The Strip Club

Here in the Village, we gay men are served by no less than 4 male strip clubs.  This blog is entitled Hunting for Sex, and at a strip club, it’s more like shooting fish in a barrel.  Sex gods everywhere, all contained under one roof.  Up until this week, I’d always gone to strip clubs by myself – to observe and give my attention fully to the experience and to how it made me feel.  Narcissistically, I want to look as good as I possibly can when I go to a strip club.  This means wearing a tank, to show off the muscles, as if to say that I could almost, possibly, if we stretched it, be a stripper myself.  And sometimes I can even pull it off.  There have been a few occasions where I’ve been cruised by the other customers, and even asked if I work there.  For someone else, being mistaken for a stripper would be embarrassing.  For me, the kindest thing you could say.  The other compliment comes when a stripper asks if you’d like a private dance in the back, and when you decline politely, they stick around and chat anyway.  And some of the chats I’ve had with strippers have been amazing, wherein they seemed comfortable to tell me tidbits about their work, whether they were really gay or straight, and some of their own sexual turns ons.  Were they being this open hoping that it would convince me to go for a lap dance, or did they just feel like chatting?  Probably the former, I wish the latter, and in the end, I will never know.

But Jason, didn’t you ever go for a lap dance, you ask?  I sure as hell did!  A handful of times.  But at $20 a song, it’s cost prohibitive, and there are limits to how far you can go.  Lick their pits, feel their chest, touch the cock, but no sucking.  And awkward moments can ensue.  My very first time, I zeroed in on who I thought was the hottest stripper in the bar – muscled, tattooed, shirtless (as they all are).  He came my way, I made sure our eyes connected so he could sense my desire, he did, and asked if I’d like a dance.  Hell yeah, and off we went.  But walking behind him towards the lap-dance area, it already felt false.  This was about my desire and his wallet.  Paying for it already felt like a mood killer and we hadn’t even started.  He was friendly and led me into a booth and closed the curtain.  I sat down and he began to dance suggestively, and encouraged me to touch his torso.  My hands moved up to his nipples which I grabbed and squeezed lightly and he winced.  I let go and he explained he’d just had surgery on his nipples and they were still tender.  What kind of surgery? I asked.  He replied that he had felt his nipples were too large and had had them reduced.  I bit my tongue, since the truth is, I actually prefer large nipples on a man.  To each his own.

But just this week, I went to a strip club with three others.  My sister, newly single, wanted to go for the first time, and so we went on a ladies night, along with my sister’s best friend (who had been on numerous occasions), and my gay friend Don (who’d also never been).

Here’s how things on the stage go:  The stripper comes out, dances and undresses a bit, teasing the crowd, then leaves the stage.  Five minutes later he returns, but with a full hard-on.  And to this, my sister said: “Is that it?  It’s so tame.  But I like the music.”  And tame it is.  But it’s all relative.  In 1950, it would be shocking no doubt, but now, when you can go to a bath house and watch a roomful of guys fisting each other, a mere hard-on by a bored looking, yet gorgeous, man doesn’t pack a lot of punch.  A camera videotaped what was happening on stage and was broadcast in real time on screens around the club, and it appeared that the dancers were watching themselves rather than connecting with the crowd.  My sister’s friend gave my neophyte buddy Don a play-by-play:  “Now he’s going to twirl around the pole three times...now he’s going to lift his arm above his head....now he’s going to slowly caress his crotch...”  She was right everytime.  It was a routine that they all had down, without deviation from said routine.  And Don and I were underserved.  We generally like our men hairy – pits, chest, face, and for me, even the pubes.  But dammit, these men were waxed within an inch of their lives.  Don, never one to keep his mouth shut, would alternately say, at full volume, “This is boring,” followed five minutes later with “God, I need to get laid!”  At first this frustrated me.  I thought, which one is it Don, do you like what you see or don’t you?  Because in spite of it all, I was transfixed.  “Earth to Jason,” I would hear my friends say.  I felt they were missing the one reason why strip clubs exist.

Strip clubs are where you go to worship the beauty of the human male.

These are men who will have surgery on their nipples to look perfect for you.  Beauty is a powerful thing.  The face of Helen of Troy launched a thousand ships.  But I couldn’t help but feel second-class amongst all that beauty.  I could never compete with these gods.  I could never have one of these gods, and if I could, would I even know what to do with him?  Like my friend Don, I vacillated between loving every man who stepped onto the stage, and resenting that he was not really within reach.  Loving his beauty, and wishing it were my own.

On this particular night, the strippers uncharacteristically chatted amongst themselves more than they seemed to chat with the patrons.  My only personal moment with a stripper happened on the way to the bathroom.  The men’s room door was adjacent to the door to the strippers’ backstage area, and as I passed, a stripper exited from backstage with a loud belch.  He then saw me and uttered a quick “Excuse me...”

I wonder if Helen of Troy also burped on occasion?

People Who Need People: Part 2

Dear Reader, I lied to you.  In my last column “People Who Need People”, I lied to you and I lied to myself.  I related a hook-up I had with Colin, a guy who looked just as hot in reality as in his pics online.  I said that we connected.  I said that the sex was electric.  I said I wanted to see him a second time and that I was going to message him online and see if he was interested in getting together again too.  Well, I did message him – and he never responded.

Here’s the truth about our hook-up.  I knew in some place deep down that he wasn’t as impressed with me as I was with him when we finally met face to face at my door.  There were red flags.  While we sat and talked on my couch, I would find reasons to touch his arm or his leg.  He did not do the same.  When we had chatted on line, he seemed so excited to meet, using lots of exclamation marks in his messages to me.  In person, he was reserved, and withholding.  When the sex happened, it was piggy – we 69’d, we ate each others’ asses, we licked our pits, he let me fuck him.  I chose to believe that he was really into me.  But looking back, I knew better.

I couldn’t tell you the truth about my misgivings in my last post because my ego wanted you to think I was hot shit.  And it got me thinking about “leagues”.  Was Colin ultimately out of my league?  What league am I in?  Am I doomed to only want men who are “out of my league” and therefore unavailable?  If I am totally honest with you (which I will be from now on), I fall somewhere smack dab in the middle with reference to which league I fall into.  If I hit the bar on a Saturday night, I am hit on and ignored by an equal number of men.  But my question is: are our leagues set in stone?  Or is there more to it than meets the eye at first?

I know the answer, and am grateful to have learned this kernel of wisdom which I will share with you now.

Back in 1998, I was the door man at a gay bar near the Rockies.  I’ll never forget the night that I first laid eyes on Corey, a tall blond god, who entered the club with his much-older boyfriend.  He didn’t appear to pay me any mind when he paid his cover charge, and I chalked that up to him being out of my league.  He and his boyfriend came irregularly, and when he paid to enter, there wasn’t a sign that he knew I existed.  Since he had a boyfriend, I let it go.  But when he started to show up alone, I took a chance and engaged him in conversation – and he engaged me back.  I learned he was now single.  I dared to flirt with him and lo and behold, he responded in kind.  By the end of the night, I had his phone number safely tucked into my pocket.

While his attention boosted my self-esteem a million fold, I immediately began to suffer from the “I-wouldn’t-want-to-be-a-member-of-any-club-that-would-have-me-for-a-member” syndrome.  Corey was surprisingly no challenge.  The tables actually turned and I could feel him pursuing me harder than I was pursuing him.  I had not had to ask for his number – he gave it on his own volition.

On our first date a couple of days later, we went to a restaurant.  He proceeded to tell me about his troubles, blaming everyone else and their dog for his problems while appearing to take no responsibility for them himself.  He was self-pitying.  And I panicked.  I could feel my interest in him waning right away.  Even his Hollywood idol looks began to melt before my eyes, and it seemed that the emperor had no clothes.   But I refused to listen to my inner voice because I had wanted him for so long and his attention was supposed to be the panacea for my aching self-doubt.  I refused to listen to my inner voice for four months, while we dated and I tried to keep him on the pedestal I had originally put him on.  When I told him on a park bench one summer night that it was over, I cried harder than he did.  But I also felt relieved.  Corey, however, would show up at the door of the bar with tears running down his cheeks, asking if we could try again, make it work, he loved me so.

So often, I see gorgeous, rich Hollywood couples divorce and I think, if they can’t make it, what hope do we mere mortals have at having a happy relationship.  But this notion that some people are above or below our league is a mirage that can be altered.  When the object of your desire is unavailable, that too is an aphrodisiac.  At first, it looks good on paper.  The Wizard of Oz seemed all powerful, but then Dorothy saw that the Wizard was a fallible man behind a curtain.  But it was then, when her notions of the Wizard were shaken, that she finally found a way home.

People Who Need People: Part 1

I rarely see a hook-up twice.  We had sex, it was fun (or not), and now I’m done.  But if I want to see a hook-up a second time, it’s likely that I was so attracted that I feel I could, if the stars align themselves properly, fall head over heels for the guy.  If I’m still thinking about you after you’ve left to catch your cab home, I could be in danger – in danger of what?  Needing someone.

Barbra Streisand sang that people who need people are the luckiest people in the world.  I beg to differ (but don’t tell Barbra).  The relationship that sustains me is the one I’m having with myself, and I like it that way.  But is it possible that even loners like me are susceptible to love?  I’ve know love before, twice, once in my teens and then in my early twenties.  The love was not returned to me in kind, and I vowed never to put myself through the wringer like that again.  But am I impeding my growth as a soul by denying that love can still happen to me?

For all my experience in the game of sex and hook-ups, I am deeply upset when, after a hook-up, the guy wants more and I don’t.  I never know how to decline graciously and end up saying of lot of bullshit, like “Well, I’m getting busier at work, but I’ll let you know if I have free time...”.  And then I avoid him, hoping that he’ll just give up on me.  I would be wise to be more authentic and spell it out at the start, stating my M.O. right away before anyone gets hurt.  Part of my resistance to doing so lay in my desire to keep my options open – what if I do wish to see a guy a second time?  Why close doors before they are even opened?

Last night, Colin came over, and he lived up to his sexy online profile completely.  We talked and laughed for an hour and a half, and then got down to sex, which felt electric.  That almost never happens, where the connection feels good on all levels.  I know that I’m hooked when I’m not just thinking about sex with a guy, but with seeing him puttering in our garden in the backyard of our country estate.  I know I’m hooked when I imagine him crying over the death of a beloved and I’m the only one who can really comfort him.  That’s the calibre of my fantasies.  And today, I’m having those fantasies about Colin. 

Here’s my plan, tell me what you think:  I’m going to go on gay411 where we met two weeks ago and message him.  Here’s what I plan to say: “Hey Colin, thanks for coming over last night, it was great!  I hope you got home safe.  If you’re open to it, you’re welcome to come over again sometime for some more whisky and I might even make you some bacon <smile>.”  The bacon reference is an inside joke, but this is no laughing matter.  What if I am dealing with a version of myself?  What if Colin had sex with me and is, well, frankly, done?

The fear that Colin is done with me is a fear of the ego.   When a man I like and admire and wish to pursue isn’t interested, I am beset with self-doubt and self-loathing.  I decide it’s because I don’t have a flat enough stomach, that I’m not masculine enough, that I’m boring.  But could it be that attraction goes beyond those superficial things and is more about what the “soul” needs at that given moment in time?  But when I fell in love those two times many eons ago, why did my “soul” feel the need to bond with those men, but their “souls” evidently did not require the same?  Is this a cosmic joke being played on us?  What are we to learn from rejection?  Barbra, needing people seems fine and dandy when the sentiment is returned, but when it isn’t, it’s a bitch.

Here’s where I’ll relent a little to Barbra’s refrain.  I’m recognizing that there comes a point where being so self-sufficient, like any good thing, can be taken too far.  Whether I like it or not, I do need people, I do need men.  Why else do I go online or go to the bars looking for sex?  It’s to feel alive.  It’s to feel awake in my body.  But what other parts of me exist that need to be awakened?  Is it possible that my self-sufficiency has also frozen my heart in ice, a heart that needs to be melted?  If sex brings rich rewards to the body, what heart rewards might I be missing out on? 

I’m afraid of the mess and mud of a relationship, but life is meant to be lived, sometimes regardless of the emotional risk.  What I like is that if it all falls flat, if my sentimental feelings are not returned in kind, I’ve created a safe place to land - within.  The only rejection worth fearing is a rejection of self.  So, here goes.  Let’s see what Colin is up to next weekend.

"Straight" Rick

When you are on a gay sex web site, and are chatting with a guy who says he is straight, you don’t challenge it.  But the guy becomes a challenge, and this challenge can 1) be hot, or 2) indicate that you are a masochist.  But you don’t have time to analyze yourself too much when he asks to cam with you.  You’re already at the computer naked (save for a ballcap), so you take a deep breath and turn the cam on, never knowing what the reaction will be.

This is how I met Rick.  The reason he became interested was that I mentioned that I liked piss play.  The invitation to cam was almost immediate.  On cam, he was gorgeous.  Too gorgeous.  Dangerous gorgeous.  He was cocky, arrogant, and proud.  He said he’d done some piss play with women, but not with a guy.  A date for Saturday night was set.

I didn’t expect him to show up.  Likely, he was a poseur, and got off on the chat alone.  But I’ll be damned if he didn’t show up on time.   He strode in with a sense of entitlement and proceeded to start undressing before I had opened his beer.  I think the only thing he said to me was “Let’s go.” 

We headed to my bed and laid on it and chatted a bit and drank our beer, and he said that that was a first.  What was a first? I asked.  He said usually, when he went to a guy’s home, there was no chit-chat.  It was clothes off, sex, clothes on, out the door.  I believe in het circles it’s called Wham, Bam, Thankyou Ma’am.  He didn’t seem displeased that we were chatting, but a little confused about how to negotiate it.  He told me he had a girlfriend at home.  Dear Reader, I do have rules about online hook-ups, and being with someone with a partner (in a closed relationship that is) is a deal breaker.  What got broken instead was my rule.  I couldn’t not proceed.  He had me at “Let’s go”.

And then, within moments, another rule of mine was broken.  He took the liberty of lubing up my cock, and proceeded to impale himself on it like a pro – without a condom.  It all happened so fast, with no negotiation.  And I didn’t stop it.  My mind was a crazy mess of conflicting thoughts, but I couldn’t resist the notion of having the best possible sexual experience with this stud like no other.  And I ashamedly didn’t want to disappoint Rick or slow down his momentum.  He was having fun and so was I, on two levels: the pure sexual bliss and the idea that I was fucking a “straight” stud.  These were heady feelings and I was licked.

After coming, he didn’t rush right out the door, as I had expected.  We finished our drinks, and I brought up the rule I had broken about unsafe sex.  I told him the truth: I was HIV negative but always used condoms.  “I wouldn’t care if you had AIDS.  But we can use a condom next time if you want”.  Oh Dear Reader.  He didn’t care if I was HIV positive or not?  Bottoming, with a girlfriend at home?  All my alarm bells went off.  This was not a good scene.  But he said something that silenced the alarm bells – “next time”.  He dangled his carrot from a stick, and I, like a stupid mule horse, thought “yes”.  He gave me his number and a few days later I called it.  On the voice mail was a woman’s voice telling me to leave a message.  Was that his girlfriend’s voice?  Was this a shared cell?  Why in hell would he give me that number?  I hung up before the beep.

We met three or four times again.  The electricity of that first encounter became replaced by my bottomless need for his approbation and by confusion.  He never gave me a straight answer as to why he shared a phone number with me that his girlfriend obviously used.  He told me that he could never love a guy, and didn’t think about them sexually a whole lot.  He didn’t feel he was cheating, he was simply scratching an itch.  But he also said that our first encounter was the best sex he’d ever had, male or female.  He said it without bravado, but as a quiet fact.   And before leaving, he did something so intimate, so gentle – so unlike him.  He hugged me goodbye.  The hug undid me.

On a subsequent night that we planned to get together, he stood me up.  The next morning at work, I was feeling so emotionally volatile that I feigned sickness and went home to punch the pillows.  I could handle it all as long as he showed up, and when he didn’t, I mentally ended it for the sake of my sanity.  He left a message again eventually, and I in turn left him one.  I played it as cool as possible but expressed that I’d been disappointed that he didn’t call if he was not going to be able to keep our date.

The story ends there, Dear Reader.  By telling him how I truly felt, I must have become too much for him to handle, because I never heard from him again, and he deleted me from his MSN.  And I was left asking myself these questions:  Is that as good as it’s ever going to get?  The high I felt with Rick was Mount Olympus.  But was it because he was unattainable that the high felt so extraordinary?  I allowed him to use me like a hooker, and I liked it.  It was clandestine.  How had I sunk so low, how had I come to expect so little?  But at that time, I believed to have felt my heart stir, and was so relieved to know that it still beat.  I wasn’t numb yet, even in spite of my many encounters and my casual approach to sex.   Months later, I would wonder in retrospect if my heart wasn’t just being pushed further into a pit of loneliness by the experience.  And I feared terribly that if he had been less of a challenge, I might not have been as attracted.  If that was true, I was truly fucked.

During one of our post-coital talks, he had said that I was the only person on the planet to whom he could talk to about his same-sex encounters.  In saying so, he looked vulnerable.  Where is he now?  And does he think of me in any way?  I’m writing an essay about him, but realize that he may have tucked me away into a hidden corner of his mind.  This is not a man who reads much, and certainly not gay essays, so I don’t expect he’ll ever read this and recognize himself in these pages.  But if he wrote an essay about our few encounters, how would it read?  What would he reveal?  Has any straight-identified male ever written in depth about his same-sex encounters?  That’s a tale I would like hear.

The Final On-line Hook-up?

Note to Reader:  I wrote the essay below some time ago, before I opened this blog.  In it, I recount a hook-up at my home that went awry.  Only recently, the world learned of the horrific murder of Jun Lin, allegedly at the hands of Luka Rocco Magnotta.  Facts seem hazy, but it appears that the two men knew each other for some time before the murder, a murder that was filmed and posted on a gore website.  I and my friends who have welcomed strangers into our homes for hook-ups wondered how we had avoided inviting over a psychotic like this Magnotta character.  The story I relate below is of an experience that is nearly comical in contrast to Jun Lin’s killing, and yet it still had me thinking about the dangers of hook-ups.  The question I pose to readers is:  Did the Luka Rocco Magnotta crime make anyone out there skittish about inviting a guy over for a hook-up?  Is it the end of hook-ups?

How is it that one knows they’ve reached the end of an era?  How is it that you wake up and find that what used to work for you no longer works?  Is that just a part of getting older?  I had always loved hook-ups.  Hunting a guy online and having him come over.  Or going over to his place.  The thrill of the hunt, the thrill of the unknown.  So often, though, I was disappointed with what I found in reality once he arrived at my door.  I rarely, if ever, thought of the dangers – how did I know that a psycho killer wasn’t going to enter my apartment?  That is the power of sex.  And the down low, illicit nature of an online hook-up was part of the thrill.  Sexual adventurism at its height.  Some would say sexual stupidity at its height.  But there is something undeniably hot about a guy showing up at your door, as if you had ordered a pizza, and willing to drop his pants and have sex without the preamble of dinner and a movie.  Without the effort of even going to a bar.  A guy who, like you, needs sex and will go sight unseen (except for pics seen online) and go clear across town to be with another horny guy. 

Like drinking, when does it stop being a fun lark and start being an addiction?  I always thought I was in control, when in reality, an online hook-up steals your control – you don’t know if you’ll really like what shows up, you don’t know if they’re mentally balanced, etc.  After a long while, after years of this, I had to ask – Was the dog wagging the tail, or was the tail wagging the dog?

Don’t get me wrong – some of the hook-ups I’ve had have been fantastic, wherein I lucked out and had a great time.  But that great time was often followed by a hollowness that I would seek to fill in with more hook-ups.  But recently, I had a hook-up that beat all hook-ups.  And the utter surreal nature of it had me questioning whether I could continue to let unknown men into my home.

Let’s call him Greg.  On a Friday night, I was on Manhunt.net and he was the only guy online that night that caught my eye, so I messaged him.  I’d like to start now by mentioning one of the red flags that cropped up, red flags that I chose to downplay.  In one of his two pics, his eyes were closed.  An odd picture to put up, but eyes open or closed, he looked cute.  He looked street tough, with shaggy hair topped with a ball-cap, a few days growth of stubble, wearing a hoodie, approximately 25 to 28 years old.  He didn’t message back right away, but when he did, I was somewhat taken aback when he alluded to coming over and playing right away.  Some nights while hunting men online, that was exactly what I wanted – zero small talk bullshit, just a plan to meet and screw.  But on this night, I wasn`t there yet – perhaps I needed a few more drinks to get me to that point.  On this night in particular, I wasn’t looking for an immediate hook-up.  I think I was already wearying of them, so I asked if he’d like to grab a beer the next day, the next day being a Saturday.  He agreed.

The next day, I called him, and he was still on for meeting.  Turns out that he lived with his parents quite far out in the suburbs, but no problem – his dad would drive him to the nearest subway stop so he could get downtown to my place.  “Um,” I stammered, “does your dad know that he’s driving you to a hook-up with a guy you’ve never met in person?”  “ Oh sure,” he replied, “Mom and Dad both know.  Mom gave me a condom.”  Hippie parents?  Negligent parents?  He was a full-fledged adult, but this sounded ridiculous.  But I let the red flag go.  Just because my parents would have had a coronary at the thought of me going to meet a stranger for sex didn’t mean all parents thought this way, did it?

We sexted a bit, and he phoned to say he’d cut his cock shaving.  “It’s all your fault,” he told me.  “I want you so bad, that I couldn’t concentrate on shaving.  Hey, why don’t we just skip the beer and I’ll just come to your place.  If we don’t click I’ll just leave.” Dear Reader, you know I said “ok”, don’t you?   I told him that I had previously arranged to hang out with my sister at about 9:30, so could he be here by 7?  He said no problem – he had other friends that he could hang out with in the Village after.  But if we clicked, would I like to get together after I was through at my sister’s?  Could he crash at my place, since it would be too late to get the metro back to the burbs?  We hadn’t even met yet, and already he was arranging a sleep over.  I, who don’t know how to say no when I should sometimes, said “sure”.

He arrived and knocked on the door, and I took a deep breath.  When I opened the door, I would see the real deal, and that would make all the difference.  I stealed myself and opened the door, and was disappointed.  It was him, the guy in the pictures I’d seen online, but it wasn’t him, you know?  I had endowed his two pictures with qualities that didn’t exist in reality.  But I smiled and let him in.  He was wearing a ball cap, a t-shirt and torn jeans.  I was wearing a black tank to show off the muscles, and jeans and a ball cap too.  He kissed me right away, and the kiss did not taste good.  There was no chemistry, right from the get go.  Still, ever the host with the most, I let this stranger in and offered him a beer.

He drank like a fish, and finished the first beer in record time.  Why in hell did I feel the need to be so accommodating that I quickly offered him another?  I could tell that he was really attracted to me – he told me so.  I couldn’t bear to tell this guy who had come all the way from the suburbs that it wasn’t working.  Instead, I was going to make it work, putting my own needs and desires aside in a misguided attempt to be a nice guy to a fellow sexual traveller. 

Against my better judgement, we began to fool around and our tops came off.  His chest revealed a non-descript tattoo on the left pec.  He straddled me and we kissed, rubbing each other’s crotches through our jeans.  He was out of shape and said he was working to get rid of the winter fat.  At this point, I was on automatic.  I’d been down this road so many times that, like a housewife doing her conjugal duty, I just wanted him to get off and go.  And so he lay down on the couch, and I struggled to undo his belt.  Finally getting that off, I slowly undid the zipper on his jeans, and began to pulling the jeans aside to release his cock and start sucking it.  And that’s when I noticed the red blotch.

“Dude,” I said, “I think your cock in bleeding.”  “No,” he answered, “I cut myself shaving, but it should be scabbed over by now.”  Was he implying that I should go ahead and suck a scabby cock?  Had all of this sunk so low that it was now going to be about sucking a scab?  Did he really believe that I would do it?  It was an epiphany.  Ten years of hook-ups had led to this moment, and I took note.  At what point would I say to myself that enough was enough?

But the cut had not scabbed over, not at all.  He was bleeding, and I told him so.  He stood up and looked and saw that I was right.  The blood began to drip on his jeans and narrowly missed my carpet.  I told him to head to the bathroom, and luckily, only when he hit the tile that led to the bathroom did his blood hit the floor.  Carpet saved.  I got him a wet cloth, followed the trail of blood to the bathroom, and found him trying in vain to stop the bleeding with tissue.  Was this going to need stitches?  But the wet cloth stopped it, and he deposited the bloody cloth in my sink.  A present for me?  How thoughtful.

He pulled up his jeans, which showed a large blood stain on the crotch.  I assumed that he was mortified that this was happening in a stranger’s home – wouldn’t anyone be?  But he wasn’t apoplectic with apologies – he was quite cool about it, at least outwardly.  Lord in Heaven, why I didn’t tell him to leave and go home?  I gave him a pair of my underwear since he had been commando, and put a towel on my leather couch for us to sit on and actually offered him another beer.  I wanted to appear to be the guy who could handle crazy situations like this and put him at ease, feeling that if the tables were reversed, I would hope my host would not freak out.

I had to wipe the blood off the floor.  He said, “I’m negative, just in case you’re worried about the blood.”  I didn’t answer him, I just wiped the blood spots as carefully as possible.  I humourously asked him how mortified he was feeling, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst.  He, surprisingly, because of his apparent ease with the situation, answered a 9.  Secretly, I was thrilled that something had intervened to prevent me from having unwanted sex with him.  Instead we chatted for a while, and he had a fourth beer.  I said that I needed to get going to my sister’s – would he be going home to change his pants and see how his cock was healing? “No, I’m gonna text my friends and hang out in the village while you’re at your sister’s.  But hey, I grabbed the wrong wallet on the way out the door and this one is empty.  Could you spare me $20?”  I gave it to him so I could be absolved of all responsibility.  What I worried about was how much he was wobbling after the four beers I had served him.  “I’m really feeling it because I had a few beers with my dad this afternoon while watching the game. “

He left and quickly texted me to say that I was attractive.  I texted back asking where he was going.  He wrote, “Dunno.  Maybe to the baths for a few hours?”  He was going to go to a bath house with a bleeding cock.   And he seemed to expect that we would see each other again later and that he could still crash at my place for the night.  Lord help us all.

Shortly thereafter, I texted him to say that I would be hanging with my sister for the rest of the evening and that he wouldn’t be able to stay at my place for the night.  I did this early enough so that he could still catch the subway home if he was so inclined.  and for the first time in ten years of actively having hook-ups, I looked in the mirror and asked myself what the fuck I was looking for that I would open my home to this kind of experience.  What bleeding wound did I possess inside that made me create a space in my life where such things could happen?  The experience would almost be funny if it weren’t so damn tragic.  I’m a slow learner, but it finally dawned on me that I had reached an impasse.

Greg texted me the next day, apologizing for his bleeding and hoping it didn’t freak me out too much.  I was glad that he was ok – I had, after all, sent him out of my apartment drunk and bleeding.  I played it cool and texted that I was glad he was alright.  And neither of us communicated again.  I, however, began communicating with my higher self.  The idea of letting a stranger in the sanctity of my home became anathema to me.  Sexually, I would need to find other ways to satisfy myself because online hook-ups were seemingly more and more discordant with what I needed.  The song was ending, and I needed to learn a new melody.

Smokin' Hot Sex

I just bought “the patch”.  I’m a smoker and I’m dreading the idea of giving up cigarettes.  So, in fact, right before filling my prescription for the patch, I bought a pack of smokes – one last hurrah.  The reason that I dread the idea of quitting smoking is that my smoking is directly tied to sex.  I didn’t start smoking until I was about 33 years old.  So I didn’t start because of peer pressure in high school.  I didn’t start due to stress.  I started because I happened upon videos on youtube of men smoking.  Hot men, putting dick-substitutes in their mouths and then blowing the smoke at me through the camera lense.  For all purposes, this could very well have been a turn off (“ew, gross!  Get rid of that cancer stick, your mouth probably tastes like an ashtray!”).  But for me, the phallic symbolism hit me right where I live.  And then, I found nastier videos of smoking men on xtube.  Here’s the strange part:  In my twenties, I dated a smoker, and it didn’t once turn me on sexually.  I never once considered trying one of his cigarettes.  If there are any psychologists out there who can explain my sudden conversion in my thirties, I’d be interested to know what happened to me.

At first, I didn’t know what brand of cigarette to buy, and I didn’t know how to smoke.  I learned and for about 3 years, I only smoked while jerking off or having sex, if my partner was so inclined.  So I felt I had it under control – I never smoked otherwise, and never even craved it outside of a sexual situation.  In 2010, on a sunny day in March, I had an enormously stressful day.  I had just moved to a new city, and when registering for a class at a local college took so long that I was nearly late for a coveted job interview, my nerves were raw.  I had cigarettes on me and thought what the hell - I deserve something that will calm me.  That was all it took to transition from being a part-time smoker to a full-time addict.

This year however, I began a thrilling ride into the world of stand-up comedy.  Even if others couldn’t tell, I knew my voice was being affected by the smoke.  And my coughing was beginning to annoy and worry people.   A trip to the dentist got me alarmed, when the dentist said she noticed white patches in my mouth, certainly caused by smoking.  She suggested I see a specialist to confirm whether it was anything serious.  I have yet to contact the specialist, as I feel frozen by fear.  I’m eager to quit smoking for both a better performing voice and to avoid any physical illness.  But, dear reader, I’m totally afraid that my connection between smoking and sex will derail my efforts at quitting.  (Excuse me while I go get a cigarette from this last pack I bought today before starting the patch!)

I can’t light up a cigarette without being made aware of my dick – it goes hand in hand (dick in hand?).  Allow me to get a little graphic with you.  There was a guy I saw for a while, another smoker, and it was with him that I first smoked DURING sex (not just after sex like we always see in the movies).  We’d light up, with me on my back, and he’d impale himself on me, and we’d grab our smokes.  I’d have one arm behind my head, watching this stud ride me, and we’d both be inhaling and blowing smoke at each other.  A little like doing poppers, it was a mutual event that was visually and physiologically a turn on.  On my first encounter with this guy, I remember us stumbling to the kitchen to refill our drinks.  I entered him from behind while pouring us whiskies, and he lit cigarettes for us both, all while he was being fucked.  Who says men can’t multitask?

My experience with cigars is limited, but who among us hasn’t turned to jelly at the sight of a muscle bear in leather chomping on a cigar.  It represents power and strength - a dom top who is going to fuck you hard.

They say that to end a bad habit, you need to replace it with another (hopefully good) habit.  What will this be for me, during sex in particular?  I had a hook up with an out-of-towner over the Christmas holidays, and he said that he only smoked during sex, much like me when I started smoking.  Can I return to that?  Or am I now so addicted that I can’t have any leeway?  There is nothing quite as good as enjoying a cigar or a cigarette while a bud goes down on you for half an hour.  Quite honestly, it gives you something to do other than just lying there.  It adds a different dimension to the blow job, both for the sucker and the suckee.

Ultimately, if I’m playing Russian roulette with my health, I have to stop smoking.  Why is it that the things that give us so much pleasure are often so bad for us?  Apples are good for you and I hate apples.  Apple pie is not so good for you and I love apple pie.  I hear that in spite of the patch, I may still undergo some mood swings linked to withdrawal.  I’m already in a bad mood over this – how much worse can it get?  Wish me luck...

Porn

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