sorry, but if this must live on in my head, it must live in yours too

so i'm sitting out on the deck havin' the first smoke of the day, perusing the day's news whilst sipping on my protein shake.  distractedly taking a large swig, i bite into a blueberry the blender's blades must've missed.  as a juicy, bitter taste floods my mouth, followed immediately by a hot, stinging sensation, it occurs to me that i hadn't put blueberries in my shake this morning.

so now i'm carefully studying what's left of the fuzzy, half-masticated little creature floating in the former mouthful of liquid which is now splattered all over my deck, wondering if the bite the unidentifiable, vindictive little fucker applied to my inner lip as his last act on earth will make this my last blogpost ever.

stay tuned--oh, and enjoy dinner.

from the guttermorality mailbag

comes what has to be, if for no other reason than its unusual absence of words like "racist", "asshole" and "quisling", my all-time favorite reader email:

so on some entry that you had half your address mailing thing scanned in, i searched for hours on facebook for people with those initials and i thought your last name was flores for some reason. so this one guy i found actually started texting me and we met up after i was thinking it was you cause i asked if he had a blog and he said yes (i shoulda asked which blog, but i'm remedial like that). made out a little, found out he was the opposite of hung (and not you) and i rolled out on him.

i figure it's ok to put this up because it's been awhile and i don't think he comes here anymore.  goddam stalkers--so fickle.

9/11.2

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from everyone who didn't do it.

william burroughs

i've been helping my overworked sister out on her new show, ghostwriting lead-ins and filler for the various stories she produces.  she texted me this weekend, said, "forget that piece for monday--it's gonna be all sandy hook elementary, all week long."

well, of course it is.

and why shouldn't it be?  the media and the politicians don't get to partake of a feeding frenzy like this one every goddam day, and boy, are they making the most of it.  those broken little bodies in connecticut weren't even cold before opportunistic, authoritarian "progressives" were out there shrilly demanding new laws, regulations and crackdowns to "fix" a problem they themselves played no small part in creating, helped along by a voracious, non-stop media that would never dream of examining the role it plays in creating and encouraging these monsters.

and the people?  instead of taking even a moment to reflect on the path that has led us to this sorry societal state, they eat it all up indiscriminately, their emotions high and critical faculties dulled by a half-century of ever-increasing, dumbed-down media manipulation and unearned overindulgence.  of course the guns must be the problem--easy, right?

i could go into all the reasons why the guns aren't the problem--i could go all micro and talk about adderall-addled, fatherless kids, and parents who substitute mindless consumerism for actual parenting.  i could talk about marathon stints spent in splendid, brain-rewiring techno-isolation behind a joystick playing "grand theft auto" and "call of duty", racking up rewards for every kill.

or i could go macro and talk about how politicians from time immemorial have exploited emotionally-charged crises to foist upon the populace wars and draconian, freedom-restricting laws that, five minutes prior to the crisis, the populace wouldn't have for a moment entertained--all to keep them "safe".

or i could even get specific and point out that violent crime has plummeted over the past decade even as gun ownership has skyrocketed.  or that states that have enacted concealed-carry legislation have seen the greatest drops in gun violence. or that most of the gun violence that does occur happens in those war-zone neighborhoods that are the happy product of the politicians' "war on poverty". or even that countries like switzerland in which the preponderance of families own at least one gun enjoy a very low gun-violence crime rate.

but i've already spent the weekend and much of today doing that--conversation after pointless, fruitless conversation--and i'm tired.

and i see the handwriting on the wall.  because this one--this one--will be the 9/11 of which the gun-control cadre have for so long dreamed.  i know it--and so, for that matter, does the NRA, which is laying quite low while the demagogues cry their crocodile tears and prepare their latest onslaught on what little freedom we have left.  it will happen in incremental steps, of course, like it always does, but it will happen nonetheless.

for the record, as of the date of this post, i do not own, nor have i ever owned, a gun.

this state of affairs will most likely soon change.

the apartment

"this place is amazing," i found myself breaking one of my cardinal rules by blurting, to which he replied, "yeah. come on back," and led me to the bedroom.

but it truly was--high in the sky, minimalist-modern, 10' ceilings, vast expanses of glass in every room giving out onto a spacious terrace overlooking the lights of the city beyond.

he shed his clothes without ceremony or conversation--not muscular, but even at 35, he had one of those lean, bronzed, life-long-effortless speedo-bodies i've always envied. having already put myself at an early disadvantage, i compounded the error by lamely trying to break the ice by saying,

"jesus, is there even any such thing as an outta-shape brazilian?"

instead of laughing, he looked at me like i'd just farted in church, said, "why would you ask me that?  do i look like i know ugly people?"

ah, so he thinks it's gonna be like that.

thing he'd forgotten was, his sexual needs were urgent, specific and well-suited to my particular skill-set, so it only took me about 10 minutes to break through that haughty wall and put him where i wanted him; i.e., ready to spill his guts to me afterwards.

i listened as he recounted his indulged childhood, his emerging sexuality, his emigration to america, his rewarding-but-low-paid career, made all the right noises as i waited for the only thing i was really curious about:  how he had ended up in this goddam apartment.

turns out it belonged to a wealthy, married east-coast biotech-type who kept it (and him) so that he could come out three or four times a year and scratch an itch that couldn't be scratched at home.  when i met him, this arrangement was entering its fifth year.

jesus god, this guy had landed the weho holy grail--a stable, distant, undemanding, non-repulsive sugar daddy who allowed him to live in the lap of luxury, hobnob with movie-star neighbors, and he only had to put out once a quarter and on the occasional trip abroad.  what's not to like?

turns out, a lot.  he'd been in love with the guy from the start, knew he'd never leave his wife and kids, and, four years in and counting, was coming to terms with the fact that he was closing in on 40, still single, and wasting the prime of his life in this gilded cage.

so he satisfied himself with the occasional trick when he couldn't stand it anymore, never saw anyone more than once.

until me, that is.  once he let me in, i found a warm, smart, funny, sweet-if-somewhat-spoiled guy i enjoyed in and outta bed, and began to entertain stupid fantasies of taking him away from all this.

once a week (or two), i'd pull up in my crappy truck, hand the valet my keys, enter the marbled lobby, announce myself to the concierge, who, after giving me an only slightly-knowing smile, would key me up to the eleventh floor, where he'd be waiting.

one night i drunkenly poured out the whole story to an acquaintance--leaving out all the identifying details, i'd thought--only to find said acquaintance three weeks later standing in the living room of that marvelous apartment in the sky when i showed up for a party.  guy looked at me, looked at him, his eyes got big, his jaw dropped as i called out his name, strode quickly across the room, pulled him into an embrace, planted my lips on his and said into his open mouth, "say one word and i'll fucking kill you."

our last date, we went to see the movie of the moment, sat close, held hands, sniffled together, went back to the apartment, had brokeback sex.  curled up in my arms afterwards, he snuggled closer, said, "that's what i want, mike--a love like they had."

my heart fluttered a little.  "so why don't you reach out and take it?"

he raised his head, looked at me incredulously, said, "yeah, like i'm gonna move into some crappy studio in hollywood, buy some IKEA furniture and wait for true love.  diahann carroll had me over for dinner last week--how am i supposed to give that up?"

yeah.

many months later, i found myself back in that elevator, pressing "11", expecting...well, i wasn't sure.  what i got was, "i forgot you were coming, so i made other plans.  hurry--we don't have much time" as he headed toward the bedroom.

don't know for sure, but i imagine the "fuck you" he got in reply as i slammed back out the door came as big a shock to him as it did his genteel neighbors.

he hit me up on adam the other night, like nothing had happened.  i did the math--it had been almost six years, so he had to be well past that dreaded 40 mark.  i asked him, "so, you still in the same place?"  he replied, "yeah--come over", and i signed off, closed the laptop, went to bed.

guess i can't blame him.  it's a great apartment.

and the reviews are in (continued)

when i wrote the first part of this post, it was with the full intention of coming back in part 2 and doing a point-by-point response to the reviews of this blog referenced therein.

thankfully, i'm sober now and back to my usual semi-indifference to the opinions of others, so i'll spare you most of it.  but i did wanna address a couple things.

first, one of paulo's readers weighs in:

what strikes me most about gregory's review of my blog--aside, of course, from its typical compassionate-liberal viciousness--is how it completely misses the point.  no sense of humor?!  this whole goddam blog is nothing but a dark cosmic joke, and i thought i'd made that fairly clear.  so either gregory's an idiot, or i've been deluding myself as to the extent of my supposed cleverness.  god, i hope it's the former.

as for paulo himself, while he professes to love the blog, he seems to see its author as nothing more than an amoral, aging lothario drunkenly crowing about all the boys he's nailed.  to this, i can only respond with the following, from an email i once wrote to faithful commenter noblesavage:

the reason you cringe at my trick stories, rob--in fact, the reason so much of what i write is cringeworthy--is because that is the intention of this long, five-year gutter-morality tale.  or, to put it another way,

oh mother, tell your children, not to do what i have done

(and yeah, will, i know--the animals did that one, too.)

where paulo nails me to the wall, however, is with the following observation:

I believe that even though one should have some courtesy to the person reading their drivel, paying a reader too much mind can fuck with your head as a writer.

boy, is he right about that.  i'm starting to care about what you assholes think, and it's clearly fucking with my head.

and the reviews are in

I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

                                                       some old song

i've been writing guttermorality for almost five years, and have nearly called it quits as many times.  while i wouldn't trade the experience for anything, it's been in many ways a long and lonely slog.  i have few readers and even fewer commenters, and those commenters i do have--and i love you guys, don't get me wrong--tend to focus on the surface of whatever i've written, rather than the substance.

consequently, in the absence of any real criticism and feedback, i've been basically writing in a vacuum all this time.  believe it or not, i agonize over every one of these posts, try to distill 'em down to their bare essence, make 'em look offhand, layer in all sorts of subtle meaning--you know, say what i wanna say without actually saying it, and hope somebody gets it.  but i'm usually left to wonder if anybody ever does.

well, tonight i got an answer, of sorts--from not only one writer, but two.

lemme talk about paulo a minute.  i first came across his column many years ago whilst flipping through a new, cheap-newsprint biweekly weho rag called fab!, and, after lingering for probably too long over his picture,

gritted my teeth and steeled myself for whatever inane, crayon-scrawled prattlings with which this pretty-boy had managed to fill the space below.  because, clearly, he couldn't possibly be anything but a desperate, gay-affirmative action hire to draw readers to a struggling new paper with eye candy, right?

wrong.  this boy had the chops--his writing was brazen, honest, shameless, street-articulate, hideously un-PC, not to mention dead-on and funny as hell, and he had me from word one.  and i came back issue after issue not only to see what gay sacred cow he'd be (usually accurately) skewering this time--and, often as not, and to his credit, that included himself--but to snicker at how the peanut gallery had reacted to his last incendiary blast.  because lemme tellya, there was nothing more entertaining to ol' mkf than a buncha clutching-their-pearls, outraged fags writing letters to the editor week after week who couldn't decide what they needed more--to hate paulo or to fuck him.  (me?  i was conflicted too--i couldn't decide whether i wanted to fuck him or be his best girlfriend.  i settled for neither.)

sadly, fab! eventually went the way of all truly interesting gay publications--i.e., outta business--and i lost track of paulo. but i never forgot him.  i'd eventually launch guttermorality as a political blog, and, when one drunken night i tired of that shit and decided to get a little personal but wondered how far i should push it, i thought of him and how he'd owned his shit and decided, "fuck, if he could do it, i guess i can, too."

which brings us (almost) to today.  see, a few weeks ago, i got a hair up my ass to google ol' paulo, see what he was up to, and found his blog.  turns out he'd been through a lot in the ensuing years--through the ol' meth rabbit hole and out the other side, victorious--and the experience had tempered and matured his writing.  gone was the boy who had so ruthlessly lashed out at those gay stereotypes he had feared becoming, replaced by a man who had every reason to be proud of who he had actually become.

so i referenced him in a post, sent him the link.  and not only did he write me back, he actually wrote a post about my goddam blog, urging his readers (who number far more than mine) to check it out.  at least one of 'em did--a writer himself--and gave me his own mini-review.

so, do they get me?  check out the link above, compare their impressions to yours, and come back next time to see what i have to say about it.  because, after five years, i think it's time i quit laying it between the lines, and explained a few things straight-up, straight-out.

somewhere down in hell, karl marx is high-fiving freddy engels whilst doing the "i told you so" dance

happy thanksgiving, everyone.

not to mention it told me a few things about myself, too

for those regular readers of this blog who know how i live to unlock people, lemme just say that this little video gave me the master key to about 75% of the guys i've slept with over the last 15 years.

as i've said here before, unlike most guys, i really don't have much use for porn--to me, most of it looks a lot more like work than any kinda sex i'd wanna have--but i think what's presented here holds true for most any activity in which people tend to overindulge.

or put another way, it just reinforces my long-held belief that the human brain handles scarcity so much better than it does abundance--it really, really, does.

give it a watch--i think you'll find it enlightening.

have i mentioned i have one of those voices that carries?

so tonight at work:

"hey mike, you wanna come in on sunday?"

"no."

"you sure?  it's for [toothsome young first-year associate]."

"look, the only reason i'd drag my hungover ass in here on a sunday morning is to see how [toothsome young first-year associate] looks in sweatpants.  that'd be good for an hour or so, but if he wanted to keep me here any longer than that he'd have to start taking shit off."

i watch my co-worker's guffaw in response to this brilliance freeze into a wide-eyed, fixed smile, and i know without even turning around that...fuck.

and, sure as shit, here his pretty lil' ass comes, studiously looking down at the document he's holding, through the open door.

did he hear me?  dunno, couldn't tell.  but i expect that if he did, i'll probably hear about it.

excuse me, now--i need to go count my fuck-you money again.

another day in congress

1.  the last honest man

representative ron paul of texas delivered his farewell address to the house today, using fifty minutes of the hour alloted to him for that purpose to summarize his core philosophy concerning the role of government--a philosophy and message which has varied little in the 36 years since he first set foot in that chamber--and to leave his fellow members, and his fellow americans, to consider some very pointed questions.

his speech--which i watched in its entirety, and will watch again--can be found starting at about 2:08 in the below CSPAN clip, and i would encourage every reader of this blog, whether you think you agree with dr. paul about anything or not, to listen to every word of it.  because this isn't cheap political rhetoric designed to play to the masses, folks--this is hard truth from a man who can't be bought, and i don't know of anything coming out of washington more rare or more precious than that.




and now, moving to the other end of the spectrum, we have

2.  the least honest men

today, the house financial services subcommittee concluded its yearlong investigation into the MF Global collapse and concurrent outright theft of $1.6 billion of customer funds by announcing it will issue a report tomorrow essentially assigning principal blame for said epic criminal incompetence to its wholly rightful owner, MF's CEO, jon corzine.  the report was unanimously endorsed by every member of the subcommittee--every one, that is, except for the democrats, not a single one of which felt there was sufficient evidence pointing to the guilt of their good friend (and top democratic bundler) mr. corzine to warrant such drastic action.*

the corruption, the conflict of interest--they don't even try to hide it anymore, because they know that, after all these years of it, we're so passively numbed and accepting of whatever it is they choose to foist on us, they can pretty much do whatever they want.  and so they will.

scroll back up there, click play, and cue up dr. paul--it'll be an hour well spent, i promise you.

__________________
* and please don't imagine that i'm painting the republicans as the heroes here by any means.  if mr. corzine had been one of theirs, you can be assured that the vote would've been exactly opposite

it's because we see

they'd asked me, i coulda saved 'em some research money.  it's nice to put the booze goggles on and view the world through the same pinhole that everybody else does; there's comfort in that sometimes.

link

casey

"wow, you're up.  why didn't you come out?"

he's sitting on the edge of my bed in my darkened room, fully dressed, hands folded in his lap.  drapes still drawn against the morning sun, just as i'd left them so he could sleep.

he looks up, gives me a wan smile.  "i did, but i couldn't find you.  i knew you'd come back."

"i was out on the deck with my laptop, having a smoke--you shoulda looked for me.  i feel terrible--how long have you been sitting here like this?"  i had been out there at least an hour.

he shrugs. "it doesn't matter," he says, and i can see that he means it.

this is a very different boy than the one i'd picked up last night.  that one had been a hundred twenty-five pounds of semi-drunken bravado; that one wasn't gonna let the fact that his folks had thrown him out and his friends were getting tired of him crashing on their couch get in his way.  that one had places to go and things to do, goddammit.

i flop down on the bed, pull him into my arms and we lie there like that. after awhile, i ask him, "you hungry?"

at jack-in-the-box, his destination of choice, i tell him he can have whatever he wants and smile as he shamefacedly orders half the menu.  when we get to his place, he kisses me on the cheek, says, "thanks--you're really nice," and i think, "yeah, i'm a prince."

i tell him not to lose my number, to call it if he needs to.  he gives me that smile again, gathers his paper bags full of treasure, walks away.

and all the way home, and all day today, all i can think about is a boy sitting on my bed in the dark, patiently waiting for whatever's gonna happen to him next.

so they did

if they want more stuff from government, tell them to go vote for the other guy

mitt romney

july 11, 2012

because he hadda come back for more, he hadda have it one more time

yeah, except that as soon as i leave the canyon, all my missing messages magically pop into place--but nice try, cupcake.

so i sit back and await an apology from this thoughtless little twit for wasting half my day driving halfway to hell and back for nothing, but a few days go by and then i get

as if nothing had happened.  nice try again, but i don't think so.  we'll wait him out, because--and i don't care how damn cute he and i both think he is--what he and i both know he needs doesn't exactly grow on trees in this city.

but instead, i get,

what the hell are they teaching these kids in twink school these days?  but wait, there's more:

jesus, he really is reaching now.  i'm thinking three or four more of these might earn him a provisional pass back into the Rotation, but it'll be damn sure be a grudgefuck, and he'd damn well better not blow it this time.

and that's what it's come down to, folks--playing power games with twinks.  oh well, everybody's gotta be good at something.




oh, and if you think for one goddam minute that tracking down this most obscure of tracks from the furthest reaches of the internet, creating a video of same and uploading it to youtube while drunk just for the sake of capping off this lousy post was a small feat, think again.  i'm nothing if not a slave to my goddam art, goddammit.

now get up and dance.

why? because this is what drink and boredom have reduced me to

presented for your delectation, much as i found it earlier this evening:

so why are we ragging on kewl, happy, dumb-as-a-rock chad tonight?  because it's been a bad day, i'm in a mood and chad's an easy target, that's why.

see, in stark contrast to chad with his naturally beach-blond hair, beach-blond body, beach-blond millions and apparent invulnerability to disease, mkf drags his fat, aging ass outta bed every morning and girds his ever-widening loins for yet one more struggle with demons and darkness and existential-angsty aloneness before finally collapsing, exhausted, into yet one more uneasy little slice of death, full of the awful, sisyphean knowledge that, at best, he's doomed to arise the next morning and do it all again.  no surf.  no jet-ski.  and god knows, no sailing yacht.

sure, i know there are multitudes of chads out there who live golden, effortlessly-blissful lives, but i don't particularly enjoy having my nose rubbed in that fact, especially when i think i'm safe among my own maladjusted, sex-twisted kind--i mean, hell, just the big dick without the correspondingly disfiguring big-dick features alone should be enough to have him killed in my book.*

so with all this in mind, i decided to drop chad a line, ask him to help me make some sense of the unfairness of the universe.

if i receive anything beyond a "duh?" in response, i'll be sure to let you know, but i don't have high hopes--i expect his little beach-blond pucker is every bit as flawless as his little beach-blond dreams.

_____________
*and yeah i know, noblesavage, but if chad is a figment of some old perv's imagination designed to lure hot, unwitting boys to send him revealing photos of themselves, i have no post, so we're not going with that one.

can we just once and for all put this idiocy behind us now?

and maybe turn our focus to slightly more pressing and tangible threats such as, oh i dunno, the impending utter and complete collapse of the financial and monetary systems of the western world, or the calculated, systematic and ongoing destruction of our civil liberties?

just a thought.

link

so should i suffer beheading, or merely the loss of a limb?

believe it or not, i actually experienced a twinge of reflexive guilt when i pulled into the parking lot.

slapped myself three times--hard--my vision cleared, rationality returned, and i ordered my sandwich.

it was as i remembered--very tasty, and a little overpriced.  goddam greedy christians.

spike and jason don't live here anymore

"whaddya think--doable?", paul asks, pointing to a tiny blip that had just turned the corner at the end of the block.

royce, instantly:  "nah, he walks old."

it's autumn 1990, and i'm sitting with my new roommates in royce's mitsubishi galant on a saturday evening, parked near some seedy bar i'd never heard of but would come to know well, getting my first lesson in the fine art of cruising, LA style.

"he walks old?", i ask, incredulous, from the backseat.  "he, if it even is a he, is half a mile away, for chrissakes, and it's dark.  how can you possibly--"

"shut up and watch, and maybe you'll learn something," paul snaps without taking his eyes off the target, and sure enough, as the guy nears, his age becomes apparent even to me.  as this geriatric all-of-40 year-old comes abreast of the car, he mistakes royce and paul's triumphant grins for interest, leans in hopefully and then back out again just as quick when they break into the opening lines of "from a distance", wave him away and start laughing (they were real funny that way, those two). 

as noted more than once in these pages, i've often wondered how much my choice of first gay roommates had to do with the fag i would end up becoming.  academic at this point, i suppose, but i will say this for 'em:  those boys taught me well.  within a month, i could pick the three doables outta a crowd of a dozen at a hundred yards, just from the way they walked.  it's a skill that would serve me well in what would turn out to be the fading days of a golden age.

*     *     *     *     *

i try to explain to the young'uns sometimes what it was like living gay in weho in those days, before the meth and the internet changed everything, and the opportunities for instant, baggage-free sex were everywhere. it was a heady time, especially for a sex-starved 34-year-old just off the turnip truck, and saying i took to it like a duck to water--to the point where i started to scare even my seasoned, slutty roomies a little--would be a bit of an understatement.

in those days--and even now, really--west hollywood was divided vertically by the berlin wall known as la cienega boulevard; the glitzy, worked-out, pubic-hair-trimming types tended to stay west of this line (unless they wanted to go slumming), and the rest of us preferred the cheap drinks and cheaper company to be found to the east.

the two principal cruise bars of east west hollywood in those days were gold coast (still there, sort of) and spike (god, i miss spike), and i would become equally at home in both.  but since my primary interest in going to these places was never clubbing itself, i quickly became far more at home working the streets that surrounded them (see the helpful infographic i just whipped up below).

(oh, and where did we live?

if i hadn't understood why paul had been so insistent on that particular house when we moved in, i would soon see his point.)

by way of shorthand, paul, royce and i quickly adapted the nomenclature that pretentious LA realtors used to put lipstick on crappy neighborhoods (i.e., every low-rent shithole within 10 miles of the place being advertised as "beverly hills adjacent") to describe these areas, and thus our favored hunting grounds became

1.  gold coast adjacent

what can i say about gold coast?  it's one of those bars that looks about the same now as it did when it first opened, and back in the day, it attracted lotsa beer-drinking boyhounds and the boys who loved 'em.  while i spent many happy hours there, it was its immediate sphere of influence that interested me far more.

see, gold coast was ideally situated for my purposes--right on the boulevard just across la jolla from the smutty bookstore (a), big parking lot out back (b), and, most important, backed up by a cut-through with diagonal parking--well, here, i'll show ya--

note to the four forlorn guys parked diagonally above: 

give it up, bitches--it ain't coming back

known infamously, affectionately and forevermore as vaseline alley (c).

by day sedate and businesslike, this little plot of pavement was transformed after sundown into an ever-changing panoply of sexual seekers of all ages and stripes, the only thing uniting them being that fire down below, as the line of cars went round and round.  it was here that i scored some of my most memorable conquests--the stardust twins and that guy with the infant-seat that a certain commenter will never let me live down (and yeah, noblesavage, i know i'm gonna go to hell when i die) in the parking lot, and my first love in my favored pole position spot in vaseline alley, for instance.

and if the crush got too much, all you had to do was take a walk (or a drive) down la jolla towards melrose, and watch for the boys on foot and the headlights coming toward you.  guys would beckon to you from the bushes of the more well-landscaped houses you passed, and drivers would slow, check you out and throw their doors open for you if they liked what they saw.

eschewing the shiny benzes and bimmers (invariably, either desperate oldies or coiffed weho faggots), i would always keep an eye out for the dented subarus and nissans with duct tape and different-color fenders, because i knew therein would be the wild young boys i loved so much, fresh off their dishwashing jobs at trendy westside eateries, looking for a little action before heading home to their girlfriends in inglewood and montebello.  if they were willing, i'd drag 'em home to 841; if they were gun-shy, no worries--i knew every dark alley and unattended parking garage within a five-mile radius.

i drove down la jolla yesterday, stopped at the sign at waring, reflexively looked left (old habits die hard, i guess), wondered if the upscale yuppies living behind those protective walls of dense foliage had any clue how many truckloads of used condoms had to be removed from their pretty little back garden in the process of transforming it from the boarded-up derelict it had been 20 years ago into the polished jewel it is today.

i'm thinking their realtor may have failed to disclose that little factoid.

2.  spike adjacent

one night, wanting to get away from yet one more houseful of royce's friends from texas, i announced on my way out the door where i was headed, showed up all bleary-eyed next morning and when one of 'em asked me brightly if i had had fun with spike and jason--and once paul, royce and i managed to pick ourselves up off the floor--the place gained its new name.

i remember one time--i still feel kinda bad about this--i was leaving spike with some guy when a much hotter guy pulled up to the curb with a wave, i leaned in, he grabbed my shirt, pulled me halfway through the window with one heavily-tattooed arm and, nose-ring to nose, snarled, "you'd rather be with me, right?", i said, "drive", and he took off in a screeching puff of smoke with my legs still waving in the air, leaving the other guy behind in his dust.

that was the way you had fun with spike and jason.

oh, and to those readers who may feel i'm giving west weho short shrift in this post, lemme just sum up that most sanctified holy of holies like this:  you could tell the main cruising streets over there--larrabee, cynthia, and (especially) keith--by the trail of blood left by herds of manicured queens dragging their poor lil' pomeranians up and down the sidewalks until their tiny paws were raw on the pretext that they were just out for a "walk" in case they ran into one of their equally secretly-slutty girlfriends (and tell me i'm wrong about this, anonymous).

me, i preferred the no-bullshit honesty of east weho--you ran into a guy on the street at 4am there, there was no pretense--you were there because you wanted to fuck, and you both knew it.  saved everybody a lot of goddam time.

anyway, moving on...

3.  drake's adjacent

[you know how you always laugh at people in respectable neighborhoods who raise a shit-stink when some porno establishment moves into their midst outta fear of the element it'll bring with it?  well, turns out they might be onto something.]

for the first few weeks, i was behind the curve on this one--i'd follow the trail of cars down la jolla to melrose as usual, make the left along with 'em, and then watch as, instead of making the next left back towards gold coast,  more and more would keep heading east.  what the fuck?,  i'd ask myself, and one night i followed to find out.

and, holy shit, what i found--a whole new hunting ground had sprung up around a glossy new adult video store named drake's that had just opened in the trendy melrose district.  and, unlike the darkened slightly-seedy neighborhoods that surrounded spike and gold coast, these were clean, brightly-lit streets filled with neat little bungalows full o' moms and pops who clearly had no idea what had just hit 'em.

to this day, i still dunno what it was--maybe it was all the light, or maybe it was the fact that the cops hadn't yet caught onto this movable feast--but, where business at the previously-discussed locations was generally conducted somewhat furtively and under cover of darkness, drake's adjacent was more like the american graffiti of gay cruising.  seriously--streams of cars full of young guys waving and hollering at each other with music blaring as they passed, others making out with each other on their hoods and trunks and hollering back, doors opening, occupants exchanging--it was like nothing i had ever seen before.

and lemme tellya--it was fun.

key memories:

(1) horrifying grandma.  it's like 3am and i'm stopped in the middle of the street--curson or sierra bonita, i don't remember which--talking to a buncha kids who are leaning in my windows, and some woman in curlers and bathrobe comes storming outta her house, waves her fist and curses us from the middle of her yard, and we just look at her until she gives up and goes back inside.

(2) the night the empire struck back.  i know what they are the minute i turn the corner onto sierra bonita, and what they mean--those ugly black rubber hoses stretched halfway across the street--slam on my brakes, and, after thinking a minute, wave my arm out the window in a "follow me, boys" gesture, slalom left around the first traffic-counter and then right around the next, with a whole line o' cars behind me doing the same, as we form a continuous serpentine conga line dodging the traps the evil homeowners had induced the authorities to lay for us in an attempt to kill the party.  it's the only gay trend i can lay claim to starting, and i take some small pride in that (shut up, noblesavage).

(3)  the night the universe told me the fun was over.  as dawn is breaking over the stubbed-out end of a long, fruitless saturday night, a really hot, well-dressed guy rounds the corner into the alley, gives me a long look

finally, i think

disappears back from whence he came

what the fuck?,  i think

and then reappears, glaring, leading his equally well-dressed wife and their two young daughters in frilly dresses, their eyes shielded by their mother from the sight of the degenerate in the car across the way.  i assume their destination is, first, the garage adjacent to the house, and then probably church, but i'm so far down in my seat by that time that i really can't tell you for sure.

*     *     *     *     *

this, folks, for better or worse, was west hollywood as i experienced it in the early- to mid-nineties--no AOL, no manhunt, no grindr, no digital at all; just analog, up-close and personal.

i really don't know what else to say about those years--i was a kid in a candy store, and, like any kid gorging himself on long-forbidden treats, conscience really didn't play a large part in some of the decisions i made back then.

kids today just look at me when i tell 'em these stories.  "you're telling me you used to could just drive around and pick up guys on the street?", they ask me incredulously.

if you only knew, boys--if you only knew.

god, i love this medium

there was a time, boys and girls, when mkf might've jumped through hoops like this, but that time has long passed.

as is typical when i flatly reject a boy who's used to calling the shots, it took him about three-and-a-half minutes to process his disbelief before coming back with

god, one of those.

i won't bore you with the three more back-and-forths it took me to convince him we weren't a match, but it just goes to show the power of the guttermorality indifference technique--it works even when you don't want it to.

on a lighter note, joey got back in town last night, which made me doubly glad i had hung onto my weekend virginity.

now if you'll excuse me, i gotta go floss.

the guttermorality of homewrecking

i'm not put off by it anymore--i know by now that when he rolls away from me and faces the wall afterwards, it's nothing personal, and that within five minutes or so or whenever it passes, he'll look back over his shoulder with that sheepish smile that just kills me, roll back into the crook of my arm, and we'll talk.

for the longest time it was just generalized post-coital catholic-boy guilt that caused him to do that, but now it's something more specific.  because now he's dating someone--the first guy he's felt something for in a long time.  he's closed his adam account, but he can't figure out why he still needs to keep me (and who knows, maybe one or two others) on rotation.

i ask to see pictures, he grabs his phone, shows me proudly.  guy looks like matt in his prime (either leblanc or dillon, depending on the angle), so god knows looks aren't the problem--i can only imagine the visual these two make as a couple.

i ask him if the guy's withholding and cool, but no--just the opposite.  he's apparently crazy about him, calls and texts him all the time, so affection's not the problem, either.

i ask him if it's the sex, and he says no--it's really good too (i almost ask if it's as good as with me, but stop myself in time).

i know his history--large, close family in mexico, came to LA at 21, met and fell hard for a player, got hurt bad, rebounded into the fast lane, danced and then tended bar at one of the most raging watering holes in weho, met lots of people, got into trouble, came out the other side ok.  now, at 32 and past his weho prime, he's grounded and sane, and still sweet and sexy as hell.  but he tells me he's not the same as he was.

i ask him, "you ever even think about cheating on your first boyfriend, the one you were so crazy about?"  nah, he never even looked at anybody else.

"so what happened between the first one and this one?"  we both know:  weho happened, that's what.

"you think you could be happy in a monogamous relationship at this point?"  he doesn't know--he thinks so, except for when he gets that itch.

"how about him--you think he's seeing anybody on the side?"  he looks away quickly, which answers that question.

"look, you want this to work or not?"  yeah, he thinks he does--he's been lonely a long time.

"then you know what you have to do."  yeah, i guess.

over the months i've known him, i've loved every minute of my time with this boy.  damn shame i have to give him up.

sober update:  sorry about this one, folks--they can't all be winners, right?  i was having a cocktail and waxing a little sentimental last night, but all i really meant to say here was this:  i'm no saint mkf--far from it.  i'll fuck you and your boyfriend too, but only if you're unconflicted about it, and the damage, if any, has already been done.  will this boy be able to make a go of it with his matt dillon-leblanc?  i dunno--i hope so, for his sake--but if not, it won't be because of me.

on psychopathy in high places (or, one of the reasons i drink)

[once again veering wildly from gutter to morality, because that's how we roll here.]

While there are always a certain small portion of the population who [are sociopaths or psychopaths], normally society acts to restrain them and their more vile impulses.

However, from time to time, the small percentage can gain enough power through ruthlessness and deception to foster an atmosphere that not only tolerates their excesses, but actually holds them up as an example for the young as well. When the power of greed in business finds a suitable match in the political arena, that partnership can seem almost unstoppable for a time. It is increasingly difficult to effect reform because so many of the more effective elements of society become corrupted and cynical to the point of apathy.

In a word, the governance of society becomes an organized hypocrisy engaged in systematic destruction, of not only others but also of society itself, especially as the others either resist more effectively or collapse from sheer exhaustion.

As I have mentioned before, in discussing this with some older fellows who have a bit of a broader personal perspective, and in reading deeply in history and its cycles, it seems as though the West entered into such a cycle, in the 1980's. It is merely reaching its full flower today.

The consequences on society as a whole, if history is any guide, will be profound, even moreso than we have seen so far.

the above from jesse, blogger extraordinaire, one of my never-fail daily reads. a clear-eyed, seasoned, successful trader who's lived all over the world, seen it all, made lots of money yet has never lost his humanity, jesse is a philosopher with no apparent ideology other than a humble, non-intrusive christianity (skewing classical-liberal if anything), whose knowledge base is broad and deep, and from which he attempts to put the events of the day into a historical perspective.

one of his strong beliefs is that psychopaths are running the world today; he backs up this contention with all sorts of compelling evidence, two examples of which are featured in his latest post.  from one of the articles he cites therein:

[T]hey seem to be unaffected by the corporate collapses they have created. They present themselves as glibly unbothered by the chaos around them, unconcerned about those who have lost their jobs, savings, and investments, and as lacking any regrets about what they have done.

They cheerfully lie about their involvement in events, are very persuasive in blaming others for what has happened and have no doubts about their own continued worth and value. They are happy to walk away from the economic disaster that they have managed to bring about, with huge payoffs and with new roles advising governments how to prevent such economic disasters.

Many of these people display several of the characteristics of psychopaths and some of them are undoubtedly true psychopaths. Psychopaths are the 1% of people who have no conscience or empathy and who do not care for anyone other than themselves.

while the above article focuses on corporate psychopathy, jesse (and i) believe that this rot has pervaded the realm of government as well (because, after all, the former couldn't thrive without the wholehearted collaboration of the latter, who know they will be richly rewarded for same via campaign funds and upon leaving office).

this goes a long way towards explaining how such luminaries as bill clinton, robert rubin, larry summers, phil gramm (and his wife), hank paulsen, tim geithner, alan greenspan, chris dodd, barney frank, jamie dimon, lloyd blankfein, vikram pandit--i could go on and on--can not only self-righteously deny their clear responsibility for the roles they played in the tragicomedy that is our economic downfall, but brazenly put themselves forward as the voices of reason who can lead us out of it.

[this also explains why, in last night's debate, mitt romney chose not to score a direct hit by slamming his opponent for not only giving the fraudulent banksters who caused this mess a free pass, but elevating many of the worst offenders to positions of power and influence in his administration--because how can he, when he too suckles from that same, pus-filled teat?]

i try to explain this to people sometimes, but they just can't get it--to them, psychopaths are serial killers, or villains in movies, or maybe hitlers and stalins.  this is understandable, i guess; people with consciences find it very difficult to wrap their minds around the idea that perfectly normal-appearing men and women who are possessed of no such constraints can walk among them undetected, and that such people are naturally drawn to positions of power over others.

and it is this collective blindness that allows psychopaths and sociopaths to thrive.  of course, as jesse also points out, a society possessed of a strong, collective sense of right and wrong tends to act as a natural check on the impulses of these monsters.  the problem comes when, through decadence, political correctness, apathy and/or other means, the pathology that takes root in high places begins its inevitable trickle down.

*     *     *     *     *

have you heard this story yet?  seems that last night, a couple decided that, screw the hotel room--they'd just have sex where they were.

"where they were", in case you haven't heard, happened to be at a table on the outdoor patio of a restaurant.

lest you assume that these were two lowlife, drug-addled cretins at some low-down dive, au contraire--we're talking an attractive, well-dressed young couple at a nice, midrange chain restaurant in an upscale area of orlando, at prime dinner hour, surrounded by a large crowd of middle-american tourists including families with small children.

and yet there they were, fucking on the table.

and lest you think that a hail of immediate and vociferous outrage on the part of said families arose and drove these vile corrupters of their precious youth from their midst, au contraire again.

they sat there, and watched.  and they let their children watch.  happiest place on earth, indeed.

oh, and lest you think this story has nothing to do with what the fuck i'm talking about here, may i just say au contraire one last time.

because, gentle readers, i want you to think about this:  if this is where we are as a society--and please don't tell me this incident represents an aberration, because i can give you a thousand more if you want--if we have devolved to the point where our middle classes can so easily and collectively turn a bland eye to corruption when it manifests itself in full view of their children, how can we ever muster the will to even acknowledge it, much less fight it, when it hides behind glossy corporate advertising and well-crafted campaign slogans?

ah, fuck it--it's happy hour somewhere, right?

other than that, mrs. alvarez, how did you like the neighborhood?

johnnie lives with his mother in the westlake district of los angeles, a once-grand neighborhood near downtown that today would be described as sketchy at best. on the way to my place, i asked him by way of conversation how he and his mother liked living there, and he said, "it's not bad--we've been there a long time."

and then he told me by way of conversation about how back when he was in high school, a gang in the neighborhood sent a rival gang member a message by shooting and then garotting the guy's kid brother--a classmate of johnnie's--and then hanging the kid's splayed body by the neck from the front doorknob of their apartment for his mother to find when she came home from work.

"this happened near you?" i asked. "oh yeah," he said. "the building next door."

i thought about that a long minute, asked about the kid's mother. he said, "oh, she moved after that." that wasn't what i meant, but i let it go.

on the drive home after dropping johnnie off, i thought about his ordinary-looking building, the ordinary-looking building next door, the dozens of times i had walked those self-same ordinary streets at all hours secure in the knowledge that my white, middle-class bubble of immunity followed me everywhere.

and it occurred to me, and not for the first time, that after twenty-three years here, i still don't know shit about this city.

well, duh

i remember one night several years ago--pre-obama--the subject of LA's illustrious mayor came up, and i went off, citing a litany of reasons to back up my contention that he was the dumbest, most clearly unfit major officeholder in america (an opinion which, btw, has only been reinforced over the ensuing years).  so caught up was i in my rant that i failed to pick up on the cues from my audience--in this case, a really smart latino with whom i was having an interesting conversation--to which i am usually so attuned, and was thus surprised when, all tight-faced and angry, he cut me off in mid-sentence with

"you know what? you may be right--villaraigosa may be a fool, but he's our fool, and i'm really not comfortable discussing him with your smug white ass, so i'd appreciate it if you'd just shut the fuck up."

oh.

it was a light-bulb moment for my smug, white ass, and i walked away from that little encounter resolved never to make that mistake again (oh, and thankful that i'd saved the talking until after the fucking).

when, a few years later, obama rose to prominence, i looked him over and dismissed him as a lightweight who'd ridden the affirmative-action bullet train straight from high-school slacker to presidential contender with very few stops in between (an opinion which, btw, has only been reinforced over the ensuing years); but, having learned my lesson, have wisely confined the airing of my views on the subject to those of my own kind.

because here's a little hard truth i learned the hard way, bitchez:  deny it as you might, we humans are a very tribal species--it's baked deep into our genes--and the emphasis on that particular human trait tends to rise in any given tribe in direct proportion to the degree of threat or sense of oppression it perceives at the hands of another.

this explains why, among so many blacks and latinos in this PC-benighted country, the emphasis on race first, last and always is seen not only as natural, but healthy--and also why any members of the perceived dominant tribe (i.e., me) who exhibit the same equally-natural impulses are condemned as racist.

or, as one of the sources quoted for the article from which the above headline derives puts it,

It goes both ways. There is racial bias amongst whites, and there is racial bias amongst blacks. But as far as the press is concerned, it only goes one way.

do i begrudge the black folk their fealty to their president?  hell, no--it's been a long time coming, and if i were black, i'd probably suspend my critical faculties and support him too.  objectivity may or may not come in time--or, as a black law professor so succinctly and honestly puts it in that same article,

There should not be this resistance to pride over the first black president. If we get to the fifth one, I'll be with you.

yeah?  we'll see.

since you asked--the sober version

[and the navel-gazing continues . . .]


not satisfied with my answer, huh?  well, i'm not really, either, so lemme try again.

as you know, back when i first hit town i began my gay career by attending the wednesday-night group rap sessions at the LA gay & lesbian center.  in retrospect, probably a mistake--mostly a buncha lonely misfit-types sitting around talking about their misfit loneliness, interspersed with a few clueless newbies like myself.  not exactly the best introduction to the life, but what the hell did i know?  i had no steve kuzi to guide me this time.

anyway, that very first night, in response to my introduction, one of the guys--a fat, loud, outspoken mid-fifties new-yorker named art, cut through all the murmured greetings and socializing suggestions by saying, "screw these guys--if i were your age and looked like you, i'd be out sucking and fucking every goddam night."  i tucked this little pearl of wisdom away for future examination.

a couple weeks later, i hooked up for the very first time with one of the guys in the group, a shy, sweet latin boy who told me afterwards, "i'm so glad i caught you now."  when i asked what he meant, he said, "you know--you're all new, at the height of your studliness (i never forgot that phrase).  you've got your whole gay life in front of you.  you're gonna play around for a little while with a lotta cute guys, and then you're gonna meet the one, settle down and make some lucky guy a great husband."

didn't quite turn out that way, did it?

i spend a lot of time second-guessing the choices i've made in my life--for instance, i wonder sometimes how differently things mighta turned out for me if my first gay housemates had been a couple high-minded ph.d's instead of royce and paul--but for the most part, and in the end, i think destiny wins out, and we end up who we were meant to be.

the kid was half-right; i possessed one of the components for gay success--i was new, cute and studly--but i was sorely lacking in the other.  to put it bluntly, i was not, and am not, much fun to be around.  i don't care for most people, nor they for me.  crowds make me nervous, and i really don't enjoy going out and doing things.  i'm depressive and negative and overly-critical, i don't think like the herd, and most guys i meet aren't willing put up with me for more than about five minutes unless my dick is up their ass.

and don't tell me i'm wrong, rob--hell, even you, my best and oldest friend in LA, can only take me in small doses up-close-and-personal these days.  before guttermorality came along and revived our relationship, i saw you once a year for maybe an hour, tops--and that's if i was lucky.  now, thanks to the blog and email, we spend long stretches together like we did when we first met, if only at digital arms-length.  i've always appreciated the irony in that; i wonder if you ever do.

and speaking of this goddam blog, that's another thing.  what started out as a drunken lark very quickly became a personal daily referendum--a self-worth test, as it were.  if i couldn't suck people in with my personal magnetism, could i maybe do it with my words?  even as my writing has exponentially improved, the answer to that question, as has been clearly demonstrated by my stats and comment count over lo these past four-plus years, has remained a resounding and unmistakeable "fuck no."  i'm becoming bitter about this, it ain't a good look on me, it's starting to bleed into my writing, and if i don't get some interaction going here pretty soon, i'm taking this sucker private, extending invitations to the chosen few, and all the lurkers--and yeah, you know who you are--can go fuck themselves and feast on their trainwrecks elsewhere.

they say there's a lid out there for every pot, and for awhile i thought i'd found mine in v--he loved everything about me everybody else doesn't, he put up with my shit, he could keep up with me, and he stuck around through thick and thin.  and i loved him back as best i could, and i really tried (or so i tell myself), but in the end, i could never give my heart to an overgrown kid who'd joyously spend $200 on an authentic, george lucas-authorized light saber when he could barely make his rent.  he's gone now, who knows where--finally gave up on the lost cause, i guess.  the good half of me hopes he's found someone fun who deserves his sweet, sexy, eternally irresponsible ass--when the bad half isn't damning him to hell for abandoning me, that is.

so here i sit--crabby, middle-aged and alone.  is that the worst thing in the world?  i dunno; for me, probably not.

i had my shot, rob--i was a hot commodity there for a precious little while, and you would probably say that instead of investing my limited capital wisely for long-term growth, i blew it all on short-term, rapidly-depreciating assets.  and while that's probably true, even back in my glory days--when cute, hot, desirable guys were asking me for dates instead of just dick--i couldn't in my wildest dreams imagine myself being shackled to even the best of 'em.

i really don't know how to end this post except to fall back on those words my widowed, one-man-woman mother--and now i--live by:  the only thing worse than being alone is wishing you were.

as v would say if he were here, "true dat."

since you asked

the following is a long, rambling answer to a short, pointed question.  i'm posting it here because this is where i keep such things now, secure in the knowledge that nobody'll ever find 'em.

as for the old drivers license above, i found it when i was packing to move, remembered how much i hated that photo--the ugly boy with the w.c. fields nose.  god, we can be so dumb when we're young.



did i ever tell you about st. patrick's day 1985, rob?  i spent that evening at hall's in austin, steve kuzi by my side; by that time we were a fixture in the place--the buff, burly protector and the scared-wabbit newbie.  that night would be different, though; towards midnight, drunk off my ass, i broke away from kuzi for the first time ever, wandered off on my own, found a cute boy who had tried unsuccessfully for weeks to catch my eye, walked up to him and asked his disbelieving ass if he wanted to give me my first gay kiss.

the next two hours were a happy blur; word spread quickly that the new guy was off his leash--i must've gotten two or three dozen first gay kisses that night.  it was probably the most fun i've ever had in a gay crowd (with the possible exception of that time at sunset street fair when your friend jonathan and i drunkenly three-way made out with that really hot guy at detour that i ended up going home with--you remember that, right?).

next time i walked into halls, i was back to my usual sober, shut-down self, welded at the hip to kuzi, not looking left or right.  people eventually got the message, left me alone.

paulo murillo, that perennial weho man-about-town (check out his blog--it's a hoot), opines that there are basically two kindsa fags:  those who are invited to the party and those who aren't, and that most fag-bitchy bitterness originates from those who are wrecked to find themselves in the latter group.

while i think there is much truth there, being the social type that he is, ol' paulo could never understand someone who would trash his invitation unopened.

*     *     *     *     *

i've always been that way;  while there are many things i would change about my high-school years if i could, joining a clique would not be one of 'em.  while in college, my idle fantasies about hanging with those intoxicatingly-cute fraternity boys in their polo shirts and tony lamas evaporated the first time i attended one of their parties.

and you remember my first and only circuit event--white party 1993, right?  i enjoyed the drive to palm springs with you, and throwing back a few with your friends in our suite, but as for the actual party itself, lemme just say that as soon as that godawful music started pounding and those shirtless, manicured, meth-addled faggots started writhing, i couldn't cut one outta the herd and drag his tweaking ass back to his room fast enough.

my heart has always been a lonely hunter, rob, and now here i find myself, having put in twenty-three boy-chasing years in a city that's never been home, sitting here by myself.

your question--why, at my age, i'm still "fetishizing youth"--misses the point; i could never fall in love with any of the boys i sleep with, nor most of 'em with me. my heart, if it ever falls, will fall for an equal.  i don't seek out the young; i seek out the unruined--which, in this town, anyway, seem to be one and the same.  i'd love to find a man who could challenge me to give it up for him, but i've never let myself learn how; in the solitary circles in which i run, most of the guys anywhere near my age are far more fucked up than i am.

i've often wondered how differently things might've turned out for the boy in that picture up there if the coin had landed tails instead of heads, and he had ended up on the east coast instead--maybe he'd have found that fabled faggot algonquin round table, which is the only clique to which he's ever wanted to belong.

or maybe that's just a cop-out--whatever; i gotta take my vitamins, catch some zzzzz's.  

it's gonna be a busy week.

luv, 

me

thanks as always, guys

so today, in sore need of a little no-questions-asked comfort, i turned to a couple old friends who've never let me down.

we met seven years ago during a cock-hunt from which they emerged the clear winners; while they couldn't hold a candle lookswise to some of the guys i sleep with routinely, their simple, unselfconscious cum-drenched enthusiasm won me over in a way that all the pretty boys in the world could never on their best day do.

they disappeared from my life for awhile; when i finally tracked 'em down, i made sure that this time they'd never get away from me again.  i gotta admit i myself have turned to other, lesser guys from time to time, but i always come back.  they don't mind; they never ask or expect anything of me--they just give without question.

decision made, the anticipation alone was enough to get me excited; by the time they made their actual appearance, i was hard and ready.  we fell into the practiced three-way dance we had shared so many times; i matched 'em stroke for stroke, coming close when one did and backing off, and then edging myself to near-climax with the other.  in the end, not able to hold it back any longer, we all came precisely together just as we always had, and then fell back, happy and spent.

as i wiped myself off, i wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to experience with a real human what i do with two guys who exist only in a 14-minute, 32-second video clip on my computer.

who knows, maybe one of these days i'll find out.  but i'm not holding my breath.

a little guttermorality post-debate analysis

i didn't watch the presidential debate last night; i never watch presidential debates.

ok, that's not strictly true--i did watch all of the mccain debates, on the off-chance that one of his opponents would say something sufficiently incendiary to send the good senator flying across the podium at him.  sadly, that didn't happen.

i didn't watch the debate last night because i knew it would tell me nothing i didn't already know about these two candidates.  there would be nothing spontaneous about the evening, because these are careful, disciplined, tightly-controlled men--perhaps the only thing they have in common.

but watching the aftermath today, i gotta say it's fascinating to see the left start to wake up to the reality i recognized about their messiah long ago.  basically, what you had last night was a grown-up version of the high-school valedictorian going head-to-head in a battle of wits with jeff spicoli, and apparently it wasn't pretty.

but, of course, before acceptance must come denial:

chris matthews opines with spittle flying that mr. obama just needs to get up to speed by watching more MSNBC, and he'll be fine.

bob woodward explains the president's poor performance by theorizing he must've been preoccupied with some weighty foreign-policy issue that prevented his full engagement.

but my favorite by far, from the aptly named charles blow--a new york times columnist, no less:

yeah, that's it, mr. blow--it's all part of his brilliant master plan.

the truth which is suddenly dawning, gentlemen--and which has been out there all along for anyone willing to look beyond the hype--is that your guy really isn't very engaged, very strong, or very smart.

(but in his defense, even cicero woulda had trouble debating his way outta the mess that obama has made of his presidency--that is a defense, right?)

will i watch the next debate?  oh yeah--there's blood in the water now, the pressure is on, and the potential entertainment value high.  perhaps an overly-smug mitt will stumble; or perhaps the president will surprise us, but i don't see how--i mean, how can you possibly hope to ace next week's SAT when you've only spent five minutes in each grade between kindergarten and high school?

my name for it is "gay stockholm syndrome"

he is that rarest of creatures on adam:  an underseller.  he lists his true age even though he could easily pass for years younger, posts nondescript photos that belie the true beauty of his body and face, and his simple description gives no indication of his accomplishments and charm.

the first time i saw that smile in person, i was so immediately bowled over that i picked him up, carried him off to his bedroom and did him semi-clothed.  it was hurried and hot, made all the more urgent by the knowledge that his boyfriend could come home at any time (they had an arrangement, he told me, but apparently it hadn't been tested).

in the two years since, we had managed to meet a couple times under similar circumstances, but saturday night was the first time he had come to my place, thus giving us time for both our first leisurely fuck and the long-delayed post-coital interview.

i led with the standard "tell me about your first time" question.  it had happened, he told me, when he was 24, fresh outta grad school, with his new weho roommate.

what he told me next would've shocked me back when i first started asking such questions; it doesn't anymore.

"he fucked me raw for a month before he told me he was positive," he said with a wry smile.

"what happened next?", i asked, although i already had a pretty good idea.

"oh, we were together for four years."

i don't care what you're hearing out there--a lot of our kind really aren't handling this disease very well.

i'm feelin' ya, trevor