Solosexuality

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My Headless Blog Pic

Dear Readers:  Since this blog is hosted by Google, I’ve used the Google function of adding “friends” who are also Google users in order to promote the blog.  I recently tried adding someone who denied my “friend” request.  Our brief email exchange went like this:

(Name redacted):  So the message from you is (and this is what causes suicides among gay youth), if you're going to be openly gay, you had better decapitate yourself in your photos?  I'm not going to add you back based on that alone.

 (Jason): Hi (name redacted), I completely understand your concern.  I'm openly gay, but it's being an openly sexual person and writing the way I do that is the issue for me.  You'll find if you read me that being openly gay is getting easier (I post my face pics on gay sites a lot and am out to everyone).  But identifying as openly sexual and writing openly about sexuality is a different matter unfortunately in our culture.  Do you see the difference? 

(Name redacted): I did not force you to post this particular content in this particular profile, but I agree that being openly gay does not mean sharing your bedroom fantasies publicly as being gay is not about sex.  However, in a social networking site, I expect men who add me to have some common courtesy and properly introduce themselves if they want a reciprocal link, compliment, etc.  Feel free to add me with your uncloseted profiles since you claim to have those.  There is a time and place, as they say....  

Oh and your lack of contact information gave me no choice but to post here.  You could have provided an email but since you're anonymous anyway, it is not likely to offend you that I posted semi-publicly.

I don’t think this gentleman clicked on the link to my blog as he would have seen my email address there.  I don’t think he read any of my writing.  But I’m as frustrated as he is with the headless, decapitated picture of me on this blog.

Jason Armstrong is not my real name.  When I started this blog, I had to decide how much of my identity I was willing to share.  I have a friend from Serbia who now lives in Canada.  She once went for a job interview and the interviewer asked her about her dog.  She had not mentioned having one, and the interviewer shared that he surmised she had a dog from a picture he’d seen on her blog after he googled her.  He would have had to surmise this since her blog is written in Serbian.

I don’t make my living from writing.  And I was well aware that there are many people who would find my ruminations on male sexuality as upsetting as the man above who denied my “friend” request.   Although it’s becoming quite alright to be gay in Canada, there is still a phobic response to being gay and sexual – and talking about it openly.  But am I really just writing about my “bedroom fantasies” as the man’s email to me suggested?  He writes that being gay is not about sex.  Not even a little bit?  Is being gay only about getting married, moving to the suburbs and adopting a foreign baby?  Then will I be accepted? 

He references the suicides of gay youth, and attributes the issue partially to me and my hiding behind a headless pic on my blog.  He is partially right.  But what I’ve always hoped is that my naked writing about sex might help those experiencing shame about their sexuality.  There are many links on other gay sites wherein I advertise my blog and those sites all show face pics.  But I have a phobia about putting the face pics right on my blog.  I’m a coward.  I don’t yet have the fortitude to be as out and proud about my sexuality as I’d like to be.  The threats seem real.  Maybe they are and maybe they aren’t.  I’m still trying to figure it out.

In spite of all this, I just can’t throw in the towel and stop writing the way I do.  The email exchange above indicates to me that being gay and sexually open is a volatile issue and for that reason alone, I think it’s imperative to keep this kind of dialogue going.

And so, bless both myself and the man who emailed me, as we both try to make sense of what it is to be gay in the these politically correct times.  Bless us, two gay men seemingly at odds with each other but both hypocritical to varying degrees.  Bless us all as we try to live openly and without shame.  Thank you to all of you who read me with an open mind.  And thank you even to those who don’t, but push me to question my own fears.  Thank you.

Best Sex Writing 2013

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Jason and Jon - Together Again!

Hello Readers!  This post is a little different from the rest.  Mr. Jon Pressick is an award-winning sex journalist here in Toronto.  He hosts a radio show called Sex City on CUIT 89.5FM (which airs at 11PM Tuesday nights) and I had the pleasure of talking about my blog with him recently.  Click here to hear us banter about the blog and sex!

I met Jon when I found his blog Sex in Words and reached out to him about my words in this here blog of mine.  There is not a sexual stone unturned on his blog and you have to check it out.

Beyond that, Jon has written an essay entitled "Holy Fuck: The Fourth-and-Long Virgin" for the collection on shelves now entitled Best Sex Writing 2013: The State of Today's Sexual Culture. (There will be an interview with the editor, Ms Rachel Kramer Bussel, in an upcoming post as part of a larger blog tour to promote the book).  Jon's essay dissects the brou-haha surrounding   football-player Tim Tebow's announcement that he is a virgin, and the meaning it has for us watching on the sidelines.  It's a stellar piece of sex writing.  I got to turn the tables on Jon and interview him about his contribution to an amazing collection...

1) How did "Holy Fuck: The Fourth-and-Long Virgin" come about and how did the essay find its way into "Best Sex Writing 2013"?

I like to think that Holy Fuck was good kharma coming back to me for years and years of free writing for others. I'm a big fan of Rachel Kramer Bussel's writing and her anthologies. I'd seen the calls for submission for the Best Sex Writing collections in the past, and just like in other years, the deadline passed without me putting fingers to keys. My writing runs in cycles—sometimes I can come up with topics and write freely and other times I can basically only write when I'm given an idea to explore. 

In this instance, Rachel posted on Facebook that she was particularly interested in a piece on Tim Tebow for the anthology and I jumped at the opportunity as quickly as I could. It was just chance that I even saw her request and I'm glad the internet was smiling on me that day.

2)What was your initial, gut reaction to football player Tim Tebow's admission that he is a virgin?  Did your reaction shift during the writing of your essay?

Quite honestly, his virginity ranked pretty low on the "oh my" factor of this dude. He was a legend in college football with a whole mythology created for him by a rabid fan base. Tim being a virgin just fed into that. 

Now, it is a surprising thing, a pro athlete who isn't out fucking whoever he can find. Athletes usually only come in "married, family man" version or "who's up next" version. Not many athletes, or guys in general, will come out as chaste. As I wrote the essay I did actually gain a bit of sympathy for the man. But just a bit because he uses his untouched status as a marketing ploy. If he were just a humble dude who chooses not to get any, I'd have more respect for him. 

3) You reference Dr. Don Sabo's essay "The Myth of the Sexual Athlete".  I can see how athletes exist in a competitive culture, and by extension a sexually competitive culture.  That in turn can lead to a sense of being "detached from the idea of sexual and emotional committment."  How might we explain the same phenomena of sexual detachment in gay men who perhaps didn't involve themselves in a sports environment in their youth?

I think this idea of detachment can exist across many spectrums. Musicians might feel the same way. Authors might. Academics might. Where there is success in competition, that detachment from commitment can grow. 

But you bring up an interesting idea here, that gay men might experience sexual detachment. Do you mean that this could happen just by virtue of them being gay? If so, then I think sports or music or any other outside factor is secondary to the "otherness" that queer people can feel. And when you've been deemed an "other" or different from the norm, I think it is only natural to develop a differing sense of commitment. 

4)  Society both upholds Tim Tebow as an exemplar, and also ridicules him for his virginity.  What does this double-talk say about the culture we live in?

It says we, as a society, are still struggling with sex as a whole. The two sides are at loggerheads because there is fanaticism from both sides. We aren't comfortable with an adult who is a virgin because of the massive pressure to pursue sex at all costs. At the same time, we're also not comfortable with someone who does fuck around all the time. There's no middle ground that is acceptable. 

5) You reference basketballer A.C. Green, a player who wasn't a "player" off the court.  His stance seems either-or:  You are a virgin, or you're a promiscuous slut.  Do you think he's missing a middle ground?

Exactly, that's what I was getting at a minute ago. Personally, I don't think there is a need for a middle ground. Instead, I think we need to eliminate the two poles. No more either/or. Neither of A.C. Green's statements are correct. 

6) What is your gut feeling, if it's possible to say:  Is Tim Tebow genuine, or is he a closeted gay man who "doth protest too much"?

As tempting as it is, I don't think Tebow will be claimed by the rainbow elite. I do think he is genuine in his beliefs, I just question how he uses those beliefs and throws the virginity around. 

Through all of his very public trials and tribulations, I do hope he meets someone he loves and who loves him back. 

Exemplars

Before the risin' sun, we fly/So many roads to choose/We'll start out walkin' and learn to run/And yes, we've only just begun  (“We’ve Only Just Begun”, written by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols, 1970)

It’s amazing that with the internet, we can communicate globally in a way like no other in history.  Gay liberation got its kick start at the Stonewall Riots in 1969, and once the internet hit in the 90’s, it began going global in a big way.

I write about gay life through the filter of sexuality.  However, this sexual navel-gazing must seem an immense privilege to those in parts of the world where homophobia runs rampant.  Every day, after work, the first thing I do is open my blog and look at the statistics – how many people logged on today and where they were from.  Naturally, my greatest readership comes from countries where English is the main language.  After the United States, Canada, The United Kingdom and Australia, other countries are listed, but their numbers are much lower.  Nevertheless, I am intrigued to find that Poland is in the list on a consistent basis.

 Although there is conflicting information out there, the general consensus seems to be that outside of very limited spaces, it can be quite dangerous to be out and proud in Poland.  Here in North America, I have the gross privilege of saying any damn thing I want to about gay sex.  But it was not long ago that here too, to write this way would have been verboten.

Since 1969, we have seen a freedom for homosexuals hardly known at any other time in all of history.  The ancient Greeks knew a thing or two about it.  Our aboriginal brothers and sisters honored the two-spirited members of their tribes before the Europeans came and fucked it up.

However, the time traveled since 1969 until now is so short that history has barely blinked its eyes.  And we homosexuals are the new Christopher Columbus, charting new territories, “watching the signs along the way” as The Carpenters so famously sang.

We have no script.  We are all writers as we invent our lives.  Thus the reason for so many contradictions in my essays:  I love sex, I fear it;  I want to be real and vulnerable with men, then I go and try to be Mr. SuperDick; I long for intimacy and then push it away.  That’s why I can be flying down the highway of sexual bliss one day, and the next, on a dime, the car flips over and I’m sexually stuck.

But perhaps before we aggrandize ourselves as the Christopher Columbus’s of this age, we ought to think of the universality of the struggle to understand sex and relationships.  The straights are still writing their scripts too.  As Alanis Morissette sang “No one’s really got it figured out just yet.”

What we need are exemplars to learn from, and then attempt to become exemplars ourselves.  The definition of exemplar is: one that serves as a model or example.  Going further into the lexicon, we see that exemplary has two possible connotations: a)deserving imitation, b)serving as a warning.  It wasn’t for nothing that I subtitled the blog “Cautionary Tales from the Quest”.

So to my reader(s) in Poland, I will be watching my stats and thinking of you.  I am mostly Ukrainian in ancestry but there’s a little Polish in there too.  May you all both find, and become, exemplars.

 

 

Interview About This Blog

Hello Dear Readers, below is a link to an interview about my blog by Toronto sex journalist Jon Pressick.  His blog Sex In Words is a masterpiece of sex positive information and entertainment.  Thank you Mr. Pressick for the fun interview!

http://sex-in-words.blogspot.ca/2013/02/the-hook-up-hunting-for-sex-cautionary.html

Death, and Rebirth

The plane to my new home of Montreal couldn’t fly fast enough.

A year and a half before that flight to Montreal, I had visited Montreal and Toronto on vacation.  But it wasn’t really a vacation – I was scouting out the two cities in an effort to decide which one I wanted to move to.  I was living in a small city in Western Canada, and I was dying from the sense of isolation I felt there.  Isolation from men like me, isolation from the creativity that is borne of shared sexuality.  Yes, I had gay male friends in the West, but the dating (fucking?) pool was small and incestuous.  The two small gay bars were emptied out, ravaged by the internet.  Online, on Manhunt or Squirt, there were hardly any men in my city online.  The city had two bathhouses, and this presented a problem.  Which one will have the most men?  I always assumed that the one I chose for the night was the wrong one, since I often was the only man there, wondering lost and alone in a towel and a bad mood.

It was not a city for a slut like me.

But what is a slut?  A slut to me is a person who needs to connect with more than just one person, and on multiple levels, and that connection is borne through the conduit of sexuality.  It’s a polyamorous notion.  It’s not negative in the least, and neither does it negate the fact that I may choose monogamy at some point.  I’ll leave it at that, since I don’t wish to defend myself any longer on the issue of sluthood.

And so after visiting Montreal, I headed to Toronto, and sat in a Starbucks in Toronto’s Village, and made a list of pros and cons regarding the two major centers.  Almost all the pros favored moving to Toronto, because ultimately, Montreal is a French-speaking city.  I speak French (as one person put it) like a third grader with head trauma.  But Montreal is also a dirty, sexy city light years ahead of the rest of North America in its openness to sex.  I was intrigued.  I was ignorant.  I was naive.  Most of all, I was hopeful.  I chose to move to Montreal.

A year and a half later, I landed in my new city and in the cab, I wept at the first sight of Montreal’s downtown skyline.

It is now three years later, and I have just left Montreal.  Guess where I moved to yesterday?

Toronto.

My job paid shit in Montreal, and layoffs were being announced.  I never did master the French language.  A job offer presented itself in Toronto and I took it.  Last Sunday, I stood in my emptied-out apartment in the Montreal Village, and I sobbed.  The sobs echoed in the empty space.  I sobbed because in spite of the fact that I, an Anglophone, had no business living in Montreal, Montreal had opened its arms to me and healed me.  That healing began on the stages of comedy clubs.

At work one day, a co-worker laughed at my impromptu jokes and said I was funny.  Then, she dared me to write my jokes down and create an act for a comedy club.  I took the bait.  What was born was an act that centered around being a horny, thirty-something man living in Montreal’s Gay Village.  I would hit the stage, telling the audience that “I never remember a face unless I’ve sat on it” and close with this:

“I’m a horny guy, as you can tell, but the strangest things happened to me this week:  I lost my sex drive.  But you see, when you lose your sex drive, that passion doesn’t just disappear, oh no, it just finds a new way to flow.  And for me, it flows right to the fridge.  When I lose my sex drive, I want to EAT everything in sight.  Like, have you ever had the experience where you’re being gangbanged by four guys, and all you can think is “Gee, I’d love a jelly donut...”

I won a few contests and some money.  My friends and family who came to watch my act gently suggested that I might want to broaden my comedy horizons and write jokes about something other than gay dating and sex.  I adamantly refused.  I couldn’t make a political joke for the life of me, and didn’t want to.  There are two great moments in one’s life:  The moment you are born, and the moment you know what you were born for.  I felt that I was born to communicate my experiences as a gay, sexual being.

Less than a year ago, I gave birth to this blog.  When I was doing my comedy act, my sister would listen and say “It’s good Jason, but go deeper.”  I never could figure out how to fully flesh out the difficult parts of my sexual journey and still be funny.  But with this blog, I didn’t have to worry about getting immediate laughter from a crowd.  I didn’t have to be a dancing monkey on a stage.  I let the comedy act go and focused on this blog.

Men - men like You reading this - began to write to me or comment right on the blog, and it cracked me wide open.  There was this frank, honest dialogue about our respective sexual journeys.  I felt nothing less than honored and humbled by the messages I received.

Last Saturday, my dear friend Alex threw me a going away party.  Alex had recently had a stroke and had fought his way back, regaining his ability to speak and walk after much arduous therapy.  He’s a slut too, and he said he had to get better – “There are men still to fuck!”  After the ordeal of being in a rehabilitation center for four months, he was able to return home, and upon doing so, slowly walked himself to a tattoo parlour and had the word “Courage” tattooed on his forearm.  Courage is, to me, the hottest thing about a person. 

At this going away party, Alex’s many neighbours showed up.  I drank myself silly and necked with two of the guests before stumbling home.  In the morning, my mattress was wet with piss.  No biggie, the mattress was going in the trash, and truthfully, that was an appropriate ending for this piss pig.  After my aforementioned sob in the empty apartment, I moved my luggage out into the hallway, and looked at that apartment one last time.  I breathed in the beginnings that had occurred while living within those four walls.  I silently thanked Montreal for the gift of life, for the men I had known in its wonderful Village, for the return of a creative life.  I said thank you, and then closed the door.

And so, tonight, my first night living in Toronto’s Gay Village, I am back where I started, writing this at the Starbucks where I had once made my list of pros and cons about whether to live in Montreal or Toronto.  We are not born once, nor do we die once.  Life is a series of births followed by deaths followed by rebirths.  What sexual journeys will I encounter here in Toronto?  Will you, Dear Reader, continue to share with me your sexual journey so that I may learn from you?  Toronto, will you welcome me as I, a gypsy at heart, start anew?  Men of Toronto, will the encounters I have with you illuminate our sexual lives, will we connect?  Sexual attraction can bring together disparate people who might never otherwise have met.  Who will I meet and how?  Most importantly, will I meet myself more fully in the process?  Hello Toronto.  My name is Jason Armstrong.

Xtube.com

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Berlin Leather Sex Party

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