Love

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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.

Threesomes

“Why don’t you jerk us both off until we cum in your face?”

This is what Keith told me he told The Guy.  My buddy Keith and I were at the bar, and I couldn’t believe what Keith was telling me – that he had propositioned The Guy and included me in as part of the bargain.  As Keith told me this, two things went through my head:  first, I’d never been part of a threesome before.  Second, Keith was my friend.  Was I now about to be in a sexual situation with him?  Keith went back to The Guy and a deal was struck.  The Guy didn’t want to be seen leaving all together (why?) and said he would get in his jeep and pick us up on the street corner outside the bar, like a couple of hookers.  The Guy was hot and I was in.  Keith and I left the bar seconds after The Guy did, and true to his word, The Guy was waiting for us at the corner and we hopped in his vehicle.

He drove us to his place, and led us to the basement, to an unfurnished, unfinished room with just a bare mattress on the floor.  We all began to make out, but something became clear right away – The Guy was more into me than Keith, and from the start, Keith was already taking second billing.  Clothes off, we ended up a trio on the mattress, the only light coming from a bare bulb in the hallway outside the room.

This would be a night of firsts for me:  my first threesome, my first time being sexual with a person who was previously simply a buddy, and the first time I would try poppers.  “Do you want a hit?”  The Guy asked me.  “What are those?” I asked.  “Poppers,” he told me.  “What do I do with them?” I asked.  He answered by demonstrating, and then passed them to me.  I did my first hit, and waited.  For the first second or two, I felt nothing.  But then....oh then....a rush through my whole body unlike anything I’d ever felt.  I was immediately on fire and instinctually offered up my ass.  Who invented poppers?  And could I thank him personally?  The poppers turned my sexuality into sharp relief.  I was so horny, I felt like one big giant cock.  The Guy took my invitation, rolled on a condom, lubed me up and entered me and it was bliss.  Keith offered his cock to The Guy to suck, but The Guy was concentrating on fucking me and Keith was on the sidelines once more.

When The Guy pulled out to go and piss, it gave me and Keith a moment to touch and caress and give each other “I can’t believe we’re doing this!” looks to each other.  I wanted to make Keith feel secure.  When The Guy came back, he resumed fucking me, and Keith took charge and started fucking The Guy.

I don’t remember how it ended – this was some years ago – but I do remember Keith and I leaving and tumbling into the street, laughing and half running, as if we’d just robbed a bank, not believing that we’d had our first threesome, as apparently it was Keith’s first time too.  I wondered if this was true.  After all, Keith had been so brazen at the bar, propositioning The Guy as he had.  What we did say was that we were so glad that we had experienced this together.

Threesomes are a blast.  The more the merrier.  And ironically, it feels like less pressure than a one-on-one sexual experience.  In a one-on-one experience, I feel I have to be all things to my partner, while in a threesome (and later, foursomes, fivesomes, and so on), one can hand over the reins to another person and be a voyeur for a moment and still not feel you’re letting anyone down or ruining the momentum.

The issue often becomes one of:  Do I like one guy more than the other?  How can I make it appear not so in order to satisfy all egos?  Because I haven’t been in a relationship since the Stone Age, I usually have been the third party to a coupled pair.  Therefore, in those situations, I get to be the centre of attention, around which the fun revolves.  But what is the experience like for the couple, especially if they intuit that I’m hornier for one than the other?  Does it show?  Or am I a good enough play partner that I make all feel equally attractive and desired?

When I look back at that first threesome, I think first and foremost of that bare mattress in that unfinished room in that dank basement.  It was a decidedly sordid environment.

How wonderful...

Fetishes: Poop and Circumstance

Before moving out East and into the Gay Village here, I was in a backwater city out West.  Knowing that I was moving, I started hitting up men in my soon-to-be-home city on the internet.  On Recon.com I met a guy that was also originally from out West.  He was gorgeous, a jock.  After a few emails, we took the next step and turned on our cams.  A poppers enthusiast like me, we had some good live chats.  He was obsessed with me showing him my ass.  You know what I mean:  He wanted me to spread those cheeks for him and show him my spot where the sun don’t shine.  Now keep in mind that I’m getting tanked on Jack Daniel’s.  Somehow, I have to position myself precariously on the chair so that the cam can get the right shot, with the lighting just right so that he can see the damn thing.  This was all quite awkward – I certainly could have fallen and chipped a tooth.  But I’m giving!  Here’s the problem:  With me facing away from the computer, showing him my ass, I see nothing.  I do hear him though, as he says sweet things like “Love your hole man.”  Well, I’m glad, but my knees are beginning to buckle.

It was after a while that he revealed to me that he didn’t just like my ass, he was interested in what was in it.  He was into scat, and the deeper I probed (pardon any pun here), I realized that this was almost his exclusive interest.

I’m not into scat, but damn, this man was fine.  So I feigned interest – for a while.  I asked him if he had many opportunities to explore this fetish.  He said he did once in a while, but didn’t really require sex too often in general.   It soon became clear to me that the bulk of our sex chat was going to be about scat and finally I couldn’t carry on.  If we chatted about other sexual things, I could sense his interest waning.  (Note to reader:  we finally met by accident at the gym once I had moved.  We had some nice chats, but ultimately I don’t think he was interested, which is probably for the best.  But he was a hot looking man).

On Manhunt.net, I connected with a cute guy who also lived in the Village, and in an email, he asked me the wonderful, standard question we’ve all been asked on hookup sites: What are you into?  Enthusiastically, I launched headlong into a laundry list of all the various fetishes I had.  I then in return asked him what he was into and he responded with a six word answer:  I want to eat your shit. Regardless of his fetish, I thought to only list one thing was a little limiting!  We didn’t continue our correspondence, but I do see him around or at the gym, where we nod hello.

Even as gay men push the envelope with regard to sexual norms and mores, I think most gay men resist the idea of scat play.  So I have to take my hat off to the men who are brave enough to share their kink, when their kink could lead them to being ostracized within their own community.  I like piss play, but I can’t quite get my head around the appeal of scat play.

Once on Gay.com (oh lord, Jason, how many sites have you been a member of?) a man from Bulgaria chatted me up.  He wanted to suck me off while I took a shit on the toilet.  Since he was on the other side of the world, I used the moment of internet anonymity to toy with the idea with him.  The trouble is, when you are discussing a fetish that is not your own, it gets, quite frankly, boring.

And so the circumstance for poop play has arisen, but I doubt I will ever go there.  My question to you is this:  Is there a fetish (of the safe, sane and consensual type only please), maybe even a relatively common one, that just doesn’t appeal to you?  What is your favorite fetish?  Is it such a favorite that sex just isn’t sex without it?

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.

Barebacking

Part 1

The bathhouse was old and decrepit.  And I seemed to be the only one there, except for the cute door guy who let me in.  And so I wandered past the door guy while he was mopping a TV room, hoping that maybe he’d take a break from work, but he seemed very into that damn mop.  Continuing on, I ran into one man, an older man, and smiled.  He was not my type, but I was glad to see a sign of life.  I’d never been to this bathhouse before as it’s outside the Village.  I had wanted to get away from the Village crowd and see what a bathhouse on the outskirts had to offer.  I began to wish I’d stayed in the Village.  Heading into the XXX video room, I sat on a decrepit, cloth couch.  I was terrified I’d get fleas.  Nevertheless, I looked at the porn on the screen, opened my towel and started stroking my cock.

Just as the porn star on the screen was begging for more fucking, in walked an absolute angel. In shyness, I covered my hard cock with my towel.   This man, a bit younger than me, had the body of an Adonis – a silky-smooth perfectly-formed hairless chest and washboard abs.  He came over to me, and then moved behind the couch where he grabbed my chest from behind.  Bending forward, he worked his way down to my dick, which was already standing at attention.  His mouth near my ear, he said “Come back to my room.”

In his room, we kissed and frotted and grabbed and licked and rimmed and sucked.  At one point he lubed up his hole, climbed on top of me, grabbed my dick and put the tip of it against his hole.  When he applied pressure with the weight of his gorgeous body, I wriggled away a bit, smiled and said “Do you have a condom?”  He said he didn’t.  “Damn,” I said and laughed at the irony of the moment.  “I have some in my room, I can go get one or five.”  “It’s ok,” he replied, not looking me in the eye, and began again to try to insert my cock in his ass.  Again, being under him, I had to wriggle my cock away.  “Sorry man, but I have to use a condom to fuck,” I said.  He seductively drew himself down so that his mouth was against my ear, just like the first time he had spoken to me.  He whispered, “Just don’t think about it.”

When someone tells you not to think about something, it becomes the only thing you can think about.  I lost my hard-on and jokingly said that my cock needed a break.  I politely excused myself, went to my room, dressed and set down the stairs to leave.  I passed my Adonis in the stairwell.  I looked at him, ready to smile and say something jokey like “Looks like my cock is done for the day,” but he made no eye contact, as if I was a ghost.

I got to thinking about the responsibility we men have towards each other.  This Adonis wasn’t going to negotiate anything with me.  He wasn’t going to ask me to fuck him bareback, he was going to assume I’d be fine with it and put the wheels in motion.  As I walked home from the bathhouse, his line – Just don’t think about it – began to infuriate me.  This angel began to represent to me the devil in disguise, a man so completely insensitive to my health.  In an earlier post, I shared how I happily became a poz-friendly guy, but this situation didn’t afford me any concern or real communication.  How many times had Adonis said to other men “just don’t think about it,” and against their better inclinations, tried not to think about it because he was just so damn hot?

Part 2

When I first moved to this city’s Village, I hit the bar near my building and was approached by a cute bearded guy around my age.  “I think we live in the same building,” he said.  I hadn’t found a job in this dirty, sexy city yet, and it was only a Wednesday night, so the bar was quite empty.  The bearded guy introduced himself as Pete.  Many beers later, we left to our shared building and ended up at his apartment.  I had drunk a lot.  I was flat out a messy drunk by time we got through his door.  And you know what I did?  I asked if he had any beer.  He did and opened me one.  Right there by his fridge, we peeled off our clothes and began to make out.  Somehow or other, he grabbed me from behind, and I could feel him pressing his cock against my ass.  “I’m a top,” I laughed.  “Sorry buddy.”  He asked me if I wanted to fuck him.  “Do you have a condom?” I asked.  “No, I only fuck bareback.”

There was no fucking that night.  I turned down the offer of fucking, but we continued to play, getting into his tub to piss on each other.  I don’t remember getting out of there, I don’t remember getting to my apartment, I don’t remember much at all.  But I remember that he had said he only fucked bareback.

He would have fucked me.  I don’t think he intended to ask if I was poz or neg.  Why?  Did he not care?  He’s a super friendly guy, and on occasion we run into each other in the lobby or in the laundry room.  One time, while in the elevator, the doors opened and he got on.  We exchanged pleasantries, joked and lamented that the pool in the building was closed for repairs.  The doors opened on my floor and as I exited, he said “see you soon sexy.”  I turned back and smiled and he winked at me.  I turned again and began walking down the hall.  As I listened to the elevator doors closing shut behind me, I wondered at how pleasant this all was.  Should I not be angry that a gay brother was willing to play Russian roulette with my health?  He must have seen how drunk I was that night.  What if I’d not had my wits about me at all?  Should I be furious?  I understand that barebacking is a choice that many men make, and should be able to make.  I’ve done it a handful of times.  There are times where it’s appropriate for the partners involved.  But without communication, by assuming I’m fine with it, I feel violated.  But unable to express it.  And so now, when I run into Pete, we act like the night didn’t even happen.  He calls me “sexy” and I smile back at him.  With him, I feel muzzled.  With you, Dear Reader, I do not.