she was nice, but she was watchin' me like a hawk

the following is from an email to a friend on sunday.  i know i shouldn't be heading off in a new direction, considering all the hanging threads and unfinished business all over this blog at the moment--but what can i say, it was a helluva weekend, and i thought i'd tell you about a little of it.


read your post--hope you're having a great time with your family.

me? well, since you ask, last night i had fun in a bar for the first time in years. met up with adam and laura, and her cousin, the legendary porno joe (which is how he's known all over this dusty little town, i would find out--by the end of the weekend, i'd be calling him the marine whisperer), and he dragged us out to one of his recruiting grounds, this military dive bar on the main drag at the outskirts of town.

i was dreading it, tell you the truth, but it turned out great--everybody knew him there, so we had, like 80 instant friends, most of 'em smokin' hot. there were lots of women there too, of course, most of 'em dressed like, as laura put it, women who hang out at military dive bars, but they were really fun too. and all night long, young guy after young guy would come up to joe--this cheerful, bald, middle-aged, nondescript lookin' dude--drape their arm around him, and shoot the shit. he told me later, "mike, i swear, the more guys who find out who i am and what i do, the more they wanna be my friend." it was kinda surreal.

i spent most of my time out on the back patio where the music wasn't so loud, and--me, who never talks to strangers in bars--did interview after interview with these kids. there was the navy corpsman, nico, who i found mildly cute (until i spent half an hour with him, by which time i was half in love) who i got to open up about his field experience and training, and, eventually, all the lives he'd saved.

and there was bret, this tall, raw-boned marine IED specialist from kentucky, who, as he put it, "blows up shit in afghanistan". fourth-generation military, enlisted when he was 17, and at 25--after enduring three direct hits on armored vehicles in which he was riding, has wrecked knees, a wrecked back, partial deafness and god knows what else. i asked him what it was like in the aftermath of such an event--do you black out, do you just lay there, stunned, or what?--and he just said, matter-of-factly, "nah, you jump up, wipe the blood outta your ears, take care of the wounded and keep moving."

he's going back in ten days for his fourth deployment--which he anticipates will be the worst, seeing as how, since the current administration has thoughtfully announced our pull-out in 2014, the enemy will wanna make it look like they ran us out on a rail (i asked him what he thought would happen after that, and he said, casually, "oh, it'll all go to shit." yeah.).

his wife drifted over a couple times during our conversation--we talked about how she's struggling to budget in the face of recent news that washington is trying to cut their housing subsidy by half--and at some point i said to her, "this guy's really something, huh?", she just rolled her eyes, smacked him on the side of the head, and we laughed. it was really cute.

lemme tellya, after years in weho being surrounded by man-boys (myself included), it was really eye-opening hanging out with these boy-men last night. and now, if the time ever comes when i give up my boy-chasing ways, make my final selection and move to the checkout, it's gonna be very hard to settle for anything less.

oh god, here we go

note to self:  stay away from joe.my.god for at least six weeks.

day 5, in which mkf comes out to his brother

lots of things happened on days 1 through 4, too--and even more during days 6 through 16--and i'll eventually catch you up on all of 'em, but let's start with this one, because i think mitch might find it instructive.  oh, and if you're expecting a tale of heartwarming reconciliation between long-estranged brothers, you've obviously forgotten where the fuck you are.



day 5 found my mother and me rolling into tyler, texas fresh from atlanta, where i had fetched her at my sister liz's house in the near-cherry dream benz i'd just picked up for a song in cassville, pennsylvania (see?  i told you a lot had happened).  there were two purposes for our presence there in our old hometown, but only one of which is germane to this post; namely, some unfinished business i had with my brother.

some context:  for as long as i can remember, it's always been my mother, sister and me over here, and mark over there; he's always been separate and superior, alien and apart.

my mother and sister have spent a lot of time agonizing over why this is.  one of my mother's theories, for instance, is that, as she was in traction and hyped-up on morphine as a result of near-fatal surgery to remove a tumor from the base of her skull when he was born and thus unable to hold him for the first three months of his life, they never bonded.

liz has never been able to figure out why he's always especially had it in for her--maybe, she thinks, because he was the aggrieved middle child and saw her as the indulged baby; or (my theory) maybe it's because she's the only one who has ever consistently called him on his shit.


me?  my relationship with my younger brother has always been arm's-length and uneasy, probably because we've both always known it would all eventually come down to what happened on day 5.

*     *     *     *     *

whenever i sit down to compose one of these little stories, one of the biggest challenges i face is what to leave out.  in this case, for instance, i could double the length of this post by laying out a long list of the sorta family-destroying shit in which my brother specializes, in order for you to more fully understand what brought us to blows on this day 5--but, fuck that; let's just cut to the chase.

simply put, around thanksgiving 2011, shortly after the sale of my mother's little house in austin was complete, my brother backed her frail, 80-year-old ass into an emotional corner and, without allowing her to consult her other children (there was no time, he told her), helped himself to half the proceeds of said sale in the form a "loan".

my sister had handled the renovation of the house two summers prior (new kitchen, bath, flooring, roof, HVAC--it was beautiful), and i had ruthlessly negotiated the sale, gaining her top dollar, so it was a fairly tidy little sum. on closing day, liz and i talked, and the last thing she said to me that day was, "whatever you do, mike, do not let him anywhere near that money."

i remember laughing, saying, "c'mon, liz, even he wouldn't..."

i shoulda listened to her.

*     *     *     *     *

on day 5, the deadline for repayment long passed, i gave him a call, told his voicemail i was in town and we needed to sit down and talk.  he texted me back, said he had nothing to say to me. i replied that he could either come see me, or i was gonna drop by and see him--and, hey, was his wife at home, and did she know what he'd done?  he replied that i could say whatever i had to say to him by text.

i thought about it a minute, decided a written record might be more enduring and useful than a face-to-face screaming match, and began.

i'll spare you most of it; while the resulting exchange has proven both enlightening and endlessly entertaining to various friends and family who know all parties involved, it would probably bore you, my readers--but, bottom line, the madder he got, the more infuriatingly reasonable i made sure to become.

finally, after he'd exhausted his entire laundry list of grievances, accusing liz of me of everything from parental neglect to embezzlement in an effort to deflect blame from himself, i coolly gave him a deadline of six week to pay up, or i was gonna get serious.

at which point, conventional arsenal depleted, he launched his a-bomb:

 and, boy, he had been sitting on that one awhile--33 years, i suspect.

and my reaction must've deflated him, because all he could come up with in response was the text at the top of this post.  so, because i'm a giver, i decided to give him a little more--you know, remove any lingering doubts:

and finally, because it needed to be said,

nobody out-texts me, motherfucker.

*     *     *     *     *

 
my brother slung a lotta shit at me during that conversation, and most of it bounced off my smooth teflon surface. but one thing he said did stick--that i'd run away in 1989 and left him to watch over our mother.

and he was right; i did.  and he'll never understand why.

see, when i was growing up, i was loved--everybody loved little mkf, and he knew it.  hell, i was a sweet, happy little kid--what was not to love?  i got along with everybody--i could shmooze the grown-ups, i could play army with the boys and barbies with the girls, and . . .

to this day, i dunno if it was something somebody said, or whether i just woke up one day and smelled the coffee, but when i was around six or so, my world started to shrink.  i started avoiding the girls, i stopped dancing like nobody was watching--i didn't know why; i just knew it had to be done.

by the time my balls had dropped and my loins alit with fire, i knew why, all right.  i knew it was because i was like my dad's cousin billy mike--the schoolteacher with the sweet smile who was so unlike his asshole-athlete brother alvin in all the wrong ways, the one everyone had always smiled at and then spoken of behind his back in tones of syrupy, southern "bless his heart" contempt.

and i started looking around at my family, all those people who had loved me all my life, and i started mentally dividing 'em up into the few who'd still love me if they knew, and the many who'd look at me like billy mike

who died in 1986 of "leukemia", bless his heart
 
and from then on, i played my role--i smiled to their faces, even as my heart hardened to them.  i stoically endured my father's suicide, and steeled myself in the face of my mother's disintegration as she lost first her husband, then her mother, best friend and favorite brother in three hard years.  and all the while, i planned my escape.

this process of shutting down made me a lousy older brother, i admit--cold, guarded, withdrawn--and i thank god mark and liz didn't follow my high-school example.  but if my kid brother had told me back then he was sure there was a warm cock waiting for me somewhere, it woulda killed me, so i did what i had to do.

and i eventually found my place in this city of angels, became a successful, hard-hearted homosexual nobody can hurt.

it's been fun, but my mother needs me now, and it's time to go home.

and as for you, my brother:  after all the shit that's gone down between us over lo these many years, would i still give you a kidney?

yeah, i would.  but i'll see you in court first.

van cliburn, 1934 - 2013

a repost from a couple years back; tonight, it seems appropriate.  rest in peace, mr. cliburn, and thanks for the memory.



so i'm thirteen and on a trampoline in some strange kid's backyard in a strange city, having been dragged there by the kid of the friend my mother had dragged me along with her to visit [that's clear, right?].

it's hot and we're jumping and hollering and generally having a good time, when suddenly there's the sound of a car out front and then the gate opens, three grownups appear and the action grinds to a halt. one of 'em (the woman, i think) steps forward and calls out, "c'mere, kids, there's someone we want you to meet!"

"my parents," one of the kids who lives there mutters. "c'mon, we have to." obviously, he's done this drill before.

we dutifully dismount and cross the lawn to the grownups. i'm embarrassed as i always am when meeting new grownups, but even more so than usual because they're all impeccably turned out in their church clothes, and we're a fuckin' mess.

the parents proudly introduce their guest and the kids are all like, yeah, whatever, give him a half-hearted wave and head back to the trampoline.

the parents are obviously mortified by their kids' reaction. i'm mortified, too, and more than a little stunned--because, unlike them, i know exactly who this guy is.

see, my grandmother had told me all about him as we watched him perform on television one night. about how he'd gone to the soviet union at the height of the cold war as a callow young kid from the nearby town of kilgore, competed in their fancy piano contest, beaten the russkies at their own game and come home with the prize.

about how america had celebrated his victory with magazine covers and ticker-tape parades.

but more importantly--at least for my grandmother--about how he had vindicated east texas. because suddenly we weren't just backwoods hicks anymore--we had produced a prodigy.

so without overthinking it too much, i walk my sweaty and grass-stained ass up to this elegant, imperially-slim gentleman, stick out my hand and say, "nice to meet you, mr. cliburn. my grandmother loved you."

and then feel myself flush as it flashes through my mind--"holy shit, is 'van cliburn' like 'van dyke'? does he have a first name i don't know about and i just made an even bigger fool of myself?"

no worries--he smiles and takes my grubby little mitt in his without hesitation. his hand is cool and supple, and i marvel at the fact that he'd let anyone touch it, much less me.

we talk for a minute. turns out the kid's parents are real estate agents and are helping him find a house for his mother. he asks me about school and about my grandmother, and seems genuinely interested.

and then he heads into the house to talk business with the parents and i head back to the trampoline to join the others, but i can't get back into it. the afternoon has changed, and i can't put my young finger on why.

alas, the word "surreal" hasn't yet entered my vocabulary.

mkf offers a couple helpful hints

while this blog garners few comments, i do get emails--boy, do i get emails.  which is somewhat understandable since, judging from their tone, the majority of these emails come from folks who wouldn't be caught dead publicly commenting on a blog such as mine.

said emails fall roughly into three categories:  the ones condemning me to gay hell for taking exception to my politics; the ones accusing me of making shit up (as if, were anyone to take the time and trouble to construct the elaborate fantasy life of which i am so often accused, it would be this one); and, last but not least--and the subject of this post--the ones from closet fans asking for help in transforming their sad, sexless middle-aged selves into perpetually priapic love machines like the mysterious mkf.

*sigh*

it's not that i don't wanna help other men achieve this exalted plane from which i gaze down upon you mere mortals, it's more like i honestly dunno how much help i can be.  because, you gotta understand, i'm very different in some key respects from most men you'll come across.

see, most men--and, i mean, throughout history, and regardless of the degree of wealth, power, talent, intellect, accomplishment or romantic prowess to which they might lay claim--seem incapable of escaping obsession with their shortcomings in at least one (and usually more) of the following areas:

• baldness
• penis size
• body dysmorphia
• loss of vitality and virility with age

and, while i wish i could say i relate (oh who am i kidding; no, i don't), here's how mkf deals with each of the above manly existential crises:

baldness:  the realization i was losing it roughly and, for a minute, happily coincided with the introduction of rogaine to the market--until, after a quick calculation revealed to my then-broke ass that it would be either rogaine or cable, it was really no contest.  because like going bald should be my biggest goddam problem.

penis size:  what can i say--other than a regrettable early surgical choice in which i had no say, i wouldn't change a goddam thing.

body dysmorphia:  i gaze, naked, into the mirror at my doughy face, sagging posture, pasty skin and childbearing hips, and say to myself, "damn, you've got a big dick."

loss of vitality and virility with age:  again, what can i say--use it or lose it, motherfuckers.


but fuck most men--let's get back to gay men.  because, in addition to the above, so many of our little tribe seem condemned to eventually and inevitably face a special hell reserved only for us; namely, loneliness, isolation and sexual starvation once we've passed our prime.

and, again, i dunno how much help i can be in this regard, because staving off this inevitability seems to come naturally to me (so far), but if you're one of those who really wants to extend your dumbass adolescence into middle age, then i'll do my best to give you some pointers.

next time.

[sorry, got too chatty, lost the point and ran outta steam.  been happening a lot lately.]

mkf breaks a couple rules

disclaimer:  i can already tell this one's gonna run long, ramble and be very inside.  why?  because i'm enjoying my first serious cocktail in over a month, and feeling a little chatty--sue me.

study the above text exchange from last night carefully before proceeding, because there are at least three important points contained within its brief bounds that i'm gonna expound upon tonight.

but before parsing its meaning, a little background:  back when i first--some would say finally--came out at 33, and knowing even then that, unlike most of my peers, my slutty kid-in-a-candy-store phase would extend well into middle age and probably beyond, i took note of the stark differences between the fresh-faced types who reveled in their sluttiness and the burnouts who were just going through the limp-dicked motions, and determined to learn from the latter group's mistakes and not repeat 'em.

to that end, i started developing a set of rules the adherence to which i figured would be most likely to ensure a long, happy run.  for the most part, i'd have to say i've succeeded in that goal, but what i've discovered over the years is that there are rules and there are Rules, and have learned through experience to differentiate between the two.

rules with an upper-case "R" are the hard-and-fast ones, never, ever to be broken--eschewing hard drugs, for instance, and fetishes like leather, S/M and bondage, and fucking underage kids no matter how tempting and available they might be (and often are), and walking away when feeling even slightly hinky about anything.  these, among others, are lines i don't cross, ever.

but then there are the rules that started out as Rules but have devolved to lower-case status as exigencies arose and flexibility was required, a prime example of which would be my once ironclad prohibition against having sex with crystal meth users.

which brings us to the subject of this post.

when the above guy hit me up last night, saw my face pic and still wanted me to come over, i was at first quite happy to indulge myself in his lean, smoking, fresh-from-miami hotness, until i looked at the clock and remembered the first of the three points i alluded to above; namely

anybody looking for sex at 3:03 am is probably up to no good

and sure enough, came the dreaded question.

see, to mkf, the two ugliest words in the gay lexicon are "u partying?".

the question itself can be interpreted a couple ways;  for instance, if it's asked before midnight, you've got a 50/50 shot at it being a non-partier trying to weed out the tweakers.  but at 3:03 am?  not bloody likely.

so i reflexively responded with my standard

and immediately kicked myself because i hadn't thought it through.

because, see, there's two kindsa partiers:  (1) the early-cycle ones who'll rule you out if you're not one of them; and (2) the late-cycle ones who, after three days with their own kind, would sell their soul for a hard dick that actually works.

with that in mind, the non-partier can offer two responses to the question:  (1) if you don't care one way or the other, a flat "i don't party" will do; and (2) if you do care, you can lie and say something like "yeah, i did a little earlier", just to get your foot in the door.

and the thing was, in this case i did care--i knew i'd do this boy no matter how fucked-up he was, and by going with option 1, i may have aced myself outta the running.

but nah, he came back with

which leads me to point no. 2:

when it comes to partiers,"sometimes" always means

"i'm currently tweaking my ass off"

so i was still in, but, never one to leave well enough alone--and even though i knew the answer--i had to push it by asking

and then looked at his pictures again and immediately did the the only sensible thing.

*     *      *      *      *

when he opened the door, the boy turned out to be as advertised:  140 pounds of young, tight, compact, hard-bodied, thoroughly tweaked-out cubano.  i pushed him into the apartment, shoved the door closed with my foot, pulled him into my arms, and, just as i was about to take a bite, he stiff-armed me, said, "wait", and looked back toward the kitchen, where out stepped the evening's surprise.

which brings us to mkf hookup postulate #4:

when it comes to hookups, surprises are rarely pleasant

i remember back when i first came out during the glory days of weho street cruising, there was this breathtakingly adorable boy who used to ride his bicycle back and forth through vaseline alley and i couldn't figure out why he never got any takers--until the night i went home with him and found out that, to get him, you also had to do the 80-year-old daddy he had waiting in the wings.  this experience, and many others like it, caused me to tense up as soon as i sensed movement in the kitchen last night.

but. you know what?  sometimes it's the exception that proves the rule, because outta that kitchen stepped not the troll i feared, but the boy who would finally allow me check off that antonio sabato jr. box on my fantasy roster.

if cubano boy was hot, this boy was a fuckin' vision--lustrous coal-black hair, perfect olive skin, limpid-yet-piercing eyes, voluptuous lips, gymnast body...i could go on and on and on.

which suddenly brought to mind the second rule i'd be bending if i went through with this; namely, the one about hooking up with guys spectacularly better-looking than me.

understand, this rule didn't arise outta any particular insecurity on my part--i know what i bring to the table, and i know its value--it was more a practical thing.  see, the spectacular-looking guys almost always come into the deal with the assumption that their looks give them the advantage, and the time and effort it takes for me to disabuse 'em of this notion is usually more goddam trouble than it's worth.  but one look at this boy's eyes as he fixated on my crotch and licked those luscious lips told me that wouldn't be a problem this night.

so, with high expectations of being the ham in this lovely sandwich, and even though i shoulda known better, i let these boys lead me to the bedroom.

*     *     *     *     *

mkf hookup postulate #22:

there are three kinds of tweakers, only one

of which is of any practical use to the non-partier in bed

remember david?  back when he was using, he'd often call me at the tail-end of his binges, knowing i'd be the one who could finally push him over the edge into that volcanic orgasm he'd been both straining for and holding back the whole weekend.  and i was always happy to oblige, because his epic climax always made me come with him (and then he'd lapse into a coma for two days, but this post has too many tangents already so we'll leave that aspect of partying for another day).

i was really hoping that at least one of these boys would be a david, but fuck, no--instead, out came the cock rings, and what i got was one of each of the other types.

antonio jr., turns out, was an Obsessive, and cubano boy was an Organizer.

in practical terms, this entailed antonio jr. spending the next two hours directing me to alternatively one and then another of his chosen and anatomically-perfect erogenous zones at specified intervals whilst moaning mechanically; while cubano boy bustled about checking messages, fluffing pillows, monitoring drugs, searching for fresh porn, and sporadically throwing himself into the mix with vigorous, graceless and ultimately pointless thrusting of various body parts in, onto and around me.

this literally coulda gone on for hours, but eventually, because as somebody really smart once said (and i'm modifying it only slightly, and in this case you can multiply it times two)

show me a beautiful man,

and i'll show you a man who's bored with him

i called a halt to the proceedings, but not before planting one of 'em on each side of me at strategic positions, assigning 'em specific tasks, and stroking my hard dick (the only one in the room all night which could claim such a distinction, btw) into a high-flying cumshot that both shocked and awed--one of my specialties, btw, and done to make a point.

as i drove home, i reflected, and not for the first time, on how i had massively outperformed two boys whose ages, added together and graded on a generous curve, did not even approach mine, and everything that implied.

and i wondered if they'll think about that, too--about how they're spending the prime of their lush young lives in dante's ninth circle, flogging away at limp dicks in a pale, sick simulacra of the sex they rightfully should be having right now, but can't.

but mostly, i chided myself for not remembering point no. 3 implicit in the text exchange which started this post:

unless you're flying with 'em, sex with even

the most beautiful tweaker is almost never a good time.

____________

update:  while i was writing this, antonio jr. hit me up--wants me one-on-one.  will i do it?  yeah, probably.  did i mention how fuckin' beautiful he is?

fuck blogging--maybe i'll just post my texts