from an email to a friend

for anyone who still comes here and gives a rat's ass:  yeah, i've landed safe and sound in a fine new spot, two canyons to the right of the old one.  me being me, what should've been a simple, straightforward move turned into a clusterfuck of fairly major proportions, and i've got stories, but not tonight.  tonight, i'm offering up a little insight into what makes mkf tick, as recounted a few weeks ago to someone who knows me well.


he got it; you probably won't.



you haven't seen me lately, but trust me, age, blues and booze have all taken their toll, most noticeably in the face, which probably explains why i can now go for stretches of several days without a single viable new hit. needless to say, my time spent aimlessly yanking the one-armed bandit in hopes of hitting a triple-diamond is starting to add up.

and then, for no good reason, i suddenly hit a winning streak. like this week, for instance.

tuesday night was the young slutty bottom who was so cute i overlooked the fact that he was high and drove the 25 miles to south gate in order to fuck him. but, of course, fucking him wasn't enough--i had to break him. i knew i was succeeding when his previously open-mouthed kisses became little pecks--i said, "you're holding back now", and he replied, "yeah, because you've gotten me to open up and talk, make me believe you're actually listening, and now i'm starting to see you differently", and i said, "yeah, i'm listening--tell me more." and, of course, he did, and by the time i made my escape at dawn, his kisses were open-mouthed again, and he held my arms so i wouldn't leave.

thursday night was a slim, pretty 19-year-old japanese exchange student who insisted he wanted only a massage from gaijin daddy. yeah. i went to north hollywood and got him--he wouldn't look at me--brought him back to my place. at first he would take off only his shirt, which was fine--i eventually worked him down to his tighty-whities, rubbing and kneading every toned, exposed inch of him (i think it was the foot massage that finally broke him), then peeled off the underroos without resistance, poured on more oil and worked my fingers into places (and in ways) he wasn't expecting--or maybe he was, who knows. by the time he was begging me to fuck him a second time, i was ready to take him home.

tonight, i drove to alhambra--yeah, alhambra--for an honest-to-god straight guy, because i sensed he might be the holy grail. latino, 38, tall, solid, manly, handsome and recently divorced, with snapshots of his kids tucked into his dresser mirror. he was very businesslike, stripped down, laid on the bed, told me to keep my clothes on and my hands to myself--he only wanted a blowjob.

so i gave him one.

about halfway through, he started whimpering and moving, and his hands, which had been held stiffly by his side up until then, started caressing my head and face, his legs wrapping around my body. i reached into my pocket, fished out the lube, squirted some on a finger and started rubbing his crack as i continued giving the best head he'd ever had. he tensed, asked me what i was doing (but not with much fight in him). i said, "just go with it--i'm gonna do something your wife never did for you", spread his legs, and started with first my pinkie, then ring finger, then finally my middle finger--he was moaning by then--and then massaged and sucked him into the first pillow-stifling, screaming orgasm he'd ever had in his life.

immediately afterwards, i pulled out and away from him, stood up, wiped off and very quickly reverted to my masculine-fag persona, talking to him like a regular guy as he shuddered and recovered, as if what we'd just done hadn't taken place, and started in with the standard guttermorality post-coital interview.

turns out i was only the second guy who had ever touched him (the first, a couple months before, hadn't worked out, because he was too nervous and the guy hadn't played him well). see, after his divorce, a married friend of his suggested he do what he himself had done: place a craigslist ad for a gay cocksucker, because what the hell, they knew how to do it (his friend's name is javier--i told him to give him my number).

he kept asking, in wonder, "where were your teeth? i never felt 'em--my wife always scraped my dick with her teeth." i told him she probably did that on purpose so he wouldn't keep bugging her for blowjobs, and assured him that gay guys are the only ones who really like sucking dick.

and then i played my ace.

"trust me, i know--i was straight until i was 34, and i never got a decent blowjob from a woman. but that could just be because i'm kinda big."

of course he had to know how big, and i reluctantly took it out, showed him.  he reflexively reached out, jerked his hand back.  i told him it was ok, he could touch it if he wanted. he tentatively took it in his hand, and it started to grow--he couldn't take his eyes off it, and his grip grew tighter, he wouldn't let go. he said, "oh my god, i've never seen another hard dick except in porn--i can't believe how thick it is. what's it like to have one like this?"

i said, casually, "would you like to find out?"

well, yeah, he would, so i sat down on the bed to his left, took his right hand and wrapped it around my hard dick, squirted some lube on it, said, "jack it like it's yours."

he did, perfectly, and i came quickly, in huge spurts (looking into his eyes the whole time, imagining him leaning in to kiss me--that'll happen in time, if i play my cards right). he was in awe, said he'd never seen anything like it, called me a stud, conferred upon me alpha status, said he couldn't wait to tell his friend javier about what he did.

he works nearby in santa monica, gets off at 3--plenty of time before i go to work at 5.  i'm thinking three more times and i'll have him.

i'm not a whore so much as i am a safecracker, rob--a locksmith, a houdini. for me, people are puzzles to solve, codes to break. and then i move on.

evil in its own way, ain't it?

wham! just like that

i did it on a lark, really.

ok, not a total lark--i'd been thinking about it for a while, despite being told by any number of experts that it couldn't be done, at least not right now, not for the number i had in mind.

i didn't even bother to nice it up first--just picked up the phone, invited four representatives of a profession of which i think little into my half-finished world, told 'em to look around, and, with a flinty stare, challenged each to convince me that he/she was the one who could deliver the miracle.  went with the black guy--not because of the color of his skin, of course, but because of the quality of his contacts and the content of his competence (which is all that really matters here in guttermoralityland).

and, by god, he did it--within three days we were in multiple offers, four days after that in escrow. and tonight? i'm sitting here surrounded by fifteen years of accumulated debris, trying to wrap my head around the fact that if i don't find something fast, my totally-unprepared, about-to-be-flush-with-cash ass will be homeless fifteen days from tomorrow.

i try not to think that i could've gotten twice as much five years ago if i'd only allowed my critical faculties to override my ego.  those illusions i clung to then are now gone--i've finally accepted the hard fact that i'll never finish this place; it's up to the new owner now, and i can only hope she doesn't fuck it up too badly.  as for me? onward and upward--i'm finally free, and can go anywhere i want.

goodbye 90210--i'll probably never be able to call you home again.

i despair for the youth of america sometimes

tail-end of a conversation i just had on adam, presented without comment.  read from the bottom (and, as always, i'll let you figure out which was me).

update:  i've just been told that i'm the only one who understands that this post was about a kid i had chatted with for five minutes assuring me that he didn't expect me to give him a whole car, but merely a down payment, in exchange for which he would be my friend forever, or at least a week.  guess you had to be there.

if you watch only one commencement address this year, make it this one

i am a pigeonholer, a stereotyper, a disciple of pattern recognition and hard, unpleasant truth.

post-2008, i divided the pundits and leaders of the world into two simple categories:  those who saw it coming and warned us, and those who didn't.

after four years of blogging and talking myself blue in the face, i have also come to divide the rest of the world into two categories:  those who look to the first group for guidance on what's coming next, and those who cannot be dissuaded from their belief that the second will lead us out of the mess they either didn't see coming or helped create.

watch this, and then tell me:  into which pigeonhole shall i place you?

a belated father's day post

summer somewhere in texas, and we're on our annual leisure trek, staying at some motel or other.

it's sunny and hot, and we're out by the pool--we lived in the water in those days.  my mom's rubbing oil on my back, my brother's splashing around the shallow end, my dad's in a chaise lounge with the sports section, and my sister--

she had to have been almost four that summer.  just overcoming her fear of the water, she had discovered her ability to float, and, enthralled with this new power, would bob motionlessly around the pool for long stretches of time, gazing skyward, so stable and still that it was easy to forget to watch her.

it was my mother who looked up, dropped the coppertone with a scream, and i whipped my head around to see my little sister's floating body--face down, blond hair fanning out around her little head--bobbing motionlessly in the water.

before i could even move, my father was outta that chair and into the pool so fast he broke a toe on its edge.

and afterwards, when we realized he had merely interrupted my sister's first try at holding her breath, he just laughed with a grimace, and never complained.

he always loved us.  even after what would happen happened, i never had a moment's doubt about that.

hey, you snooze, you lose

on advice of counsel, the post published earlier today has been removed.  sorry if you missed it--it was pretty damn good, if i do say so myself.

let's check in with our european cousins for a moment, shall we?

1.  the pain in spain is mainly very plain*

twelve days ago, when questioned about his country's increasingly fragile banking sector, the prime minister of spain, one mariano rajoy, stated, unequivocally and emphatically,

There will be no bailout.

eleven days ago, after a meeting with spain's deputy prime minister, who had just-so-serendipitously happened to find herself in the US on long-planned, unrelated business that day, the managing director of the IMF, one christine lagard, dismissed the possibility of an imminent bailout of the spanish banks by stating, unequivocally and emphatically,

There is no such plan.

early this past week, as things deteriorated further, the general consensus arrived at by the financial masterminds who know such things was that it would cost $40 billion to safeguard the integrity of the spanish banking system.  everybody then sat back and waited for the real number to emerge, which, when the bailout everyone knew was coming was announced over the weekend (which is when all such announcements are made), turned out to be more like $125 billion, or one-tenth the GDP of spain.

from whence will this money come, you might ask?  well, that's an interesting question.  the bulk of it is to come from two emergency funds set up last year called the ESM and the EFSF, respectively, which have been funded by the various countries which make up the european union.  the good news is that the ESFS alone has almost $200 billion set aside, which will more than cover the spanish bailout.  the bad news is that $93 billion of this $200 has been pledged by, well...spain.

after you've tried to wrap your minds around that a minute, consider the following:

this is an "unconditional" bailout--i.e., none of this "austerity" nonsense for spain that ireland and greece were subjected to, which pretty much ensures that there is not even the pretense of an expectation that spain will ever be able to repay this loan.  this is, unsurprisingly, not sitting well with the irish, who are already loudly clamoring for a renegotiation of their deal--or, most especially, the greeks, who in one week will hold a special election which will decide whether their new prime minister will be the pro-austerity candidate, or the radical left-winger who has pledged to tell the european central bank to shove their austerity up their collective asses (hmm, i wonder which one will win?).

this is also a "primed" bailout, which means that the ESM and EFSF will jump to the head of the line of creditors, pushing the existing spanish bondholders outta their rightful, legal position as first to be repaid.  this should do wonders for the already-shaky esteem in which private-sector bondholders regard, oh, italian, portuguese and french bonds.

finally, this "bailout" in no way fixes anything--the spanish banks' assets are still as worthless as they were on friday, if not more so--but it serves the purpose of providing them the liquidity to continue making their interest payments and thus stave off the inevitable a little longer.

which will be enough for the markets, no doubt.  thus freshly assured that all is well once more, i fully expect a marvelous rally tomorrow.  it's as if no one remembers what, almost a year ago to the day, the prime minister of luxembourg, one jean-claude juncker, had to say about the way crisis is managed by the powers that control such things:

When it gets serious, you have to lie.

2.  hopefully it's 2-ply, and quilted for comfort.

so the other day a friend of mine, who always sends me interesting things, passed along, without comment, a press release from a...paper company?

took me a minute.

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - June 7, 2012) - Fortress Paper Ltd. ("Fortress Paper" or the "Corporation") (TSX:FTP), announces that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Landqart AG, a leading manufacturer of banknote and security papers, has had a material banknote order reinstated. This order was unexpectedly suspended in the fourth quarter of 2011 which negatively impacted the financial results of Landqart's operations in the first half of 2012.

so, basically, a subsidiary of a canadian company (a swiss subsidiary, to be exact) that makes money-printin' paper got a cancellation from some government with money-printin' aspirations late last year on an order of sufficient size that it materially impacted said company's profits--but, glory be to god, said money-printin' entity has changed its mind and decided to go for it, so it's happy days again, at least at landqart AG.

who will this money-printin' entity turn out to be?  i dunno, but i figure it's a safe bet it'll be the one who denies it the loudest.

While the government struggles to save one crumbling enterprise at the expense of the crumbling of another, it accelerates the process of juggling debts, switching losses, piling loans on loans, mortgaging the future and the future's future. As things grow worse, the government protects itself not by contracting this process, but by expanding it.

that evil bitch who

was wrong about

everything, 1974

________________
*sorry, couldn't resist