Sex and Disability

After two pot brownies, my friend Alex was in fine form at the party we were at.  Minus the pot brownies, this was a pretty staid group of people, but once Alex got a little high, all bets were off.  “You’re so attractive.  You make me moist!” he bellowed at some mortified straight man.  My head spun only to find Alex talking to said straight man and his girlfriend.  Alex was propositioning them for a threesome but qualified it to the girl by saying it was only to get into her boyfriend’s pants.  I decided the straight couple needed to be rescued from Alex and went over.  “You’ll have to excuse Alex, he’s had a stroke, and he’s had two brownies.”  “The stroke didn’t take away my sight and I know an attractive man when I see one,”  Alex said, taking one more glance at the straight man as I pulled him away.  “Do you want to sniff my diaper?”

Alex was indeed wearing a diaper, and was just the kind of man who let everybody know it.  It was a badge of honor for all that he had been through.  He’d already been living with HIV since the early 80’s, since before HIV had a name.  His bowels and bladder didn’t always give him much warning.  I remember the day I received a call from our mutual friend David in September, telling me that Alex had had a stroke and was in the emergency room at the General.

I got to the hospital and found Alex.  The right side of his body was paralyzed, including his face.  His mouth drooped on the right side and his speech was slurred.  He looked up at me as I knelt to kiss his forehead.   “They say I might not ever walk again,” he said, enunciating as best he could.  “We’ll get through this Alex.  You’ll walk again, I know it, “ I countered.  “Damn right I’ll walk again.  There are still men to fuck.”

Alex didn’t see the inside of his apartment again for four long months.  After being in the emergency room for a torturous week until they could find him a room, and then two weeks in that hospital room, he was transferred to a rehabilitation centre.  While I watered the plants in Alex’s apartment and collected his mail, Alex engaged in the arduous task of learning to use the right side of his body.  His doctors warned that another stroke was not an impossibility.  He battled through and was released from the rehab center just before Christmas.  And that’s when he completely broke down.

Alex was henceforth differently-abled, if you will.  He required a brace to walk, to walk ever so carefully.  His right arm was still immobile.  We had dinner together every Saturday night once he returned home.  We would order pizza and I would read the latest essay I’d written for this blog to him.  He was the one person to hear my essays before I posted them, and my short essay would launch us into an examination of our sex lives.  Alex never allowed for bitterness, but I remember the Saturday night that he looked at me and asked, with tears in his eyes,  “Will a man ever want to be with me again?”

I remembered, long ago, in my mid-twenties, being at the New York City Pride Parade.  I recall only two moments from that parade, and both of them left a deep impression on the young gay man that I was.  The first moment was when the float passed by on which there were men who had fought at Stonewall  on that fateful night in ’69, when our history changed forever.  These men were old, with canes and in wheelchairs.  They had been there, and they were here with us now.  As they floated down the street, I realized I’d just witnessed history.  My history.  The whooping from the crowd told me that everyone around me was sharing the exact same feeling.

The second moment that I recall was when a gay group in wheelchairs passed by.  Young and old, of every race, their presence hit me.  It became all too clear, all at once, that our society neglects to recognize the disabled as sexual.  And here they were, claiming their orientation, refusing to be left in the shadows or on the sidelines.  As with the men who had fought at Stonewell, I knew I was witnessing something that I did not feel much of within my own belly:  I was witnessing what looked like courage, and I found it beautiful.

After Alex had his stroke, I did some research – on Xtube.  I found an instructional video for sex workers on how to best cater to the needs of their disabled clientele.  And then I found a video by a man who suffered from some type of palsy.  He was jacking off and I so wanted to be there with him.  His pits, his cock, his absolute engagement were hot – his palsy did not matter.  I wrote him a message telling him how amazing his vid was and posted a comment on his profile.  I didn’t hear back from him.

Alex is improving.  He’s walking without a brace, and he’s getting movement back in his right arm and hand.  He’s even venturing forth to the Eagle again.  More than that, he got picked up recently and took the man back to his place.  But he called me to tell me that it didn’t work.  His body did not want to cooperate with his desire.  He was momentarily bereft.  He is not supposed to take Viagra, but to hell with it – he ordered some online and his doctor is turning a blind eye for him.  Alex is a force to be reckoned with.

Last night, I hit the streets of the village to go get a pack of cancer-causing smokes.  I began to think about the ways we are all disabled.  For some of us, it is visible to others.  But for many, it’s invisible.  It’s the disease that’s eating us from the inside.  It’s the mental anguish that we mask so as to appear normal.  Among the many casualties of illness or disability is our sexuality.  Always, we are fighting to reclaim it, from external forces, or internal.

As I walked down the steps from the tobacco shop, I noticed a young man in a motorized wheelchair.  He couldn’t have been more than twenty-four.  He, like the man in the Xtube video I had watched, appeared to suffer from a palsy.  He was alone on the street, in this Gay Village, and he looked bewildered, lost.  He did not see me see him.  And he was gorgeous.  My instinct was to reach out to him.  I wanted to make love to him.  I wanted to let him know that if he was in the Village seeking comfort from the men who walked by, he would find it.  I wanted to take his cock in my mouth.  I wanted to enter him and fill him with light so that he shone like a nuclear reactor.  I wanted to believe that my feelings were not born of pity or fear that by the grace of god, that could be me.  I wanted to apologize to him if these thoughts were in any way construed as condescending or patronizing.  I wanted to tell him that even though I am so-called able-bodied, that I have struggled since childhood with an illness that I rarely discuss, an illness that constantly thwarts my sexuality, an illness that no one can see, but that I experience so profoundly.  I wanted......But instead, seeing him carry on down the sidewalk, I too continued on my way.  But oh how I wanted....

When Alex first got home from rehab, he was sternly warned against walking too far from home.  And to walk, especially in the beginning, was laborious for Alex.  But secretly, one day, Alex walked from his apartment to the nearest tattoo parlour.  The next Saturday night, he surprised with me his tattoo.  On the inside of his left forearm, he’d had the word “Courage” inscribed in glorious script.  I wondered, like the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz, if I would ever have the courage to both come back from an illness, or to even get and stay sick, and still reclaim myself and my sexuality.  In my twenties, I thought that the perfect man was the one with the six-pack abs.  But Alex’s courage to face disability and still move forward changed that.  I think that having just turned forty, I am maybe, just maybe, growing up.

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.

Talk Dirty to Me

When I log on to a porn search engine, I love to enter the word “verbal” and then click the search button.  If I am watching a guy in Alabama jacking off, I want him to talk to the camera and tell me to “suck it, ya fuckin’ whore”.  Guys who are good at dirty talk are gold.  But there have been times during sex that fear has clamped my jaw closed wire-tight.  Am I good at dirty talk?  Do I have the voice for it?  Does it seem authentic coming from me, or studied?

Not long ago, shortly before starting this blog, I posted a video of myself jerking off on Xtube.  (It’s a piss-drenched, cum-play jack off, with good old Rob Zombie playing in the background.  One commentator called it a masterpiece, thank you very much). On the video, I talk dirty.  But I was very self-conscious about it.  Thankfully, one commentator said that hearing me talk was hot.  I’m not so sure.  I have had well-meaning friends tell me that I have a lisp, while other friends have said that that was incorrect.  A lisp cuts to the heart of a gay man, since it makes him question the authenticity of his masculinity.  But what makes a man a man?

I have a dear, straight-laced friend named Kenny, and when we are talking about sex and he uses words like “cock” or “dick”, he says them in a funny voice, as if to put imaginary quotations about the words.  He seems uncomfortable verbalizing dirty words.  The polar opposite scenario played itself out in the movie “Sophie’s Choice”.  In the movie, the character Stingo meets a hot girl with a real filthy mouth.  She has no trouble verbalizing – fuck me, fuck you, fuck fuck fuck.  But when Stingo attempts to do what she verbalizes so well, she balks.  Nearly in a panic, she explains that her therapist has helped her with her fear of sex by teaching her to verbalize.  She can now say “fuck”, but she can’t actually do it.

As a society, we become completely tongue-tied when it comes to sex.  Sex is something we all do, but we are loathe to admit that we want – hell, need – it.  My colleague Jennifer was recently dumped by her girlfriend of a year.  She told me that friends and family had comforted her for losing a companion, but because she knows I write a sex blog, admitted that she could share only with me that she was deeply upset about losing their sex life (apparently so intense, they would weep afterwards.  I should be so lucky).  She felt that her friends and family would find such an admission as trite.  Jennifer felt the sex was so good, that it made the relationship worth fighting for in spite of their differences.  Whether that’s true or not is beside the point.  The point is that if we can’t verbalize how important sex is to us, how can we even begin to say a word like “cock” with conviction?

The path to successful dirty talk is the same as the path to Carnegie Hall – practice practice practice.  You don’t need me to tell you that the best way to try something new with a partner is to try it alone during masturbation first.  Nothing is hotter that saying the words “nut sac” while grabbing your own.

I recently decided to take this practicing of mine a step further by attending a workshop last week entitled “Talking Dirty: From Mild to Wild...and Beyond”.  Picture it: me and four straight women in a room at an upscale meeting spot downtown, a spot so upscale that we were advised to wear business casual.  Our host was the amazing Katrina McKay, the founder of Ohhh Canada (check out Katrina's website here).  At first, I felt horribly out of place, the lone gay man amongst four very beautiful women.  Part of the workshop would entail actually talking dirty and my throat began to clench tight.

But as the evening unfolded, I developed a rapport with Katrina and those beautiful women.  Having a gay man in the mix actually seemed to add a twist to the evening that wouldn’t have been there had I not come.  I shared my feelings that while it’s pretty acceptable these days in Canada to be gay, god forbid you should be gay and sexual.  It’s fine if you want to get married, buy a house in the suburbs and adopt a foreign baby.  Some gay men may see me as a throwback to the 70’s where sex was a central feature to being gay.  In these politically correct times, I’m an outlier.  But one of the women said she could relate.  She was a mom now, and she said that people tended to de-sexualize her, which she resented.  It was as if having a baby had rendered her sexless to some.  I told the group how I love to be called a whore during sex.  I wondered if they, as women, resented that term, but to my great surprise, they quickly shooed that concern away as they too loved the word in a role-play scenario.

These women began to dispel my notions about women not being as animalistic as men.  One type of sex talk could be referred to as “Exclamations”, and one woman offered “I want you to blow your load inside me!” as an example.  Other types of sex talk could include “The Tease” (sending a sexy text hours before the scheduled play time), or “Instructional” sex talk (“I love it when you suck both my balls at the same time”).  We talked about having prepared catch phrases.  Preparing for sex talk is actually the only way you can feel free to improvise when actually in the moment with a partner.  We talked about a whispered command sometimes being more powerful that the full-throated command.  We even learned that nervousness about talking dirty can be endearing (“You are so hot, I can’t even speak!”). 

 It bothers me that we call them “dirty” words, when in fact they are fucking beautiful words.  And yet the sense of the forbidden gives them a power that both tantalizes us and at times paralyzes us.  But the late, great comedian Lenny Bruce taught us that words are just...words.  He laced his act with strings of profanity to reveal that words only hold power when we endow them with it.  So tonight, when I masturbate, I’m going to talk dirty to myself, loud and proud.  I will own the word “cock” and “cum” and “suck”.  I’m proud that I have the mouth of a trucker when I masturbate and have sex.  Where’s the parade for that?

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?