Bartending at The Anchor

My bartending interview at The Anchor, a gay bar in my hometown, circa 2000, went like this:

“Jason, we`d totally love to have you bartend here......you already know half the clientele, it`s perfect.  Plus, we don`t care how good you are at pouring drinks.  You`ve got what a bartender really needs – likability.”

“This sounds awesome,” I said. “When the fuck do I start?”

“We’re gonna re-jig the schedule, but you’ll train with Brent on Thursday and Friday.  You’ll work the main bar from 8-3, then we do cash out and you’re outta here by 4, unless you wanna hang and party.  Thursday, Bera Breast is hosting the wet underwear contest.  And Friday is underwear night – are you cool about working in your underwear?”

“Uh – no.”

Back up.  I had just returned from three glorious years living in Manhattan.  My last year there had been one of sexual exploration, and then it all came to a crashing halt when my work visa finally expired.  I had the choice of living in New York City under the table and forfeiting health care, or coming back to Canada.  I couldn’t live life as an illegal alien, and, with very little money, I had to make the unsexy decision to bunk with my parents in my semi-small hometown.  I thought this would be a pit stop on to a better Canadian city, but ended up there for ten years.

Happily, my parents lived right next door to The Anchor, one of two gay clubs in town.  The other was The Savoy, where I had worked as the door guy/coat check guy back in ’97.  I likely could’ve gotten a job at The Savoy again, but for the simple detail that The Anchor was right outside my parent’s door, I chose The Anchor.

My last year in New York City had opened up sexual vistas to me that enlarged my sense of my sexual self.  So can you believe that I hesitated when the manager of The Anchor told me I’d have to work in my underwear on Friday nights?  This is like a porn star balking at going to a nude beach.  But I didn’t yet have a full comprehension of my exhibitionist side.  Also, from my year working at The Savoy, I knew the gay population of my hometown well.  Did I really want to open myself up to their scrutiny of my body?  And psychologically, I knew my parents lived right around the corner.  Their best little boy in the world would be mere steps away shaking his ass behind a bar, nearly naked.  The mental dissonance had me reeling.

I made a deal with myself.  I would give it a shot this coming Friday.  If it reduced me to trembling tears and embarrassment, I would quit.  I called the manager, Lloyd, and said I was in.

Thursday was a homecoming of sorts.  People let me know that I’d been missed while in the Big Apple.  They also wondered why the hell I was back in the sticks.  I milked the truth that my visa had expired for all it was worth, and while a valid excuse, I still felt ashamed.  Ashamed that I hadn’t found a way to stay in New York.  They knew that I’d gone there to go to a performing arts school.  Why did I need to bartend here half naked after all of that?  I wondered the same thing.

The drag queens were the true players at The Anchor, and I loved them all.  Crystal Meth bussed tables, and Charity Case, Dora Dumpster, and Iona Sextoy hosted shows, like the wet underwear contest that first Thursday that I worked.  Brent, who trained me on the till that Thursday night was a hot, young guy with a son and a girlfriend and was bisexual (I think).

Friday’s were The Anchor’s big night, while Saturdays belonged to The Savoy.  This was before the internet had emptied the bars, and The Anchor on a Friday night was wall to wall men.  Good ol’ prairie boys.  So cowboy hats, jeans, and flannel shirts.  I got to the bar on Friday night, only my second night there, with my heart in my throat.

Brent and I set up the bar fully clothed, but at around 7:40, Brent said “Ready to get ready?”  We headed to the kitchen (during the day, the bar served finger foods) where there was a staff bathroom.  I was getting prepared to do a job that required me to get partially naked.  Who the hell was I?  I was raised to be Prime Minister of Canada. Or, better yet, a minister, in the religious sense.

Brent was a pro – he was wearing a cock ring.  Therefore when he undressed down to his skivvies and his army boots, he was a beautiful sight to behold.  I, on the other hand, had not had the foresight to wear a cock ring and would have a deflated-looking package next to Brent.  I took that as a bad sign.  There is an art to everything, evidently.

Then it was time to march back to the bar.  Folks, this has to be done proudly, like you own the place.  I knew that much.  I could act, I’d spent 2 years at a NYC performing arts school honing the craft, so I went into automatic and followed Brent.  We got to the bar and there were the requisite whistles from the already drunk patrons who lined the bar.  It was 8 o’clock, and still pretty empty in there.  I was sure my mother was going to walk in at any minute.  Or that god was going to strike me with lightning.  My life as the best little boy in the world flashed before my eyes.  And then, fifteen minutes later...

Nothing.  Fifteen minutes is all it takes to forget that you are working in your underwear.  You banter with the customers, you get slapped with a rag on the ass by Brent, you starting serving drinks, and it’s like being in a bathing suit at the beach.  By time eleven o’clock hit, when the men really started to pour in, I was an old pro.  And then when the customers see a new guy working the bar (or in my case, the dimly remembered guy who worked the door at The Savoy three years ago), the curiosity is piqued for them, and the compliments come.  And my ego grows.  And though legally Brent and I aren’t supposed to drink while working, we do.  And I think “I’m gonna like this”.  I liked it for 3 years.  And the truth?  I was bored the nights I had to work fully clothed.  All week in the gym was for Friday nights.

I also never worked a Friday night without a cock ring again.  And I often worked shirtless, even on the other nights of the week, simply because it felt good (and prompted better tips and shooters bought for me by the customers).  Did I mention that underwear night also applied to the clientele?  Anyone in their underwear got a discount.  Truthfully, not many guys took advantage of it, and I understood why.  Everyone in that town knew everyone else, and it felt vulnerable to really go for it, let loose and drop your pants.  It was the reason I had hesitated in taking the job.  But being behind the bar gave me a certain license that I don’t think our customers felt.  However, I found ways to give discounts on drinks.

One cute guy whom I’d never seen before came to the bar and said right out “If I show you my cock, can I get a free drink?”  I’m all about supporting others people’s exhibitionism, and I also just plainly wanted to see cock.  He showed me.  He got a free drink.  He showed me his cock numerous times.  I used change from my tip jar to keep drinks in his hand.  It’s called reciprocity.   This is the homofuckinsexual equivalent to “show me your tits!”

On a leather themed night, a good friend loaned me the leather I didn’t yet own myself:  A harness that connected to a cock ring under my jeans.  I remember feeling particularly sexual and left a few buttons of my fly undone.   The cowboy sitting at the bar that night was fucking cute.  I’d gotten his name, so I naturally felt that I knew him well enough to let him slide a hand down my jeans.  Which lead to a short-lived affair.

And then there were the shows.  Whenever a drag queen needed a guy to dance in a cage wearing just a g-string, I volunteered.  No, this was not Broadway.  And inwardly, I shook my head at how far backwards I had reeled from the theatre aspirations that had guided me to New York.  But something else was happening, and it wasn’t ominous in the least.  I was getting to exhibit my inner exhibitionist.  And while you may think that my ego was likely growing at too fast a rate, believe you me, there are always a few drunk patrons who stagger up to you to remind you that you’re not all that.  Egos actually are kept in check and a sense of humour about the whole blasted thing is necessary.

But after three years, I began to feel that I had stayed too long at the fair.  It got harder to muster up the sincerity, and I wasn’t as great any longer at entertaining the customers.  The internet was truly drawing the crowds away – and my tips reflected that.  But in the good times, it was heady fun to be the centre of a party, at the main bar, around which the fun circled.

At the time of this writing, I am back in my hometown after a few years of living in a much larger city out East.  Three nights ago, I went from my parent’s place to The Anchor to see the old gang.  Lo and behold, the door to the main club downstairs was locked.  Only the pub above was open.  I learned that The Anchor was now closed on Sundays and Mondays due to lack of business.  Upstairs, in The Anchor’s adjacent pub, I stepped into a time capsule.  I saw some dimly remembered faces, but the place was quiet, with one patron sleeping at the bar’s counter.  And as much affection as I have for the faces that I remembered, they too seemed to have stayed too long at the fair.  There was the undeniable air of hopelessness – and loneliness – enveloping the air.  The few patrons left seemed out of a movie called “The Last Chance Blues”.  Where were all the gays?  At private dinner parties?  In the closet?  If I had stayed in my hometown even a year longer than the ten that I did stay, I believe a cancer would have begun to grow.  A cancer created by loneliness.  I needed a bigger centre, with a gay Village, to feed my need for life and adventure.  And so, leaving after one beer, I thanked the gay gods for my years at The Anchor when it was hopping, and thanked the gay gods for also bearing me to the big city I now live in before the quiet of my hometown caused me to implode.

Cock Sucking

Who doesn’t love cock sucking!  Evidently, some people don’t.  Even some gay men.  But I love it.   There are those that make it an Olympic sport.  I played with one guy who claimed to have sucked a guy’s cock for ten hours straight, with breaks only for meals and the bathroom.  In another essay of mine about an orgy in Berlin, I recounted seeing two hot men, each on a podium, with a line-up of men in front of them all waiting their short turn to suck the cocks of the exalted studs.  And what’s better than one in your mouth but two or more!  It’s a challenge, so you have to roll up your proverbial sleeves and hunker down.

But it’s not always so simple.  I’ve sucked a few dicks that smelled downright bad.  I don’t mean the hot, musky odor of a hard-workin’ man.  I’m talking stench.  However!  There are some men out there looking for that perfect unwashed dick.  (I remember blowing a guy in New York City once who didn’t have any discernible scent at all, which is very rare, isn’t it?).

I think cocks are like snowflakes – they all look alike and yet are vastly individual.  Big, small, cut, uncut, they’re all wonders.  Now, I do like to suck a cock that’s hairy, but if you’re shaved or trimmed, I’m not going to kick you out of bed at all.

Deep throating is going to be a challenge if you have a gag-reflex.  Sometimes I’m fine, and can get the cock all the way down and hold it there.  I usually want to shout at these moments “Look at me go!”, but all that comes out is “oo a e o”.  However, once, and only once, I did something we who love getting face-fucked fear happening.  I threw up on the dick.  It wasn’t a lot, just a little bit of puke – just enough to look up at my partner and say “My bad.”  But even this has been fetishized by some.  I had a Master who told me that he liked hearing me gag - it meant I was working hard.  I learned from him not to fear the gag so much.

“If I could suck my own dick, I’d never leave the house!”  How many times have we heard this joke?   I, with my inflexible body, have managed this just a handful of times.  I would flip my legs over my head and just get the tip in, licking just beyond the head.  But on Xtube, there are men that are so gifted at this that they deserve a special place in porn, whether professional or amateur.  Your ability to do this should not be left off of your online dating profile fellas!

Do I like getting sucked?  Oh yes, but would you concur with me when I say that not all men are that great at it?  (We have to keep this a secret because straight women depend on our advice in this matter and we have a reputation to protect.  On further reflection, if we keep teaching women how to do it right, how are we going to continue bagging the straight men that turn to us in desperation?)   Now, I dated one man who had this tremendous trick with his tongue.  While sucking me, he would flick his tongue on the underside of my cock head.  His mouth would be going in one direction, his tongue in another.  But I’ve also been with men who scraped me with their teeth, which causes one to flinch.  And it’s more than just about the physical act of moving a mouth up and down a cock.  It’s the attitude behind it.  There’s nothing better to me than an aggressive cock sucker, who tells me how it’s going to be: “I’m gonna suck you off so hard you’re fucking head is going to spin, get me?” Or, “Face-fuck me until I gag on it.”  These men must be appreciated and kept on speed dial. 

A Master I played with (the same one who liked to hear me gag) liked to hear me try to speak while sucking him.  To him, this represented total dedication on my part.  Our dick-sucking sessions took an hour at least.  He would begin by letting me just look at his dick, right up close near my face.  He would stroke, I would visually and verbally worship.  Finally, agonizingly, he would let me kiss the head of his cock.  There were times when this was all I got, and for an hour, I’d be aching with such desire that I would experience a type of body orgasm just from the anticipation of what I would be allowed to do next.  When I was deserving, and he was feeling generous, I would be allowed to take it in my mouth, maybe just for a moment.  Then I would go back to staring at it an inch from my mouth.  At this point, I was fit to be tied.  The times he let me suck him for a long while, I took advantage of this privilege and was a greedy pig.  He would face-fuck me and I would concentrate on his pleasure which was my pleasure.  He was a feeder, and I would happily get a load at the end down my throat.

The Master took the most common act of cock sucking and turned it into an art.  So, tell me, how do you like it?

 

 

 

Xtube.com

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Booze

“One last drink, please.”  Last words on deathbed, Jasper Newton “Jack” Daniel (1849-1911, American distiller and founder of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey Distillery).

The orgy was BYOB.  And so, at home, I located three empty Gatorade bottles and filled them with Jack Daniels and coke, my absolute favorite drink.  I put them in my back sack, along with the other things one should always bring to an orgy: condoms, lube, poppers, some water, a tab of Viagra, and tic tacs to be oh so fresh.

The orgy was invite only.  I’d been to one of them before, the month previous.  It had been held at a bathhouse in the Village, where they had cordoned off a section for the orgy invites.  But tonight, for the first time, the organizers had found a space in a warehouse for the party.

I showed up at 11:30 PM and was greeted by Dominic, one of the organizers, who gave me a kiss and to whom I paid the $20 entrance fee.  Dominic, a bearded leather dude in his thirties, had flogged me at the previous orgy – something I’d never before experienced.  He promised to give me some new experiences tonight and pointed me in the direction of the coat racks.  To my surprise, just left of Dominic, were two men from a local safe-sex organization, standing at a table filled with safe-sex brochures and lots of condoms and lube.  They were there to answer any questions we might have about how to play safe and I thought, This is damn well organized.

At the coat racks, I hung up my winter coat and started to undress.  This orgy had a strict dress code: leather, rubber, jocks or you could be completely naked (“No deodorants or cologne please!”).  Tonight I would be wearing a leather jock, a leather ballcap, army boots and my black rubber wristband that sported two yellow stripes indicating my penchant for watersports.

I grabbed the first of the three bottles I’d brought of Jack and coke and headed into the main area.  It was tricked out with BDSM equipment I don’t even know the names for.  The room was dimly lit with a red sleazy glow, and a blue strobe light flashed psychedelic patterns along the far wall.  A cage was set to the right.  The room was already populated with about eight men, and we each found a spot to pose and preen, to eye each other and sip from the drinks we’d all brought.

I stayed that night for three hours.  The room only filled to about a maximum of twenty men, and I regret to inform you that I didn’t really feel attracted to most of them.  In attendance was a slave owned by the organizers.  He wore a sign that said if we wanted to play with him, we needed permission from the organizers.  Dominic’s partner, Cory, gave me this permission.  I approached the slave and...we talked.  I have a distinct need to know that my sex partner is attracted to me in order to have fun, and I felt that if I played with the slave, he would be doing it out of duty rather than pleasure.  In hindsight, perhaps that’s the key:  perhaps his duty was his pleasure.  But instead, I interviewed him about what it meant to be a slave, what his life was like.  Our conversation intrigued me, though I wonder if he questioned who let this leather-wearing Barbara Walters into the party.

By the second Jack and coke, I was sufficiently inebriated enough to doff my leather jock and enjoy the sensation of simply walking around naked, save for the leather ball cap and boots.  I watched men get fisted and fucked.  I dipped my toe in the water by letting my hands caress men as they caressed me.  But it was Dominic who came through for me in the end.  At my third Jack and coke, Dominic found me and led me to a separate room where he tied my stiff cock and balls up with a soft, forty-foot long rope.  Once it was completely tied, he pulled fast on the rope and it quickly unravelled, which set my cock bouncing and vibrating.  The sensation was one of pleasure and pain.  The slave joined the room and Dominic slipped on a condom and began to fuck him, while I sat on the floor licking the slave’s balls (his cock was locked up in a chastity device).  After a moment, I stood and the slave took my cock in his mouth.  Dominic pulled out of the slave, took off the condom, and made me suck him off.  With his cock in my mouth, he let go a stream of piss.  Like a champ, I devoured every single drop.

I left soon after.  I had to walk home, as the subway had stopped running by that point, but I didn’t live so far – just the equivalent of three subway stops.  When I reached home though, did I go to bed?  No sir, I did not.  I poured another Jack and coke.

At the orgy, I’d taken half a Viagra, just for insurance against nerves getting the better of me.  I’d also brought my trusty pill bottle filled with a week’s worth of cum, in case I had a notion to play with it at the orgy.  But that didn’t happen.  So now at home, I decided to continue the party alone, downed the second half of the Viagra and started to edge, pouring the cum over my face and pits and cock.

How many drinks did I consume before I finally hit the bed?  I don’t know, but I do know that in the wee hours of the morning, I was lying in a wet spot.  Evidently, I’d pissed the bed.  Tragic?  Not so much.  I have a cover for the mattress for piss play anyway.  I had been having erotic dreams, and only half awake, my hard dick made its presence known.  I lazily rolled onto my stomach, pressing my cock into the wet sheets.

But this is the turning point.  When you wake up soaked in your own piss after a bacchanalian night of revelry, you have to decide whether to feel shameful about it, or to feel that you’ve simply had quite a wild night.  I chose the latter and fell back to sleep.

When I awoke at three in the afternoon, I was hung over, but not of the headache variety.  I was rather still drunk.  And more to the point, I was intensely horny.  I got up and put on the kettle for some coffee to bring me back to the sober Jason that had to return phone calls and iron his work clothes for the week.  But while waiting for the water to boil, wearing only my underwear, I pressed my cock against the edge of the kitchen counter and I knew that my ironing would have to wait.

I was in a delicious booze haze and my cock wanted my full attention.  Now I was the slave, and rubbing my cock felt like an emergency.  I checked the fridge – all out of cola.  But I had lots of Jack.  Jumping in the shower, I rushed to ready myself to go out into the world for a brief, alcohol-dazed moment.  I ran – not walked, ran – to the grocery store kitty corner to my apartment block and bought cola and ran back to my apartment where I hastily poured a drink, shed my clothes, lit a cigarette, turned on some heavy metal, and positioned myself in front of the mirror.  I had everything I needed to edge, and I readied myself for that first, cataclysmic grab of my crotch.  In a hypnotic state, I rubbed my hand around my crotch over and over and over again, watching this in the mirror, in a state of religious ecstasy.  It was a communion with the earth, with my cock, my brain, my cock, the universe, my cock, my male brothers, my cock, my soul, my cock, my infinity.  Hyperbole, you ask?  If only.   I thought of the events at the orgy and it was as if the memory of the night was more powerful to me than the actual experience of it.

I eventually lost my erection, changed the sheets on my bed and fell into a twelve hour sleep.  Awaking for work the next morning, I felt still a little out of it, but not too bad.  Once again, while waiting for water to boil, I pressed my crotch against the kitchen counter and thought to myself “What a weekend.”

But a lost weekend?  Or did I find something?  What I experienced on that weekend was not a regular event that occurs every week.  Even still, I had to start asking questions (as is my wont).  Am I an alcoholic?  I only drink when my cock is involved.  If I go out to dinner with friends, I have no desire for a drink, since it’s a social occasion and not a cock occasion. 

But alcohol is part of every jack off, every sex experience.  So is alcohol just a tool I use to support my sex addiction?  Sex addiction is too large a subject to discuss in this essay.  I will come back to that another time.  The bottom line is that booze fuels my sexuality.  Why is it that when watching porn sober, it all seems fairly ridiculous.  When sober, I see the performers and wonder if they are happy and safe, whether they are only in it for the money or whether they get any pleasure from performing.  When drinking, it’s all hot and horny.

Years ago, I had sex with a man who was a recovering alcoholic.  He welcomed me to drink until I was hammered, as he put it.  I asked him if he missed drinking during sex and he said that sober sex was so much better.  I’m still not sure if I understand how that could be.  Is it that you can be fully present in a way you aren’t when drinking?  Are you more apt when sober to feel a truer connection to your partner?  Does alcohol give one the impression of loosening you up when really it shuts something down?

Most of the topics for this blog occur to me when I’m having a drink and masturbating.  The little booklet I write my ideas down in is stained with lube, my pens all sticky.  But I always write these essays sober.  Sober now as I write, I wonder if I’m peering into the rabbit hole by letting alcohol be such a steadfast part of my sexual behavior.  Or have I already fallen in?  Addiction, to sex, to alcohol, are topics to discuss later.  For now I leave you with this...

Jack Daniel never married, never had children.  And so I wonder – was he an earlier incarnation of a man like me?

When Horniness Attacks!

Horniness loves to yank your chain and right when you’re busy doing the daily errands that sometimes simply can’t wait.  Walking the busy downtown streets, with things to do and people to see, my horniness threatened to overtake me and I had serious visions of myself losing my mind in broad daylight.  I wanted to yell at men passing by “Hey buddy, want a blowjob!?  Blowjobs!  Blowjobs!  Get your blowjobs here!”  The grizzled homeless men on the street appealed to me – I figured they probably hadn’t had a decent blowjob in ages and they’re men too!  I began to fetishize their unruly, unkempt beards.  I was out of control.   I felt like George Michael on speed.

Passing a lamppost, I noticed a sign taped to it that read “TOPS WANTED!”  Oh goody, I thought, a sign meant just for me!  Out there, somewhere, was a bottom desperately wanting to be serviced.  Rounding the lamppost a little more and I realized the sign read “LAPTOPS WANTED!” and I was heartbroken.  And so onward I trudged to the department store.

At the department store, I waited in line at customer service to make a minute payment on an outrageously high credit card bill.  Waiting in line, I noticed advertisements for a men’s line of clothing called TOPMAN.  What joy, what bliss!  A clothing line aimed at men like me!  But peering closer at the clothing itself, I realized that I wouldn’t be wearing that style of clothing until I was safely ensconced in Happy Day nursing home.  I somberly made my laughable credit card payment and forged on to the grocery store.

While in line to pay for my groceries, I noticed that the blonde, bearded guy in front of me with the army ball cap was a guy I had hooked up with when I first moved to this city’s Gay Village.  And I also remembered that’d I’d disappointingly cum almost the minute I’d entered him.  In shame, I prayed that the sex gods would keep him from turning to notice me.  (Dear Reader, you think I make this shit up, but these are the things that happen when you live in the Village.  I would not be having this problem if I lived in Ohio – or would I?).

Carting the two bags of groceries home, something poked my leg.  It was the English cucumber I’d purchased, and it stood erect in my grocery bag, aching for release.  It was only when I got to my building and in the elevator that I noticed the other end of the cucumber had broken through the plastic bag, pleading to penetrate something.  Oh Cucumber, I thought....you and me both.

This is Horniness...

Berlin Leather Sex Party

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Hometown Hook-Ups

As you may have gathered, I live in a large Eastern city, and I live in its Gay Village.  But previous to this, I lived in a small city near the Rocky Mountains, and I’m writing to you from there now, visiting on vacation.  My family picked me up at the airport early last week, and as we drove into the downtown core, I spotted a place that caused my soul to lurch with a wave of sentimentality.  The place?  The Holiday Inn Express Hotel.

We kept driving towards my family’s apartment building located on the fringes of downtown and we passed The Westin, The Coast Plaza Hotel and the Carleton Hotel.  As we drove, I did my best to chat and play the role of “son”, but seeing those hotels recalled a part of me perhaps more authentic than that of “son”.

In each of those hotels, I recalled a hook-up.

And it wasn’t just hotels.  I had lived in this backwater city for a decade, and had had hook-ups in homes and apartments dotted across town.  On this trip, there would be no time or opportunity for men.  I was here to see parents and friends, whom I hadn’t seen in almost two years.  On the plane, I had already begun to slip into the roles that I would play – that of son and buddy.  It wasn’t until I saw the Holiday Inn Express Hotel that I realized that the role I felt most authentic in was the one I played when naked with a man.  I looked forward to talking with my family and friends, but I longed even more to be back in room #212 in the Holiday Inn Express, where words weren’t always necessary.  Instead, I and another naked man with a matching need would communicate on a visceral level – with words, if necessary, but also with taste and touch.

We continued driving, and passed the apartment complex that I had lived in while residing here.  I thought not of the parties with friends, or the meals I’d burnt in the kitchen, or the view from my 23^rd floor window.  Instead, I remembered the men I’d welcomed over – some of whom I’d connected with, some of whom I hadn’t really, but respected all the same.  Respected them for skipping the niceties of normal society and baring their need to me.  They would leave and I’d be left to wonder what their “real” lives were like, the life in which they had to put a mask on and return to being a son, a brother, a friend, a banker, a waiter, a doctor.

During a hook-up, I was so unmasked and authentic, that I could also be terribly vulnerable.  I would sometimes say goodbye to a hook-up, leave his place, and feel that I’d left a part of my soul behind on his bedside table.  There would be times when I wouldn’t really connect with someone I was hooking up with and feel dirty afterwards, as if I had raped myself somehow, my emotions shaken and stirred.  But that feeling would subside, and I’d be online again, looking for the next hook-up.  

Because often I would luck out and really dig the guy I was hooking up with.  Yes, I realized that even during the hook-up, I was playing a role (that of sex buddy).  But the role did away with worldly pretense and most of all, hypocrisy.  Thus, the role felt authentic, at least to me, and the by-product of that was that I felt alive and realized.

Living here, I had felt so isolated as a gay man that I believe I hooked-up sometimes for the wrong reasons in order to just feel noticed.  Now, living in a Gay Village, I am no longer isolated and therefore less inclined to hook-up out of desperation.  I used to think that hook-ups were just about getting off.  But if that were so, we could all just jerk off.  No, we hook-up because we need to be seen.  We need our authentic sexual needs acknowledged and accepted.  Even if we like being single, and feel that we are not the marrying kind, we still need to be touched occasionally (touched gently if you wish, or slapped hard by a gorgeous dom Master).

The new trend for gays is to resist being ghettoized and to not live in a Gay Village.  But here I am in my old town, and the world feels and looks so straight that I feel like a ghost walking through it. I feel a void here that cannot be filled by terrific parents and loving friends.  I feel castrated and lonely, and I would sleep with just about anybody just to be recognized as a fellow gay traveller. 

I’m ready to go home.