post no. 819, in which mkf first experiences the magic that is meth

1991 (or maybe '92--fuck, i don't remember)

what i do remember is, the reason i found myself in vaseline alley that particular no-action night had less to do with sex than just wanting to get outta the house, because little arthur and his desperation were starting to get to me.  this also explains why i sat there in my car long past the point where it had become clear that the pickings had gone from slim to none--whether or not i got laid that night, i was determined not to head back to 841 until i was sure our visitor had gone to bed.

and then, suddenly, as i'm giving up, flicking my last butt out the window and reaching for the key, that thing that almost never happens, happens:  outta the 3am desolation, this blond twink fantasy vision in torn jeans, a chain harness and little else emerges from around the corner by the dirty bookstore, starts heading down la jolla, moving fast.

i wait for him to walk toward what must surely be home without even throwing me a disgusted glance.  but no--he looks over, spots me, makes a beeline straight to my window, leans in all bright-eyed, licks my face before i can even react, says, "i need a place to stay tonight."

if two years working the low streets of weho had given me nothing else, it had at least taught me not to question the random gift from god when it drops into my lap, so within five minutes of that first lick we're in my bedroom, and five minutes after that i'm deep inside him.

bliss, right?  turns out, not so much.

i mean, his beauty combined with the novelty of the whole thing carried me for awhile, but after twenty minutes or so of vigorous A-game fucking, i begin to notice some things that kinda take the edge off.

like, for instance, he's distracted--and after two years of generally taking for granted the undivided attention of whoever i happen to be fucking, this is new.  what's more, kid isn't even hard, and what the fuck could possibly be up with that?

but the worst thing is, he will not shut up (and it ain't sexy talk, trust me).

so, what had started out hot fairly quickly morphs into something else entirely--some kinda endurance marathon challenge that has far less to do with sex than with just getting the damn thing done.

and i am determined to get 'er done; it becomes a validation thing, a point of pride.  i pull out all the tricks--bend that boy into every position possible, fuck him hard, fuck him slow and sweet, use long strokes, angled attacks, even resort to quick little asian-style rabbit-punch jabs, but nothing--not even my patented never-fail sideways prostate-tickler special--can get him off.

when after a full hour (because i could do that back then) of futility i finally roll off him, unspent, over it and exhausted, and he looks at me with those bright eyes and says, "that was great--rest a few minutes and we'll do it again," i know i'm up against some new, potent unknown evil force in the universe that is stronger than me; i just don't know what.

what i do know is, dawn is coming soon, i need sleep, and i need to be rid of this freak.  but i promised him a place to stay, and i'm a man of my word.

so i do the first of the two bad things i'll do this night.

as we stand together outside my roommate's door, i reassure the boy once again what a great top paul is (while crossing my fingers behind my back and hoping god won't strike me dead for this egregious lie), open the door, shove the kid through the blackness in the general direction of paul's bed, pull it shut and stumble back to my own room, turn out the lights, hope for the best.

which hope turns out to be remarkably short-lived--before i've even gotten my eyes good and closed, my door flies open, the lights go on, and there's paul, wild-haired, wild-eyed, red nose snot-clogged with sleep, underwear askew, screaming, "a bottom--seriously?  you sent me a BOTTOM? WHAT'D YOU THINK WE WERE GONNA DO--BUMP PUSSIES?!", as he shoves back the gift i'd so thoughtfully sent his way before totally unnecessarily slamming my door.

"fuck, " i think, knowing i'll pay for this.  "what am i gonna do with this kid?  if only royce was here."

but royce isn't here--the roommate who might've actually been useful in this situation is currently bunking with his boyfriend so that his visiting friend, the aforementioned arthur, can use his room at our house while he's in town.

see, royce was constantly inviting friends from texas to come out and stay with us, but arthur has been by far the most needy of the bunch--he'd arrived all innocent and starry-eyed and shit, anticipating a week of decadence and debauchery in this legendary sin city where the fun never stops.  and it's not like arthur isn't presentable, and it's not like we haven't tried to serve his fantasy up for him--we've taken him to rage and mickey's and studio one and mother lode and circus and even spike, practically shoved him at any guy who checked him out--but the shyness that arthur had hoped to leave behind in fort worth has unfortunately accompanied him to LA.

so, bottom line, despite the collective and exhaustive best efforts of three of the biggest whores in weho, poor arthur hasn't managed to get himself laid, and his week is almost up.

as the blond bottomless pit crawls back into my bed and starts pawing at my limp junk, i think about it for no more than a second, figure, hell, it'll give him a story to tell the folks back home, and i might even get some sleep.

and with no more consideration than that, i drag the blond boy outta my bed once more and lead him down the hall to door number three.

ready or not, arthur, it's showtime.

*     *     *     *     *

when i awake with a jolt, remembering, the sun is high in my window.  i hear the tv--paul's at work, so that must mean arthur's out there.  i throw on clothes, walk out to the living room, apprehensive.

arthur's sitting on the couch with his back to me, watching sally jessy or something.  he hears me, whips around, animated in a way i'd never seen him before, his formerly perpetually-morose face splitting into a huge grin.

i just stare at him, amazed--this is a changed boy, and i guess i did it.  i relax.

the words start pouring outta him.  "wow, what a going-away present, mike!  cody told me you picked him out just for me--i can't believe you got me a porn star!"

i smile, willing to let him go back to fort worth thinking that's what life is like in weho--porn stars just routinely and magically appear in your bedroom in the middle of the night.  hell, what can it hurt?

and then he says, "and that crystal stuff--i never knew sex could be like that.  we did it for hours."

and that's when i look closer, notice how bright his eyes are.

on money, and the lack thereof

since i'm not writing much these days, i cobbled this together from a couple old emails to a friend; it's apropos of nothing in particular.  there may be more of these in the future.  or not.


growing up, i never thought about money much.  my parents were depression babies, so they were on the same page financially and always careful with a buck, but there was never a sense of either deprivation or excess in our house; things in that regard were always pretty much just right.

after my father died, three things changed (as regards this subject, anyway):  we became poorer to the point where money suddenly was something we talked about; my father's brother eventually became quite rich; and i, for reasons quite unrelated to money, became quite unhappy.

i've talked about my uncle don a lot on this blog--hell, he's even got his own section on the sidebar--but what happened to him and his family, and me and my family, as either a result of, or maybe despite, all that sudden money, really started me thinking about the whole scarcity/abundance thing.

because while don's rise to riches was heady and fun, and he and my aunt pat were incredibly generous with what they had come into, it really didn't make a goddam bit of difference in how happy any of us were; in fact, in some ways it might have made things worse.

i remember one night, sitting miserably in my nice, new uncle-don-supplied condo three blocks from the university, with a nice uncle-don-supplied car down in the parking lot, years of plush, prepaid education ahead of me and enough cash in the bank to carry me through the school year in comfort, and thinking about how decisively that wish i'd made back when i was a 15-year-old slaving away for $1.10 an hour at a sizzler steak house--how, if only i had money, all my problems would be solved--had come true.  and how it hadn't.

and i saw don and pat's marriage deteriorate, and how he coped with success by drinking, and she, remodeling, and how their kids went from great to losing-their-way spoiled, and how insufferable all their rich friends were, and how, although my mother's cage was plush and gilded now, it was still the same cage.

I didn’t study architecture so i could design taj mahals or high-rises to the sky; all I ever wanted to do was houses—my houses. But I knew before that could happen, I’d have to cut my teeth on other people’s houses first. so, after graduation, and to that end, I worked for two high-end residential firms; first in austin, and then LA.

and I hated it, so i quit.

for a bunch of reasons, actually, but not the least of which was because designing and building a dream house seemed to bring out the worst in people. or maybe it was just the people who made up our client base--nouveau-riche types who wanted monuments to their success. it wasn’t all bad—some of ‘em were actually fun—but so often it came down to couples bickering like sibling rivals over colors, or whose closet was bigger, or which mega sub-zero would look better in the kitchen. I mean, these were people who really seemed to pin all their hopes on the notion that their new house would finally make their lives complete. and then, after all the drama, angst and knockdown-dragouts along the way from concept sketch to finished house were exhausted, and the crystal bowl with the three perfect apples had finally been placed on the gleaming granite countertop, more often than not, they’d look around at all the magnificence they’d paid so dearly for, and i'd hear 'em say something like, “ok—now what?”.

and then after i quit architecture for other people and did my own first house and talked to the day laborers i hired to help me--about how much they missed their countries, how they were only here for the money, how they'd never bring their families--and certainly not their daughters--here, and saw america through their eyes, it propelled me on to look hard at the myth--you know, the one that ours is the life to which everyone on earth aspires.  and i started looking at happiness indices for the various supposed hell-holes of the earth, saw how little those people managed to live on, saw how a cast-off pair of nikes could give some kid in mogadishu a bigger grin than almost any american kid on his playstation-extravaganza christmas morning; saw how, in those primitive countries, family was everything, like it used to be here.

and then i widened my scope of vision to look, for the first time critically, at the panoply of wretched souls whom we've pushed to the top of the world we've made--the judy garlands and marilyn monroes and elvis presleys and justin biebers--and then, eventually, even wider to encompass my whole goddam country.  america, we're number one--in both wealth and sales of antidepressants.

when I finally hit my big payday, i surprised everybody with my restraint--i bought a decent car for my mom, a little pickup for myself (because I needed one), and invested the rest. while I’m by no means anti-materialistic (in fact, I just indulged in a little of it recently), I have come to believe that things really don't matter all that much.

don't get me wrong--i'm not extolling the virtues of poverty here.  poverty sucks, and sucks happiness outta the lives of people who might otherwise be happy.  all i'm sayin here is that maybe there's a point beyond which money doesn't buy happiness.

and that maybe we here in the first world have passed it.

that's all.

hard out there for a ho (part 3)

i used to be annoyed and mystified by those bloggers who, without any explanation to their readers, just stopped blogging one day for no apparent good goddam reason--until, that is, i became one of 'em.

because now i understand why it happens.  one day, you just look up after years of doing this shit and realize you've pretty much shot your wad, said everything you have to say.  but you don't formally call lit quits--you figure you'll come back in a week or so, when the muse whispers into your ear once more.  and then that week turns into weeks, and the weeks become months, and…well, here we are.

so, yeah, i'm still (1) battling my demons, (2) having lots of age-inappropriate sex, and (3) watching the western world devolve into chaos exactly as predicted, but, having had nothing new to add to these three pillars upon which this blog rests, i've kept my distance, figuring if anything truly outta the ordinary came up, i'd maybe check in again.

well, something finally did, so here i am.

this story started out ordinarily enough (for me, anyway), back in late december, with a truly memorable night with a cute 20-year-old named ruben out in riverside. came home the next morning, packed up the car a couple days later and headed east for the holidays.

it was the morning after christmas, in wichita falls, texas, in the bosom of my family, standing there sleepily contemplating the big jesus-loves-you cross hanging over the toilet whilst waiting for the stream, that i first felt the burn.

i dismissed it as nothing, of course, because denial always comes first.

it was only later that day, standing in fronta that same toilet, when i whipped it out, cautiously gave it a pre-piss squeeze, saw the unmistakable, tell-tale pearl emerge, that i knew for sure.

i rotated through the other four stages in a matter of minutes--first, goddam you ruben you little whore, then please god no, then kill me now, and, finally, fine, deal with it.

i went out on the front porch, sat down on the steps, lit a smoke, called ruben, wished him a merry christmas, broke it to him gently, told him he needed to get tested immediately.  (how did i know it was ruben, you ask?  simple process of elimination--ruben was the only one i'd had sex with in the past two weeks (due only to a bad cold), and there had been no one after.)

a word now about STD etiquette:  blaming poor ruben woulda been pointless, because it really doesn't matter who clapped whom--we're both reckless sluts, and if that guy in amarillo hadn't flaked on me two days after ruben, i'd have no doubt passed it on to him.  so you gotta be philosophical about these things, is my attitude.

at this point, faithful readers, you might be wondering why mkf has broken several months of radio silence only to tell you this sorry little story, and you might have a point, if i didn't have a point, too.

see, i was in a mess--here i was in a strange town in texas, about to leave for another one, and then another one two days after that;  it wouldn't be until i was in austin nearly a week later that i'd have even a hope of getting treatment for what suddenly ailed me.

and i couldn't wait that long, because it was bad, and getting worse.

so, two excruciating days later, as soon as my mother, sister and i arrived in dallas (i.e., semi-civilization), i made my excuses and burned rubber for the nearest whole foods, where i picked up the two strongest natural anti-bacterials of which i know, started dosing myself with same at staggered intervals throughout each day and night.

and prayed.

all for nothing, so it seemed--by then, the pus had given way to blood, the bowl turned dark every time i pissed, and the pain was intense.  but i kept on.

the darkest moment, i think, happened the night i finally hit austin.  intensely horny, and having had to cancel a long-standing appointment (with the hottest, hungriest boy you or i have ever seen, trust me), alone in my motel room, and for the first time in ten days, i gave in and jerked off.

before that night, i had never even imagined such a thing as red semen was possible.

but, yeah, it is.

*     *     *     *     *

austin free clinic, four days later

she was the coolest doctor i've ever met--about my age, years in the trenches, had seen it all, yet still retained her humor and humanity.  which is probably the only reason i told her the story.

she listened, as i explained my regimen, and how i'd obsessively jerked off repeatedly those last few days, tryin to shoot all the bad stuff outta me, and how it got progressively lighter and lighter, until, just that morning, i had delivered a load that finally looked normal.

she seemed interested but dubious, took a swab, disappeared for a few minutes, and came back and told me with some surprise that, while white blood cells showed up under the microscope, indicating a reaction to infection, there was no infection to be found. to make sure, she had me piss in a cup for lab analysis and gave me the shot anyway, told me to call back for the results in a couple weeks.

which i did.  the results:  negative for any STD.

fuck gut-destroying antibiotics and drug-resistant superbugs--using natural methods, i cured my own serious bacterial infection, bitches.

and i'm betting you can, too, should such an eventuality ever present itself. which is the point of this post.

get you some of this stuff, ok?

and yeah, i'll be dosing myself with same before and after all future encounters with all present and future rubens, you can damn well be sure.