening up, I headed out on to the street to get acclimatized to my new neighbourhood, where I would be staying for a week.  I found a quaint cafe nearby and had dinner on the patio.  Next to me sat a gentleman of Arab descent, and seeing the tour guide in my hand, asked me where I was travelling from.  He himself was a student in London and said that every now and again he took the short flight to Amsterdam to have a good time.  Did he have any advice on where to have a good time? I asked.  He pointed across the street at a bath house, saying he’d had many a good time there.  And so I thought about it:  I was really keen to hit the blue light district’s bars and backrooms and dungeons, but evening was upon me.  I hadn’t yet figured out how to get to the blue light district, and so, even though a bath house wasn’t new for me, it seemed right for tonight, at least, to stay close to the B&B.  I thanked my first of many angels on this trip for his advice and excitedly went back to the B&B to get ready.

As I headed to the bathhouse, I felt like Dorothy in Oz, and I knew that this was the beginning of some type of sexual adventure.  Who would I meet, both tonight but also throughout this European vacation?  What would happen?  Would it all be sunshine and lollipops, or was trouble lurking?  There is no walk longer than the walk to a bath house.  You are filled with a mixture of excitement, embarrassment, dread, and again excitement.  By time you reach the door, you are often whacked out with panic and a racing heart.  If I can just get myself through the door, I’ll be ok, you tell yourself.  And once you’re in the door, you feel as if you’ve reached Everest.  And to reference Oz again, I felt like the cowardly lion approaching the door to the bathhouse.  I had come to Europe to experience sexual freedom.  Was I going to abandon that goal due to nerves and just visit museums?  No.  (Well, I did visit the torture museum, so there).

Once safely inside the bathhouse, I noticed that it was A-1 quality – modern and big, with at least three levels.  But unlike any bathhouse I’d been to before, there were no rooms to rent, just lockers.  I soon understood why.  Instead of rooms, there were loads of cabins, with beds that didn’t have sheets, just vinyl coverings.   The cabins had no ceilings, and the walls were so low that by standing on the bed, you could look directly into your neighbour’s cabin and watch them – an exhibitionist’s paradise!  This worked for me, but I wondered about those for whom privacy is a must while having sex.  I assumed that those folks would just not choose to frequent this particular establishment.

After showering and cruising a bit, I met a guy named Marco – a cute blond Italian who had once been to my home city in Canada.  And into a cabin we went.  A great guy, Marco and I talked as much as we had sex.  I topped him, using a condom.  He came, but I didn’t.  I wasn’t ready for the night to end – I wanted more.  Marco seemed disappointed that I didn’t come with him, and I had a hard time explaining that I wanted to stay longer.  I still wasn’t owning up to my sluttiness and couldn’t just be forthright and say I wanted to cruise around some more.  We left the cabin, said our goodbyes, and I showered and carried on.

I headed into the movie theatre, and upon entering, encountered a hot guy with dark, curly locks.  When he saw me, our eyes met and he straightened up, and I knew he was the one.  I sat near him, with just one theatre seat between us, and had one eye on the porn playing on the screen, and him in my peripheral vision.  Ladies and Gentlemen, what comes next is an age-old mating ritual between two men at a bathhouse.  It goes like this:  I inch my foot casually closer in his direction, so casual that it’s almost imperceptible.  Then he does the same.  That is my cue to move my foot a bit closer to his.  And he does the same.  Finally our feet touch.  Then what?  Well, someone has to do something.  And what he did was get up and leave.  I instinctually followed, and hoping he would, he turned back to check if I was following.  Wordlessly, he lead me to a cabin and in we went.

I found this Dutchman incredibly gorgeous, and his soft, curly dark locks in my hands made me crazy.  We rolled around on the bed, kissing, touching, exploring.  And then he turned me onto my stomach and got on top of me.  He began to thrust, but it was simulated fucking – he never entered me.  Really, he just rubbed his cock against my ass.  After we both eventually came, we lay there and talked, stroking each other all the while.  I decided that I loved Amsterdam.

However, do you recall that I said the walls of these cabins were so short that people could watch what you were doing?  Since I was on my stomach with my Dutchman grinding against my ass, I hadn’t noticed that we had a silent audience. Nor did I realize that Marco was a part of the audience.  The trouble with exhibitionism comes when you can’t control who’s doing the watching.  The Dutchman and I left the cabin, and there was a naked man sitting by the door of the neighbouring cabin, and he looked at me as I passed and said “you should use protection”.  Dumbfounded, I carried on, only to be accosted by Marco, who grabbed my arm and berated me for fucking him and then apparently having unprotected sex with someone else, saying that he’d have never allowed me to fuck him if he’d known I have unsafe sex.  I said that he had it wrong, I hadn’t been fucked, it just looked like that.  But he was having none of it and stormed off.

I was due to meet the curly-haired Dutchman on the street to get his phone number, so showered again, dressed and left the bathhouse.  Once on the street, still reeling from Marco and his accusation, I took the Dutchman’s business card.  “Do you really want me to call you at work?  Wouldn’t it be best if I called you at home?” I asked.  But no, I couldn’t call him at home – because his boyfriend might answer.

I went back up the street to the B&B and instantly threw the Dutchman’s business card in the trash.  Was my whole trip destined to be full of this melodrama?  Would this fun frolic through Europe devolve into something negative and difficult?

Three weeks later, after touring Europe, I was back in Amsterdam, just for a night, to catch my return flight back to Canada.  Terribly heartsick over a guy I had met in Berlin, I wandered to a bar for one last taste of European nightlife before I had to say goodbye to the Continent.  And there, at the bar, was the Dutchman, standing with whom I assumed was the boyfriend.  The Dutchman and I awkwardly exchanged hellos and goodbyes. With a plane to catch in the morning, I didn’t stick around to hear him explain me to the boyfriend. 

Saturday, 8 September 2012

New York Nights


I don’t know if it’s still there, but just before the turn of the millennium, there was a leather bar in New York called The Lure.  On Wednesday nights, usually a slow night for a bar, The Lure had the smarts to make that night their Pig Night.  You would see the ad in the gay magazines of a pig in fetish gear, underscored by the tagline “Men Are Pigs”.  Enough said.  Wednesday night is the new Saturday night.

Entering the Lure was like entering another universe – one filled with the smell of poppers and sweat, the sounds of thumping music, the feel of hot air, the sight of gorgeous leather men, and if you stayed a while, a taste of them too.  You could check all the clothes you wanted to check at the coatcheck (where do I put the coatcheck tag when I’m half naked?).  With all the bartenders dressed in leather and/or fetish gear, I decided to order from the one with huge muscles and nipple clamps.  Not intimidating in the slightest, he proved to be sweet and smiley. 

Two drinks later, I’m still not ready for a trip to the backroom, so I cruise the place.  So many dark corners.  In one, I chat with a guy who eventually moves behind me, wrapping his arms around my chest.  We keep talking and his hands slide slowly to my pants, and then in them.  And this is how I know that part of being a homophobic straight male comes down to jealousy, since this welcomed groping could never happen in a straight bar between a man and a woman (or could it? does it?).

This groper was the opening act, and now, I think I’m ready for the main act – the backroom.  An area of the bar is partitioned off, and almost dark, with just a few dim red lights to cast an appropriately sleazy glow.   What time is it?  It must be late, because the backroom is at its peak, packed shoulder to shoulder, cock to cock, with men touching each other as they squeeze by.  Along the walls, men are on their knees, servicing others, some of them being fucked.  I watched two men playing and they notice me and beckon me to join them.  They are standing, and I fall to my knees to worship both their cocks at once. When I glance up, they are either smiling at me, or kissing each other, both beautiful sights to behold.  This communion makes me cum.  I’m not sure if the two guys I’m servicing even know I have.  I release their cocks and smile and say thanks, and lead my dizzy self out of the darkroom towards the light of the bar, itself still so dim.  I’ve cum, I can still taste two men on my lips and am ordering another drink from the same nipple-clamped bartender.  He knows I’ve been around the world and back in the backroom.  He smiles knowingly at me.  Is he at that stage in his career as a bartender where he thinks this is heaven, this den of lust, or is he at that place where he’s seen it all before and longs to leave the bar and find romance rather than pigs?  I know both feelings are possible, and valid.  I too have been a bartender in a gay bar.

I get back what clothes I’ve left in the coat check and ready myself to leave the bar and enter the real world.  It’s dark still, and I leave a bit of my heart and soul in the bar.  I feel more naked in the real world, even though I’m fully clothed.  On the subway platform, waiting for the train to come, I steal glances at the few people around me.  Can they smell the sex of the night on me?  Can they sense it?  Being New Yorkers, they probably don’t care if I smell of sex.  At this hour, they probably do too.

I crumple into a seat on the subway and look up to see an attractive man across from me with eyes closed, sleeping.  It sounds like a good idea and I too close my eyes.  But when I open them again, he is eyeing me.  He grins slightly before closing his eyes again.  We pass this flirtatious ball back and forth until I realize that I’m coming to my stop.  At my stop, the door opens and I take a last look back at my sleeping beauty.  As I step off the train, he jumps up and leaps off the train just as the doors are closing shut.

Sleeping beauty is a dancer with an esteemed dance company, and he was heading home, but up for hanging out.  He follows me as I lead him up the steps from the subway into the street, and in the time it took to get home, a miracle has occurred.  The light has arisen on the city, and it is that holiest of moments in New York, when the streets and even many of the pigeons are still asleep at dawn and it’s just you and the City.  And in this case, a beautiful dancer.

In my single-room-occupancy room, the dancer undresses and lay on the bed.  His balls are hairy, a rare gift in this waxed age, and I cup them in my hand.  He breathes deeply and teasingly shows me how flexible he is by stretching a leg so far back that his heel nearly reaches his head.

My cock is done – what happened at the Lure was all it had the energy for, but I do have the energy to worship this dancer with my tongue, all over his body until I reach his cock and take it in.  When he cums, we lay together silently.  His energy is at peace and I instinctively sense that he is a nice person.  This is meaningful to me.

When he goes, I lay down, placing my head into the indentation on the pillow where the dancer had rested his head moments before.  My window is open, and I hear the sounds of civilians starting their Thursday.  As I lay there, I don’t worry that straight people, and many of my gay brethren, would think that I’m a stereotypical example of the promiscuous gay male.  I don’t worry whether I’ve got an STI.  I can worry about that tomorrow – and I probably will.  I don’t worry that I was seduced by men and booze.  Instead, as the machinery of capitalism begins to churn on the streets below, I simply fall asleep.

 

Saturday, 25 August 2012

This Is Horniness


This is horniness.

At the gym, a tall, dark and handsome drink of water is doing bench presses, and every time he pushes up, his dark, hairy pits are on display – over and over and over again.  He’s in shorts, and his legs are hairy too.  You wonder about his bush, and quickly grab hold of yourself before someone catches you gawking.

This is horniness.

You’re at the leather bar, drunk, and pissing into a urinal.  Even though there are lots of urinals, another guy pulls up at the urinal right next to yours and whips it out.  You are two men displaying your manhood and checking out the equipment.  You look up at him and smile, because you are both horny pigs, you “get it”, and you respect it.

This is horniness.

You started a night of edging by stripping and dancing in front of your mirror – just mildly drunk.  By the fifth hour of watching porn, you’re wasted and hunched over the computer, a sad sack of a man beating it like it owes you money.  You edge it really close and then stop.   You think you are amazing and all powerful, even though you are a hot mess.

This is horniness.

You walk by a bathhouse on your way to meet a buddy at a coffeeshop.  The smell of towels being laundered drives you crazy and you know that talking about anything other than sex is going to bore the hell out of you.  Luckily your friend is also a slut. 

This is horniness.

You’ve met a Master, who starts off by only letting you get your face close to his dick and looking at it.  When he thinks you deserve it, you get to kiss it.  The lights are low, and the punk rock music he loves plays.  You start to quiver.  It’s a half hour before he lets you take his dick in your mouth.  When he does, you have a strange sort of body orgasm and beg for more.  After another half hour, he feeds you his cum because you are deserving and he is generous.

This is horniness.

You are chatting online with a guy you once hooked up with years ago.  You are talking about yet another guy that you’ve both slept with separately.  He tells you that he watched that guy get gangbanged bare in the back of a pick-up truck.  Half your brain asks why he took the risk of unsafe sex.  The other part of your brain is jealous.

This is horniness.

You meet a guy online who wants to come over at 4 in the morning.  You know he could be a killer, could try to rob you blind.  But you will risk it to be naked with a man.  So you hide your wallet and wait for him, half hoping he doesn’t show up.

This is horniness.

Nervous as hell, on a trip to Amsterdam, you enter a popular bar with a backroom.  After a couple drinks, you take off your tank top, hook it into your belt, and head to the backroom and proceed to blow a crowd of four men facing you.  Nearly simultaneously, they blow on your chest, each turned on by the sight of the others cumming.  You all say thanks, smile, and you put the tank top back on over the fresh cum and sally on down back to the bar and order up a whisky.  For these few minutes, you are the cock of the block.

This is horniness.

You are dancing in a sea of shirtless sweaty men, lights flashing and music pulsing.  You are on another planet, shirtless yourself, and you instinctively grab hold of your crotch and fall in love with every man on the dance floor.  Yet you wonder if you’ll be going home alone.  You remind yourself to just enjoy the moment, to enjoy the horniness.  You would like to make love to everyone in the club, but doubt that would satiate you.  What would?