i'm feelin' ya, trevor

well, what would you have done?

you gotta understand--i have a special thing for brazilians colombians costa ricans venezuelans--especially ones that look like this boy here--and, possessed as i am of a selfless, giving nature, will go to great lengths to make 'em happy.  my givingness, however, was tested tonight.

preliminary negotiations went smoothly, right up until he said, "there's just one thing."

ah, here we go--there's always just one thing.  i rolled my eyes:  what was it gonna be this time?

see, if i had a nickel for every "just one thing" i've accommodated over the years--round-trip taxi service, roleplay the teacher, coach or pervy uncle, smoke a cigarette and ignore 'em while they blow me, wear fancy underwear or black dress socks, let 'em suck my toes, climb carefully and quietly in through windows, hurl myself head-first and half-naked outta windows, ruin their bathrooms, fuck their roommates--well, you get the idea.  but this one?  this was new.

"you want me to do what?"

i quickly worked the pleasure/pain equation:  aside from the weirdness, this one would have long-term consequences, not to mention the explanations to every new customer for weeks if not months thereafter.  then i looked at his pictures again.

"but can't we just--"

"no.  the smooth down there, i like it."

well, when you put it that way...

"ok, fine--you want smooth, i'll give you smooth.  but you have to do it for me when you get here."

"why?"

because if i denude myself into an 8-year-old boy and then you don't show up, i will have to hunt you down and kill you.

"because it'll be sexier that way."

deciding that my 8-for-a-dollar disposables might not cut it, i went to rite-aid, picked up a deluxe gillette three-blade number and some shaving cream, and awaited sweeney todd.  he did not disappoint.

the deforestation went pretty well--i tried not to watch--until he started heading down the back forty, which is where i drew the line.

"whoa, boy--you plan on spending any special time back there later?"

"no, but--"

"then forget it."

when all was said and done, i gotta admit--the novelty of fresh, tingly, slick, hairless sex does have its appeal (and oh my god, you oughta feel my balls). but was the hour or so of pleasure experienced worth the price to be paid?  i'll let you know in about three days.

91 words exactly, bitches

so, as a way to put off doing my first assignmentget into the spirit of things, i tonight composed and submitted an entry to a writing competition offered by my writing workshop.  the challenge:  tell a previously-unpublished story of one's life in 91 words or less (the "91", in case you're wondering, being the number of years some lady who was apparently important to this organization and in whose honor the competition is being offered managed to put in before recently shuffling off this mortal coil).

it was tough, but i enjoyed this exercise in enforced minimalism--enjoyed it, that is, until i realized that the contest entry window counts hyphenated words differently than does my word processing software, and i'd have to pare my perfect entry down by three more, godfuckingdammit.  but i did it.

i can't believe i've never told this story here, because it sums me up so goddamned perfectly, but whatever.

The Spiderweb Story 

Upon moving to LA, a new friend took me hiking in Griffith Park. As we crested a hill, we were frozen in our tracks by the spectacle of a spiderweb stretched between two trees--size of a bedsheet, rippling slightly in the breeze, every gossamer spoke limned in golden fire by the setting sun. 

When I cut him off in mid-gasp by reflexively pointing out a dime-sized hole in the upper-right corner, he looked at me, said, “Oh god, you’re one of those.”  

Yeah, I’m one of those.

in retrospect, i really wish i'd titled it as i did this post, but that's probably just the booze talking.

mkf joins a writing group

there are all sorts of reasons i've avoided doing this, not the least of which is fear of finding myself in the midst of yet one more group of civilians who will never in a million years get me--and, of course, that's exactly what's happened.

i mean, they seem really nice--mostly grandmas, single women and soccer moms, with a couple guys thrown in--they've all been writing for years, and their bio's read like a cross-section of america.  happy, shiny people all, putting their best face forward to the group.

i put it off as long as i could, but just now submitted the following:


I've given thought for the better part of a week to how i should introduce myself to my new writing group--I mean, seeing as it's my first go at this, do I go the safe route and try to ingratiate myself to all these new people who seem so nice, or do I tell the truth?  So I mixed a cocktail, because booze always seems to show me the way.

See, when I think of myself as a writer at all, I tend to think of myself as a writer in the grand tradition of Hemingway and Fitzgerald--not the talent part, of course; just the drunk part.

I never wrote growing up--not outside of school, anyway.  Nor, for that matter, did I drink much.  I only discovered these things later in life, and they came together four years ago in the form of a blog.  What started out as political ranting morphed into something else one night when a random song from my past came up on iTunes and triggered a memory at just the point when the vodka had overcome the voice of the inner critic that had always told me i couldn't, and I wrote the story.

It wasn't a great story, but it was something.  They got better over the years, or at least I like to think so.  Problem is, I dunno if the world agrees--and, for the longest time, I think I've been trying to avoid the answer to that question.

It's fairly easy for the author of an unsuccessful blog such as mine to rationalize the fact of his failure--lack of exposure, clueless clickers, Twitter-dulled attention spans--but far more difficult to escape the scrutiny and judgment of a small group of writers who are also, presumably, true readers.  Am I toiling away in obscurity because I'm merely undiscovered, fellow group members, or is it because I suck?

(It's also fairly easy to write whatever and whenever the drunken spirit moves me, but a different thing entirely to do it on demand, as I'm finding out with our first assignment.)

Thank you, Gotham Writers' Workshop (oh, and Amazon, and your too-convenient "Buy With One Click" feature), for this opportunity to maybe answer these questions--or screw you; I guess we'll see.


they're gonna love me, right?

so what happened to my guy? (concluded)

The great criticism of Mitt Romney, from both sides of the aisle, has always been that he doesn't stand for anything. He's a flip-flopper, they say, a lightweight, a cardboard opportunist who'll say anything to get elected. 

The critics couldn't be more wrong. His legendary flip-flops aren't the lies of a bumbling opportunist – they're the confident prevarications of a man untroubled by misleading the nonbeliever in pursuit of a single, all-consuming goal.  

Yet unlike other politicians, who at least recognize that saying completely contradictory things presents a political problem, Romney seems genuinely puzzled by the public's insistence that he be consistent.  It's an attitude that recalls the standard defense offered by Wall Street in the wake of some of its most recent and notorious crimes: Goldman Sachs excused its lying to clients, for example, by insisting that its customers are "sophisticated investors" who should expect to be lied to. 

i struggled with the second part of this post, because i couldn't for the life of me come up with a way to present my problems with this guy in a way that hadn't been done a thousand times before--and then matt taibbi came along and did it for me.  the above quotes from his recent, superb rolling stone piece (mashed together for my own purposes--sorry, matt) perfectly encapsulize and explain the great mitt romney conundrum with which i've wrestled for so long; namely, how a guy who is so seemingly principled in so many aspects of his life can justify, in his own mind, being such a hypocritical liar.

the answer:  he honestly doesn't think he's doing anything wrong.

and once you grasp the enormity of this truth about the man who would be king, i want you to read the referenced article--every word--and then send the link to everyone you know.  because if you think the mental disconnect which allows such breathtakingly complacent hypocrisy is limited to his policy positions, just wait'll you get a load of how this man who decries debt and promises america jobs actually did business.

*     *     *     *     *

i gotta admit, i watched with dark amusement as the ramp-up to the republican convention dovetailed perfectly with the formation of a hurricane that looked like it might turn out to be katrina's little brother. because i knew exactly what was gonna happen--hell, i could almost write the news copy in my head, accompanied by footage of white, fat-cat republicans partying in air-conditioned comfort in tampa juxtaposed with images of barack in shirtsleeves in louisiana, aiding and comforting the victims.

but, unbelievably, that didn't happen--turns out the obama campaign was so intent on chasing every last buck that it blew a golden opportunity, let mitt get there first, and ended up playing awkward catch-up after the fact.

you don't get do-overs often in life, but mr. taibbi has just handed the obama camp one on a silver platter--everything that is needed to completely destroy mitt romney in the eyes of the undecideds is contained within this article.  will they use it?  i dunno--they've played it pretty dumb so far, and they may not even need it--but i hope they do, because it's something every voting american needs to know before they step into that little booth in november.

so what happened to my guy?

[ok, enough obama-bashing for now; let's turn to the other side.]

so, even now, i get the questions all the time: "you think your guy's gonna get the nomination this time?", "you think paul ryan will help your guy?", "you think this todd akin thing will hurt your guy?", and, of course, the ever-popular, and usually said-with-a-sneer, "so whaddya think of your guy now?"

it doesn't seem to matter that i broke it off with mitt four years ago; the fact that i carried such a huge, flaming torch for him for so long sticks to me like stink on shit, and i can't shake it no matter what i say now.

*     *     *     *     *

i remember the first time i laid eyes on the guy; it happened back in 2002, shortly after the close of the salt lake city olympics.  he was giving a long, informal interview about his role in transforming those particular games from a massive too-many-cooks clusterfuck into the fine swiss watch they became under his leadership.  he was relaxed and loose under the camera's gaze, and spoke easily and articulately, outlining the process he undertook to turn the event around, and relying very little on the words "I" or "me" in the telling of the story.  i watched, spellbound as i always am when confronted with that rarest of human qualities--true competence.

as the interview ended, i turned to the guy i was watching it with and said, "holy shit, this guy's gonna be president one day."

and why not?  his dad had almost made it--hell, probably would have, had he not told an inconvenient truth before the american people were ready to hear it.  and mitt seemed to be his dad's son--an honorable, self-effacing guy who just happened to have a knack for fixing complex things that were broken.

i cheered when he became governor of massachusetts.  my admiration only grew when he and his team crafted a badly-needed healthcare fix for that state that not only received the full bipartisan support of its legislature, but even earned the endorsement of his arch-enemy, ted kennedy.

i admired his discipline and his character.  here was a self-made guy who hadn't relied on daddy's money to make his mark on the world, and had seemingly avoided all the temptations to which so many rich, powerful men are prone--there was no hint of scandal in either his personal or professional life, and he had managed to successfully adhere to the strictures of a demanding religion without rubbing it in everybody's goddam face.

when he threw his hat into the presidential ring in 2008, i cheered once more.  finally, my dream candidate--a fiscal conservative/social moderate, non-career politician who, unlike all the aforementioned assholes, had actually proven himself in the real world and knew how it worked.

and then he opened his big, fat i'd-sell-my-soul-to-be-president mouth, and it all went to shit.

[part 2 to come--excuse me while i go sob into my pillow.]

mkf weekend in review (so far)

[sober update:  back in the drunken glory days of this blog, it used to take at least sixteen ounces of alcohol to get me to a state of sufficient inebriation as to be capable of producing a post of such smug, pedantic, self-aggrandizing obnoxiousness as the one which follows.  now, i can apparently get there on a quarter of that amount (progress of a sort, i guess).

and since the morning-after policy here at guttermorality is to remove only those drunkenly ill-advised posts which have the potential of harming or embarrassing others, i'm gonna let this one stand--if for no other reason than to serve as a reminder to myself and others as to why mkf should never succumb to the temptation of a twitter account.

besides, it's what happened.]


from a similarly-titled email to my friend rob:

so this afternoon i'm trolling around adam and it's slim pickings as usual (saturday afternoons being a traditionally low point in the weho weekend sex/drug cycle, as i'm sure you'll recall), when to my surprise i get hit up by a boy i'd never seen online before.  mutual interest is quickly established--he's happy because, well, you know; and i'm happy because i'll finally get to scratch that robby benson itch i've had since i was 14 (see attached pics).

he lives in anaheim, and, as is typical with such boys, has neither a place to host nor a means of travel.  this does not deter me--i tend to favor boys from the wrong side of the OC tracks (as opposed to the laguna/HB/irvine assholes) because they're generally unworldly, unaffected and so cut off from the gay milieu as to be unruined by it, and thus worth the drive--and i ask him if he knows of a cheap motel nearby.  whaddya know, he does, so with that, i'm off to disneylandland.

i pick him up, and he doesn't disappoint--a young 27, and he's let his hair grow since the pics were taken, so that when he cuts his eyes up and smiles adorably at me from under that shaggy mop, he's not only channeling robby at his twinkiest, but i get a little taylor lautner thrown in for good measure (so there's another box i can check off).

on the way to the no-tell, he surprises me--this boy is well-traveled.  starting at age 18, he's taken solo trips to each of barcelona, madrid, paris, rio and australia, saving up between each adventure for the next one.  "a car would be nice," he tells me, "but i'd rather have experiences while i'm young."  (on the other hand, he had never heard of laurel canyon, much less knew where it was--i suspect that will change, and probably next weekend if i have anything to say about it.)

that first kiss tells me everything i need to know--this will be good. i decide for this one, i'll pull every tool outta the bag (so to speak), give him everything i got.

you've asked me more than once how my nondescript, aging ass has always managed to move with such seeming confidence and ease through the cutthroat, youth-oriented minefield that is the LA gay hook-up scene, and i thought about that question tonight on my way back from anaheim.  it comes down to three things i can put my finger on, rob, and at least one thing i can't.

first, not giving a shit about much of anything does have its upside; the resulting detachment allows all the inevitable rejections that force so many older gay men outta the game to roll right off my back--i really don't care that much one way or the other, guys sense it, and that gives me power.

the other thing that detachment has done for me is made me a keen observer, and thus, a good lover.  when it comes to sex, i never get lost in what i'm doing; i'm too busy watching--facial expressions, body language, tension, breathing--all the little signs that tell me when to plow ahead or pull back.  for me, it's always a performance, and while i've never derived as much pleasure from my sex life as i would have liked, i can console myself with the fact that i've damn sure made a lot of people very happy.

and then there's that last-but-far-from least, the "pleasurable peen" factor (a term i picked up from one of my favored bloggers/commenters, who apparently has one too).   simply put, a big, fat dick that functions reliably is the great equalizer in our little world.  i don't care how young and/or pretty you are, how much time you spend in the gym, how extensive your toy collection or practiced your techniques happen to be--there really is no substitute.

anyway, back to our story:  two hours later, we're lying in a puddle of sweat and cum and he looks up at me with shining eyes, says, "that was unbelievable--you're the best i've ever had."

i raise an eyebrow. "including rio?"

he laughs, snuggles his lithe, limber lil' yoga-body closer to mine and says, "yeah, including rio."

oh, that fourth thing, the one i couldn't quite put my finger on? i dunno, but whatever it is, i've apparently still got it.