Wii, Mii and Kweh

In the November issue of Play magazine they did a feature article on the Wii. This is nothing new (who hasn't written about the Wii at this point) but it was the first time I had read about Nintendo's intention to change the relationship people have with their televisions. While the Wii is in standby mode and connected to a TV, Wii channels will be available in which one can engage in a variety of activities. Sharing and displaying photos via an SD memory card, checking news or weather, web browsing through Opera, and sending messages are all initial channels (Nintendo promises more in the future). Most intriguingly, there is a channel in which players can create a "Mii", a customizable avatar that can be stored and taken to a friend's for gameplay.

As the ubiquitous Reggie Fils-Amie puts it: "Our strategy is based on one core belief: That the next step in gaming is bringing gaming back to the masses."

The only problem is, I never really liked the masses that much.

The idea of the Mii is cute. It immediately brought to mind images of my furry eyebrowed Mii wandering Wii space and making friends based on my stats, style of play, preferred game type (Role playing). I imagine a cute little gaming community, the likes of which I've only dreamt about, coalescing into the sound of a thousand little Mii's pixellated laughs.

It probably won't work that way.

It's like when I was 17, mostly innocent and searching Gay.com for love. I was under the impression then, having met almost no real gays, that we were all infinitely smarter, braver, classier, understanding and more creative than our straight brethren. That rosy notion was quickly dispelled. Rather than finding love, the only thing I ever found through the internet was a moderately good blow job. If I hadn't met Froggie, my boyfriend, through Gay.com, I would be disavowing it completely in this very paragraph.

Most other Miis will be rather annoying, I'm betting. As well as insistent, asinine, unskilled and tedious. Reggie's "masses" will be rather unwashed, and perhaps my Mii will befriend one (or five, if I'm lucky) and mostly find himself playing alone in his channel sandbox, just as I did in elementary school.

Then again, maybe I'm just a little too cynical after 26 years of finding most people don't want to play the games I want to play. That's why I've been piling hours up in Ivalice, Final Fantasy XII.

RPG's are exactly what I need. Endless, satisfying collection. The quick sigh of relief one feels after completing a doozy of a fetch quest. And the characters, oh the characters. In Final Fantasy XII, each of the six main characters is so heroic, so sexy, that you could possibly never need to leave the house again. Vaan, blond and twinky and searching for freedom. Basch, scruffy and scarred, moving stoutly forward. Balthier the sky pirate, flirtatiously debonair in his tight leather pants. I'll even include the girls, a cast of three that even I find irresistible.

These are the Miis for me. Enclosed, written, designed to be sexy. There's no discrepancy between the photo and the actual person here... it's all been programmed. What you see is what you get. I game to get away from the uncertainties and hassles of life, and I find gaming's increasing connectibility a little threatening. I did play the online FFXI for a few months, loving everything except being forced to play with the other dunderheads also online. In all the hours spent in that online world, I made one real friend, an FTM who went by the name of Zyrx and who lived in Pittsburgh. So, like in Vana'diel and Gay.com, can I count on batting 1 in several thousand in Wii-land?

Maybe that's not so bad.

Nintendo is saying that the Wii is called such because of it's all-inclusive nature, and that "the name works best at the beginning of declarative statements."

Silly, but I guess I can live with that. As I learned in high school, being the loner wasn't as cool as it seemed. Wii is your parent, begging you to go outside because its a sunny day. FF XII is that journal of poetry you kept hidden under your gay porno videos in your dresser drawer.

Maybe I can find room for both?

Metal Machine Music

Have I mentioned how much I love going to the gym?

For me, everything at the gym is erotically charged. Men walk confidently, chests pumped out and asses swinging out behind them, they bend over to take a sip of water and I'm dreaming of being the water spout. Or behind them. Most of the time, we try to keep our obvious sexual prowling in check, but the gym is one of those places where our dicks are hanging out, and there are no apologies or questions.

Today I saw a boy who I've become obsessed with, once again doing his resistance training in his red baseball tee and long, dark blue Dickies shorts. He always keeps his dark hair buzzed short, his quizzical thick eyebrows curling ever so slightly when he makes quick eye connections with me that last a half a second at a time.
For a second I fantasize that he is a young monk that leads an ascetic life, he comes to the gym secretly for vain purposes, to gain mass that his solitary training at the monastery can't provide. He wants to pursue the pleasures of the flesh despite all his years of devout study. When I see him leave twenty minutes later, his simple cloth bag further cements my daydream.

It's not just the guys that turn me on. The hard plastic handles of the machines cutting into my palms, my ass pressing firmly against the plump, cushioned vinyl of the seat while I breathe in loudly, pulling down and the veins in my neck and arms pulsing out visibly under my skin. Then the release, my breath escaping like a popped balloon, the muscles in my ass relaxing too. And starting all over again, the clanging of metal amid the groans of the people around me. My toes curl almost the whole time, and I drip steadily from my half hard-on into my jockstrap.

And then, going into the locker room sweaty and relieved to be done, stripping off my tight sweaty clothes like a wet banana peel. The first moment when my ass and free swinging cock hit the damp air is always my favorite. I almost regret putting the towel around my waist each time, and as I walk over to the showers I can see in the mirrors the outline of my cock cutting into the thin terry cloth of my towel.

A quick rinse, and then to the sauna. Sitting there with my towel loosely draped over my crotch and my legs spread wide open. Dripping sweat from the back of my ears, the small of my back, the edge of my collarbone, the slight concavity inbetween my pecs, the crack of my ass, under my balls. In the sauna I can't help but steadily harden, even when (like today) I'm sharing it with a giant fat man scratching the hair on his back in yellowed department store briefs. When I get up to leave, the pocket of sweat in my bellybutton spills out, and I leave a wet mark on the bench shaped like me.

The final shower is a luxury, lathering up slowly with peach smelling gym soap, resisting the urge not to pee in the open tiled room. I run my hands all over my body, wanting it to be tighter but happy with it nonetheless, spending extra time on my crotch: my half hard cock swings up onto my stomach as I lift my balls up and lather underneath.

And then it's over. Drying off and putting my clothes on in a daze, I'm a little sad to leave. I walk out, past other people just starting to run on the treadmill, the whirr of fans and ellipticals. I always kind of swagger a bit at this point, feeling accomplished and ready to take on anything, waving goodbye to the cute boy with a sleeve tattoo that works at the desk.

On Wednesdays I grab a weekly on the way out. Not to keep current of local events, but to check my horoscope. It's the only time I feel prepared for what fate has to offer me, because everything seems to make sense when my limbs are comfortably aching and a trickle of sweat falls from my pit, skin still heated from the cedar-lined, moist rage of the sauna.

Las Mentiras de la Juventud

The Castro Theater has been having an Almodovar retrospective in anticipation of his new movie coming out, Volver. I've seen more than a few. I've also been teaching the inquisitive and adorably un-Latino Froggie the bits of Spanish that I do know. All this Spanish has been flooding my brain, and bringing back memories of my first boyfriend, mi primer novio.

I was 18 and nervous, tapping my converse continually against the red-painted curb while capturing Pokemon on my Game Boy Color. Tap-tap-tip-tap. Every boy with dark features that walked by I looked at with watery and hopeful eyes, making eye contact and then looking away and wondering each time if they kept walking because they didn't like what they saw.

I was waiting to meet a boy I had been talking to online for a couple weeks. He was Mexican (the Catholic kind), let's call him J-Lo. He lived in Santa Ana and I was from Brea, and for those unfamiliar with Orange County politics, this was the equivalent of the "other side of the tracks." Brea is decidedly upper middle class, it's clean sidewalks were peopled with blondes, Mormons, and the upwardly mobile Christian Korean families. Santa Ana was "dangerous" and solely because Mexicans lived there. Police patrolled incessantly, stopping lithe tan boys in sagging black jeans and long wallet chains because of suspicious loitering. The houses did not have pebbled lined beds of begonias and perfectly mowed lawns--they had lawn chairs, and families laughing and drinking beer. I found this liveliness refreshing, and knowing that my parents would flip at my being there made it all the more enticing.

He was late (which I would later come to expect), and when he finally came over and tapped me on the shoe with his steel-toed Doc Marten boot I had already begun to gather my things with a sigh. He was wearing a baseball cap, 6'3" and stocky, he had distinct dark features similar to mine, big lips, and a scar on his forehead that bisected his right eyebrow. He had a couple piercings and wore plaid button down shirts. I grew hard, I felt inadequate.

We dealt with our shyness in different ways. I grew quiet and looked intently at anything but him while he spoke incessantly of mundanities. J-Lo considered himself bisexual without having ever touched a penis other than his own, and hadn't told anyone in his life that he was attracted to guys. I found this comforting and arousing. We met up with a girlfriend of his that he had broken up with only a month earlier and went to his apartment to watch a movie.

Ione Skye was on his little television, the ex-girl had left to go to class, and we were all over each other. I still remember his smell, syrup-musky and sweaty. Our lips clumsily sliding across each other's teeth and tongues. We made out until it grew dark, never even taking out clothes off. We rubbed our aching bulges together until we came. It went without saying, we were boyfriends. I remember going home that night on the bus listening to Blur and feeling like I had been given a gift that no one else could see.

We became inseparable. We were playing the part of the couple as we had imagined it would be. It was playing house and it was very real at the same time.

I learned what it was to know another body. He was so hairy that I nicknamed him Pooh Bear (because I was hairless and shy he called me Piglet), and he had a beautiful uncut cock. It was my first experience with someone uncircumcised, and I remember marveling at it for long stretches of time, pulling on the foreskin gently while sliding my tongue around inside it. It was like a whole new dimension of sexual ability, and I grew jealous of how much pleasure he got out of it. Perhaps that's why I would tease him so much the few times he hadn't cleaned it well enough and I found myself with a taste of smegma.

While driving home from his 20th birthday bowling party with a couple of his friends, we held hands under our jackets. Some drunken thugs threw beer bottles at our vehicle as it drove away, and a shard of glass left a thin slash of blood on his cheek. He trembled and his eyes asked me if it was because we were gay.

That night we fucked each other for the first time, and it was the first time either of us had been fucked. We didn't use a condom. It never even occurred to us. I sat on his thick uncut cock smeared in vaseline and it slid inside painlessly. I rode him until sweat was falling from my hair onto his straining face. I felt him shooting deep inside me and without even touching myself I came too, deep strands of cum flying onto his still bleeding cheek. Later, while sitting on the toilet, I felt repulsed at having to shit out his cum and still I thought: "So this is why people have sex."

He moved back into his parents' pool house after his roommate found us fucking one night and almost beat us up, but not before I caught scabies from their couch. It was like everything we tried to do doomed us, and we loved it. The secrecy of our relationship was enthralling.

My mother knew what was happening, I had already come out to her. I came home one morning with my neck covered in hickeys. She looked me over like she didn't recognize me and later, while laying on my bed watching anime, she came in and nearly spit out the words: "You're disgusting."

His father was a gardener who didn't speak English and eyed me suspiciously every time I spent the night. J-Lo locked the door to his little house every time I came over because he was terrified of his parents finding out. I woke up one early morning to his father looking over us while we slept in each other's arms. He saw me see him. His deep brown eyes were mournful as he shook his head slowly and turned around and left. I never told J-Lo, his father never said a word.

We were together for a year, but looking back, the relationship should only have lasted those first few months. We weren't suited for each other. He needed someone much more attentive and domestic, I needed someone goofier and grounded. I would tease him constantly about his taste in music, he would call mine boring. As I grew more comfortable with my sexuality I realized that I preferred the dominant role, and he was endlessly trying to make me more submissive. He began to realize his attraction to burly older men, and I found myself drawn to quietly neurotic, artistic guys. But for a short time, we were perfect for each other.

It ended badly. A long conversation in a mall parking lot. Blinking lightposts made my stony face even more unreadable as I lied and told him I had cheated on him several times. I wanted it to be over and I wanted him to hate me. He cried and punched the steering wheel and when he dropped me off at my parents I felt like I was returning to my real life. I had dropped into someone else's life a complete blank, and the voids that were created in that life taught me what I needed to be happy. I had such a low sense of self those first few years of young adulthood that it took knowing someone else intimately for me to realize that I had one.

What a strange, messy time in a life! To be a stranger to oneself and yet so full of curiosity. I could have become anyone at that time, and I could only have become myself.

We used to go to Tijuana and Rosarito with his friends often, being underage. We would drink tequila out of water bottles the whole way there. I would get teased by everyone for being only half-Mexican, but it was the first time in my life that I appreciated the part of me that wasn't white. Growing up, this had been a huge point of shame for me. Despite being raised for years by my Mexican grandparents whom I loved very much, I would lie if people asked, saying I was French, Italian, Jewish. Anything but Mexican. Because where I was from, Mexicans did the gardening. They did the jobs no one wanted to do. Still, I never felt like I truly belonged with J-Lo and his friends. They're strong mothers and Catholic upbringings, their strong sense of family and pride, I did not understand.

So J-Lo and his friends and I were in Mexico, speaking Spanish to the vendors on all sides. A little girl came up and begged me for money, I gave her 5 dollars, which only brought ten more kids out of the shadows. I got yelled at for doing that while we eat steaming carne asada tacos, the most delicious I have ever tasted.

The ecstasy was rolling through us as we danced at a gay strip club that had a name I swore I would never forget but can no longer recall. I ran my hand over the smooth taut curves of a stripper with angry eyes and his cock grew hard in his shiny g-string. J-Lo pulled me away from the stripper angrily and I wanted to ditch him instantly, I wanted to have sex with every guy in the building, in the city, in the world. Feeling attractive for the first time in my life, I wanted more than anything to know that I could have what I wanted, not only what I had. When he took me in the bathroom and started sucking my dick I felt like I was going to be sick, I asked him to stop.

J-Lo's best friend M met someone that night, and we all stayed in a hotel on the San Diego border. I had a massive crush on him for his shaved head and lip piercing, he enjoyed pinching my ass when J-Lo wasn't looking. Before long, J-Lo was snoring. I laid in the dark and watched him fucking the boy and touched myself. In the dark, M saw me and our eyes locked. He smiled. With one hand on one of the boy's upraised legs and the other on a pillow covering his face, he fucked him hard and kissed the air in my direction. I lifted the sheet off and jacked off in front of him, our eyes never moving. We both came silently, and I quickly turned over and went to sleep. The next morning his trick was gone, and we pretended it had never happened.

It was in the car on the way back to Orange County, hungover and reeling from the post-E depression, that I realized that the void created in that hotel room on the Tijuana border with J-Lo snoring was my life, a life created on my terms, and one that had a long way to go. The first step was in that mall parking lot, and began with a lie.

And like the transvestites and transsexuals and women and criminals that fill Almodovar's films, in a difficult world that doesn't seem to have space for you, sometimes that's the only way to begin to find out who you are.

A Confluence of Numbers

Last night, between loads of laundry, I saw Peter Jackson's King Kong. Laundry is always a little depressing, the musty smells of your own body mixing with your memories of the last several days and the monotony of the spinning, the buzzing, the folding. Combine that with the theme of King Kong, which seems to be that "nothing good and beautiful can ever last, and the pursuit of such things will lead to your demise" and you're in for a dreary evening.

This kind of nihilism is not what I look for in my summer blockbusters.

So I'm watching the Beast and his Beauty (Naomi Watts was indefatigable as always), feeling a little hollowed out, when I remember that in the course of twenty-four hours this last weekend I was essentially asked out seven times. This is a personal record. I will probably never top this unbelievable and incredibly lucky feat.

***********************************************************************

Number Number One:
The usual way in which I get numbers: myspace. Just a random boy messaging me, tall and macho looking, although I can already hear his queeny voice just by looking at the pics. Being tall (6'4") and constantly mentioning "420" are strikes against him, but the jury is still out on this one. His strong stubbled jawline is alluring.

Numbers Number Two to Four:
I went out to dance at the Transfer after a day of bad news that I knew was coming, feeling the need to sweat out the poisoned bullets. I wore a pair of thick framed glasses like a mask. The music was Detroit, all repetitive bass lines undercut with sex and malignancy. It made you want to fuck on the dancefloor, and it wasn't long before my erection was bulging in my corduroys for all to see. I rubbed it on a guy I had spoken to briefly outside with a handlebar mustache and piercing eyes before he tactfully slid away and punched me softly on the chest with both fists. Taking it as a sign of The Eyes' moment and not hurt in the slightest (to be honest, I was secretly relieved), I retreated to the bar.

It was there that I ran into the on and off again ex of the DJ of the moment. I had spoken to him before and found pleasant enough. He was also from Orange County and had a laid back demeanor that I found comforting. I could sense that he thought I was cute from the first time we met and at recent run-ins, and that was the only proverbial wrench. When he talked to me I could see him imagining fucking me, or spreading my legs open, and I have never found this to be a good thing. I get hard, but I feel slightly sick, like something deeper is being siphoned out of me. He asked me if he could email me, and that he was single. I said "good to know" and nodded my head, and before I knew it we kissed quickly and parted. He is short and sexy and I imagine good at sex, although I haven't decided whether or not to pursue it, considering his involvement with DJ and the odd feeling he gives me, like there's something I shouldn't trust.

The lights went on quickly, as they always seem to do, and everyone headed outside. OC had his arm around me and I felt goodwill all around me, and before I knew it a young friend of mine (tall and pierced, whom everyone in this town seems to want to fuck but me) was convincing me to go to a houseparty. I jumped in a stranger's car and was sped along, but not before my favorite Most Beautiful Boy of the night, who was cuter than anyone has a right to be and the exact same height as me, slipped me his number.

The car ride was frightening. Two drag queens looking like puffed up Kabuki dolls whining about money and "bitches" and two semi-cute Trannyshack followers giggling in the back, completely ignoring me. I took this as a challenge and tried to interject now and then but soon found myself staring out the window, getting increasingly nervous at how far away we were heading. Regardless of gender, everyone in this car referred to everyone as a "she". The party was an absolute bust, the safety of my glasses not enough to protect me from the wasted and thin hipsters. Within moments I saw a Michigan boy who I suspect has never liked me, and was met with his icy stare and a cold shoulder that smacked like the thin layer on an ice cube tray. I waited for my friends to show, and then snuck out the front door and started the long trek home.

I walked for a little over an hour, and by the time I saw a free cab, I was already 4/5ths of the way home. I briefly considered calling Froggie to see if I could crash at his place, but then remembered quickly that he either wasn't going to be home or already had someone over. This didn't bother me for once, though, and I enjoyed the clean air. Strangely, the streets were dead. I never saw a single soul on the whole way, and cars zipped by like loud fish.

I smiled, unaware that the next day The Eyes was going to message me online and give me his number and that the Most Beautiful Boy was going to retract his with the usual line of getting back with an ex. The latter stung, perhaps only because it was the one number that I couldn't call (see previous entries), and led to a series of events that I won't go into. Suffice it to say that I made an absolute ass of myself, and will be much more careful with the Forward function in the future.

Number Number Five:
A peripheral friend of Froggie and his lovable Ex, messaged me through myspace. I had met him briefly at a Midnight Mass, and found him to be cute in a safe and non-sexual way. He had clean red hair and pale skin, and he seemed intelligent
and kinder than most of his type--the rich white boys that go to college, listening to all the latest indie rock, wearing all the most expensive jeans. I think he's Jewish, which I have always been a sucker for. This one may not count, because I think he wants to hang out only as friends.

Number Number Six:
A creepo at the hostel, with pockmarked skin and frail shoulders, at least forty years old. I made the mistake of telling him I loved the book he was reading, Phillip Pullman's The Subtle Knife, which I suspect he interpreted as directed towards himself as well. He asked me out in front of my house, and I later found out that he told my coworker that he had crushed out on me, describing me as "the exotic one with the beautiful nose," asking if I was Italian.

Number Number Seven:
Froggie and I had a comfortable night, which did much to ease my troubled heart. After a few heavy talks I had been more worried than anything that the ease which we had around each other would be forever lost, something that would have torn my eyelashes from my eyes, my toenails from my toes. At one point he hugged me and it took every ounce of my energy not to sob as hard as I wanted to.

We watched a scary movie and as I sat next to him in the dark theater sharing twizzlers I chuckled to myself. Realizing my own foolishness at crying over making the best friend I had made in years, realizing that that is its own special kind of relationship, realizing that to begrudge that is as silly as running blindly in a monster infested cave deep beneath the earth. The need to possess the ones we care about is truly a destructive impulse. The girls with accents all died in satisfyingly grisly deaths.

We went for a drink afterwards and joked around, making faces at a chubby train wreck of a man burping up his beer to our left. We left shortly, and hailed a cab. Froggie got out and I continued on my way, noticing as I slid over the back seat that the cabbie was looking at me in his rearview. I ignored it and started responding to a text from Froggie when the cabbie started talking to me, asking where I was from, what I had been up to, etc. He was black, in his forties, boyish and not boyish, he played soft jazz and he smiled often. I felt good from the night and responded more than I am usually inclined, noticing his perfectly straight but yellowy teeth every time he turned his head and smiled at me. When he got me in front of my place, after I paid the fare, he turned to me one more time.


"I just have to know... are you straight or gay?"

"Ha! I knew you were looking at me more than you should. Gay."

"I knew it! Baby, you a sexy motherfucker!"

(The passenger cracks up and puts his hand on the door handle and pops the door open)

"Wait! Can I have your number or something? Wanna hang out?"

(Awkward pause, the passenger bites his lower lip)

"I'm sorry. I'm flattered! You seem nice, but I have a lot on my plate right now."

(The passenger looks the cab driver in the eye and smiles, slowly lifting himself out of the cab, wondering if he really does have a lot on his plate)

(The cabbie, whispering through the open front passenger window)
"Hey. Why don't we just go somewhere around here and have some fun?"

(The passenger stands by the open window, sees the cabbie massaging a sizable bulge in his jeans, and considers, immediately feeling his erection pushing up against the tight blue cotton of his briefs, a single drop of pre-cum oozing forth)

"Again, I'm flattered. You're cute, but I really should go, I got some people to call... you know, the whole full plate."

(The cabbie smiles good naturedly)
"Alright baby, you take care. Damn! You made my night."

(The cabbie slowly drives away, raising his hand in salute from the window as he turns the corner. The passenger stands there for a second with his hand in the air. He picks up his phone and starts to text his friend after a moment, knowing that he's the only one who would understand the absurdity of the moment, and the scene ends as he lets out a disbelieving sigh)

****************************************************************************

After I finished putting away the last of my clean clothes, hanging my favorite shirt on its green wire hanger, I briefly saw the giant gorilla crashing to his death in my mind's eye. I started watching an anime I had recently discovered called Berserk, the story of a man who must kill every day to survive and has only been betrayed by the ones he loves. The episode ends with a preview of the next, and over images of human faces a masculine voices booms this out:

Each person's gaze will be locked on one whose feelings mirror their own.
To protect one's own happiness, to fulfill one's own dreams, and just to survive.
Is there ever a time where one can live his own dream,
Without inflicting a wound on someone else's heart?

Tears come to my eyes and I'm shocked by the feel of them. I wipe them away and turn off the light, and suddenly feel tenderness wash over me. I get under my white comforter and I will sleep deeply, and I will not remember a single moment of any of my dreams that night.

I Want What I Can't Have

Not too long ago I found myself masturbating to a video of a woman playing with herself.

Like most of my masturbatory experiences, it started innocently enough. I had started my routine of checking the usual six or seven sites but soon found myself going off track, following one link after the next until I found myself in a site dedicated to the perverse. There were videos of a man who nicknamed his grotesquely engorged testicles "the Blob", a dog throwing up on it's unfortunate humping victim, an exploding ass. Not exactly classy entertainment. But I was titillated, in a way that made my brain throb.

Feeling adventurous, I clicked on the video entitled "Blonde Plays with Perfect Tits and Pussy". A young blonde woman, with huge and seemingly pneumatic fake tits and ridiculously long, clear plastic stiletto heels gyrated on a wooden bench. I laughed a little and moved the mouse over to close the window but stopped short. Instead, I got up to close the door to my room. Watching her squeeze the large rosy nipple of her left breast with her right hand while her left hand's pink-nailed fingers spread her moist labia, I found myself surreptitiously touching myself. My butt in the air while I lay on my bed, my hand under the tight white band of my undies, I came within seconds.

Almost as soon as the semen left the head of my dick, the second it shot onto my trembling fingers, I found the video disgusting and distasteful. I shook my head, as if to shake away the memory of what had just happened, and closed the window, every window, and turned my computer off. The image of her lipsticked mouth open in pleasure seemed to burn itself onto the black screen. The void of it nagged at me, tugged on my sense of memory.

This kind of masturbation is not a new thing for me. Hurriedly rubbing the end of my cock while looking over my shoulder, watching the door. Not because of the shame of the act, but the cause of it. Often, I am turned on by the mere inappropriateness of something, the "wrongness" of it.

When I was thirteen, I would record the Sex in the 90's specials on MTV, then re-watch them alone in my room while jacking off. The more people talked about what they were into, the weirder it was, the greater the risk of someone walking in, the more times I would cum. Sometimes I would masturbate several times in a single one-hour episode.

One of the specials was focused on fantasies. There were fantasies of "everyday people" and of famous cool figures, rock stars and the like. One in particular seized me, the fantasy of Henry Rollins. In the segment, he spoke of wanting to have sex with Superman, being completely powerless to a person with limitless power. Or perhaps he wanted to be Superman, and have others under his power. Green-tinted images flashed in staccato of his angry muscled body in blue tights and a red cape, screaming at the screen with macho Neanderthal features, jumping in the air and grabbing bars with a look of unearthly frustration. This turned me on to the point of pain, and I would watch it again and again.

I was playing with myself while watching it one drowsy Sunday afternoon when my step-sister came barreling out of my closet, her blonde hair flying past the fuzzy static image of Henry Rollins thickly corded neck while she screamed "Pervert!" and ran out of my room. I slammed the door after yelling out with a mischievous grin, "That's what you get for sneaking into my room!" Less than a minute later I was cumming into my sock.

While working a volunteer position at the local public library with my best friend I would sneak books on body-building, male physique, and nude photography into the bathroom and beat off furiously, convinced that people could hear my hand squeezing the crisp plastic covering of the library books. I even checked one book out that was particularly erotic. I still remember the sepia toned photos of men with perfect bodies, and one photo in particular of a man lying in a bath, the milky soap of the water curling up against the taut flesh of his chest. I would jerk off to it any chance I had, and made almost no effort to hide it when I took it with me to the bathroom, although my brother and I shared a room at the time. I waited until the library sent a postcard to the house to remind me to return it, and the questioning look my mother directed towards me as she handed it to me.

This was part of the excitement for me. The fact that I knew it was taboo to be looking at men in this manner made it that much more enticing. The strange looks I got, from my step-sisters, from my Mom, from the librarian, from my best friend... these looks were half the reason I got the boner in the first place.

Now that having sex with men is no longer a mystery, something that is out of reach; now that I live in San Francisco and am out to everyone I know; now that I'm comfortable with my sexuality (for the most part); does it take the idea of a woman's sexuality to get me that old feeling of urgent, secret release? Does it take something that many of my gay friends would find disgusting, anathema, just as plain wrong as my parents finding me jacking off to men in underwear? Is desire so fickle? Or is what we find arousing learned, the direct result of a culture that frowns upon open sexuality?

Right now there is a boy staying at the hostel that I can't help but observe like a creep. He's shirtless often, and the tight fuzzy quality of his chest under the strap of his acoustic guitar is nothing short of remarkable. He's scruffy already and always, with big chops, and stubble that doesn't ever seem to change. He is always laughing and jumping, bouncing off of concrete from his skateboard with the aplomb of a superhero. Today I was walking down the hall and almost ran into him. He just stood there for a second and looked at me, the red paint of a Superman S curling down his naked stomach before skipping past me towards the bathroom and the shower. It left me with a headache and the need to jack off furtively. Am I attracted to him only because I can't have him? Because he's most likely straight, a skater, only 17 and off-limits? Or is it as simple as the fact that he's got an ass like a shelf?

I can only hope that he won't take to bubble baths while wearing six-inch, clear plastic high heels.

Reefer Sadness

It's one of those summer days when it just is not possible to do anything at all. I've been sitting on my bed doodling or playing a game half-heartedly, I've been sprawled out on the couch chatting aimlessly with my roommates about girls or boys or sex or art, I've held a book in my hands and dazed out. My mind is one of those motes that play in the shadows between the shafts of light that bleed through dingy aluminum blinds.

This general listlessness combined with a complete absence of sexual arousal has put me in a state of mind very similar to that of my 12 year old self, left alone every day of the summer. What an odd time that was. I never had anywhere to go, no neighborhood friends, no summer camp, no sports. Life consisted of getting up late, eating Cap'n Crunch while watching Nickelodeon cartoons with sandy eyes, eating a bologna sandwich on my stomach while watching Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Jane's Addiction and Guns n' Roses videos on MTV, eating Doritos while watching cooking shows with my Mom on her lunch break, fighting with my brother, laughing with my brother, watching the lives of wild animals while he made concoctions in the kitchen that I would be dared to eat, then remembering our chores 30 minutes before my step-dad would come home and doing them in a sweaty flurry. In other words, it was mind-numbing fun. It was monotonous, it was like being perpetually stoned.

Key Word: "like"

When I was 21 I had a terrible paranoid hallucinogenic waking nightmare after smoking pot in which I believed that I had forever lost my mind and the ability to live in time as everyone else did. Don't even try to understand that, it's a slippery slope indeed. Ever since, I haven't exactly jumped at the opportunity to partake. It always takes me to the darkest space in my brain. Back in February I went to a birthday party in which everyone seemed to be smoking and thought, "what the hell!" Thirty minutes later I was in a cab on the way home muttering to myself about how shallow and evil people are and suspecting my cab driver of nefarious deeds.

I had pretty much decided that I just shouldn't smoke it.

But a few days ago I smoked with Froggie and I gotta say, it wasn't half bad. For the first time in a long while I understood why people enjoy it. Admittedly, I took only the tiniest hits; as I felt it wash over me I felt my body and mind relax in ways that they hadn't in months. As we laid on his little couch I felt a fondness for bad television that had been lost since childhood. One show bled into the next and held my interest in quick stops and spurts. No longer was time any concern. Television was just on, and when you let it in, you let it in completely.

Touch too took on a gentler connotation, and before I knew it we were playing around in a space without guilt or nervousness. Not that I normally feel those things around Froggie, who is kind and silly and sexily comforting to be around, but for once, my brain was shut off during physical interaction, and I just let it be what it was.

Unfortunately I took another, bigger hit and it started to have an adverse effect. Already prone to overthinking everything, I found myself analyzing every hand gesture, every noise that came out of my mouth. My vision started to tunnel a little and I started to feel enclosed inside of myself, barely speaking. Being aware of my own quieting, my paranoia increased regarding a fear of sounding stupid, or boring. When I get really high, essentially all of my worst insecurities get magnified until I reach a point of complete atrophy, at which point I fall into the deepest escape of sleep.

I don't regret doing it--I had a lot of fun and felt freed for much of the experience. I especially like the loosening of one's boring internal regulations, and the childlike ability to live fully from one moment to the next. Perhaps this is why as I lay there watching South Park I kept thinking how great it would be to watch a big summer blockbuster like Superman Returns after getting high. To just let go of that cynical inner voice that can't enjoy the thrill of the action for what it is: a simple sensual visual pleasure.

I know you remember this: chewing on a peanut m&m with the tickle of Coke in the back of your throat, watching explosions with a barely concealed glee, your mouth ever so slightly open in awe. Isn't that what we loved about going to the movies in the first place?

So maybe marijuana isn't as bad as I've been saying all these years. Still, I don't support smoking it every day! I don't want to see anyone get the short term memory of a sponge. That's not cute. Your inner child would kick you in the ass for that.

Chaos is the Big Boss

It's Pride Weekend and the closest thing I've come to any sort of gay activity is a bunch of fratboys drunkenly punching each other on the shoulder. But that's what I get for living in the Marina. There are a bunch of hot guys staying at the hostel right now, and some of them have been giving me the eye and calling me "buddy", which is obviously code for "I want to do you."

It seems impossible that over a month has passed since I last posted. And that I am now 26. After past birthdays, when I was asked if I felt any different, I always scoffed a bit at the idea. As if the passing of one day can make you feel any different! I have found that this is entirely possible--that change can be very quick as well as extremely slow. Regardless of it's speed, it still occurs, and it is irrefutable.

Growing up I was plagued by parents who seemed to seek it out. I could never depend on them for stability, and these terrors were usually sprung on me as soon as I came home from a daunting day at school, or those first disorienting moments after waking. Sometimes it would just be a complete rearrangement of all the furniture in the house. More often than not it was something much worse, like all the tile being torn out of the kitchen, or all the grass in front of the house uprooted, or one of my stepfather's erstwhile daughters moving in just long enough to get pregnant, or the entire house being demolished to make way for a new one that would take over 5 years to finish. An uneventful day was a boon, a blessing, a space to breathe.

I think I can honestly say that I have spent the majority of my adult life so far pursuing stasis. I slept often and I slept late. When friends told me of plans for their lives, plans to move, plans to go to graduate school, plans to get married, I always dismissed them. In my Berkeley days especially, when I was surrounded by an endless procession of friends and parties and boys to make out with, I kind of took any challenge to that as a personal affront. I didn't understand why anyone would try to upset everything that seemed to me to be so perfect, so forever. But pursuing stasis is not a path to happiness. Much more likely, it's a path to becoming that shiftless guy you see holding onto a phone booth with white knuckles, eyes a little hazy and empty, asking his last friend for a favor and being turned down.

Ever since my birthday, it seems like things can't stop changing. The two cats that live at the hostel where I work met the end of their nine lives. One went peacefully in her sleep, the other went out clawing, losing her fight to a bulldog with a strong jaw. Animals in general are acting kinda cuckoo. I went over to an apartment a couple weeks ago and had to jump in the middle of a vicious dogfight that left one of the dogs bleeding copiously and several girls in tears. One of my coworkers was forced to move out of her place within 24 hours because of a nearby tree that posed "imminent danger".

Then there's personal politics. People got together, people broke up, people stopped talking to people, people started talking to people again. I'm confounded by other people, and what brings us together, and what pushes us apart. Sometimes I'm so overwhelmed by it all I went to hermit myself, but then I remember how miserable I was when I sat in my room masturbating endlessly and hoping someone, anyone, would call.

Sometimes when I'm walking to the gym, and the sun is at that perfect level that imbues everything with an orange glow that seems to over-saturate every color, an amazing thing happens. There are these little birds with wings like kites. In my head I call them Kites, or Starlings, although I have no idea what either should look like. They fly close to the ground at breakneck speeds. Oftentimes they look like they're going to crash, and they save themselves at the last possible second. So sometimes, when I'm walking through the tall grass, they choose me as a focal point and fly around me as I walk. I'll stop for a second and watch it fly around me and we're like a gyroscope. They don't seem to do it for any other reason than because it occurs to them, because it's fun. And you feel this connection with this little thing, and then you feel a connection to everything, and it all makes perfect sense.

If you don't overthink everything, sometimes knowing people can be as simple and inspiring as that.

The final boss in the very first Final Fantasy, the one on NES, is Chaos, the destructor of all that is good in the world. But it's never been an enemy in any other Final Fantasy since, and yes, I've played them all. According to wikipedia, in the new Final Fantasy (by the number of 12), Chaos is a force you can summon to work for the party, to wreak havoc on your enemies and prevail. Somehow that seems much more appropriate.

Chaos finally joined the party, he was just a little misunderstood.