hmm... its hard to draw girls. i think the main one came out kinda wonky, especially her stick. heheh. but the one in the upper right hand corner with the glasses came out spot on... at least one did. :) 

i like the littler ones i did of zoro more than the main one, but overall im happy with the finished product 

these turned out well 

The One Piece Obsession Continues

So now I've taken to drawing the characters of One Piece. See above. ^^ There will be more to come. Although I'm nowhere near as talented as Oda, I learn a lot from looking at his art, namely the way he draws bodies. Just trying to do his characters is like taking a class. I'm very into drawing lately, and someone actually told me that I was pretty talented the other day, and that I should pursue a career in animation. How rad would that be? To spend all my days doodling? It would be like being in high school math class, forever.

"My Balls Itch Like a Bitch Lately"

I work at a place that is conducive to being around youth, which is sometimes invigorating and at other times (usually when it is before 8 am) surprisingly irritating. It can make me feel like a man, and no longer a boy.

Right now there are two boys sitting near me, in their late teens, and the sexual air between them is palpable. They could not look more different, they are almost different species.

One is tall, red-haired and snub-nosed. He wears his orange shirt like a badge, his baggy stonewashed jeans like he can't wait to take them off. He is huge, barrel-chested, and deep voiced. He never stops moving his big eraser-like hands, he grabs his crotch and adjusts himself incessantly. He takes pride in drinking coffee at a young age and enjoys trying to force his smaller friend to drink it too.

The other is slight and short. He wears glasses and his dark curly hair rests against his smooth yet acne recovering skin like a baby with dirty thoughts. His thin arms are confident, his voice is higher pitched. He makes up for this by saying what I think he thinks are manly statements, like: "Back home my room is freezing, just the way I like it!" or "Dude! Dude, my balls itch like a bitch lately!".

They can't take their eyes off of each other.

I want, so badly, as if the world were a musical, for them to take each others hands. They would jump on top of the table and throw coffees and teenage caution to the wind. They would profess their love for each other in rhyme and scheme, they would profess their love for each other with youthful honesty and tenderness. And then they would kiss, and the strings would punch in, destroying everyone's reality and expectation with the power of their desire for each other.

A moment ago, when they got up to leave I made a joke. Either the joke was bad or they didn't hear me--I wasn't even acknowledged. They just kept looking at each other, talking about god knows what, looking at each other and laughing. I imagine they are going somewhere, high on caffeine, to make love. Yes, make love. Because these are boys too new at anything to call it sex. The little one will fuck the big one and his thin fingers will run through his coarse red hair until they cum on each other and fall asleep in each other's different sized arms. They are young enough to give themselves entirely. Their ribbons of semen will resist for a moment, like the membrane of an egg white, and then break into each other until it is impossible to tell where one started and the other ended, before it dries.

A Towel or a Dirty Shirt Will Do Fine

It's 1:51 am and my roommates are listening to Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan in the living room at a level which is counter intuitive to sleep. The smell of gin is in the air, I have come back from a late jaunt at the gym. There was a guy in the locker room who had the most perfect body I had ever seen: lithe, smooth and not overly muscular, slightly pinkish skin, the occasional mole. I wanted to run my hands over his back and all I could do was pretend I wasn't looking.

I'm horny and my choices are slim. I think of talking to people I have nothing in common with on the internet and it makes me want to grab the computer and throw it through my window. I feel such intense feeling that the only way I can think to disarm it is to be, somehow, in a space that is outside of living existence, like an egg. I consider masturbating, I hold my dick in my hand and feel no response, and yet I go through the motions, rubbing it in the usual spaces... I'm hard, I'm hard, I'm going to cum. If I cum on my chest or face will I feel a sense of accomplishment even afterward? I'm struck by how pointless most things are, and yet I keep going because my imagination tells me that there is something more.

I walked through lower Fort Mason to get home, up a long flight of stairs. I was a quarter of the way up and realized that I was surrounded on all sides by teenage thugs. They were drinking and tagging, I could hear the slur of their slurs. I walked forward and was not afraid, when the bottle broke on the steps directly below me, I did not flinch.

The Bottle, Spinning

I'm not really sure where to begin on this one, so I'll begin with some lyrics that have resonated with me in the last week. It is by, unsurprisingly, The Smiths. The song is "I Know It's Over". 1986.

It's so easy to laugh
it's so easy to hate
it takes guts to be gentle and kind
love is Natural and Real
but not for you, my love
not tonight, my love...

Somehow this takes me to another thing I have been captivated by for awhile, the anime and manga by Eiichiro Oda, One Piece. The first time I had ever seen it was the American/English edit on Cartoon Network. I found it annoying but the look of the characters compelling. So I bought the manga form and found the original vision of Oda irresistible. Oda has a remarkable imagination that he molds into clear and vibrant lines, youthful and inviting. His characters do everything full force. When they cry, he draws streams running from their eyes, their nose, drool from their impossibly wide mouths puddling. When they laugh you can see the cavernous backs of their throats, and their eyes are inked clear. The main characters, the crew of Monkey D. Luffy (who wants to be the King of all Pirates), all have tragedy in their pasts but trust each other implicitly. I respond to Luffy for his absolute loyalty to his dreams, his friends, and his will to live. People interpret him as an idiot and a fool and yet he rides his ship with joy towards danger and molds his world into something real. I could only hope to be so alive.

These two things, a song and a comic, melded in my waking and sleeping mind.

I had no intention of going to my friend Thea's party, in the spirit of spring, a Spring Formal. Yet I woke Saturday feeling jubilant despite the alcohol still in my veins from the night previous. I felt, as the day wore on, that the day was designed as a chance to slough off bad habits, to see the world through clear and undaunted eyes. So I decided to go. Simply avoiding any thought of the insecurites that I had let plague me for so long, for too long.

I dressed up, I wore a vest and a tie. My hair hung limp and slightly greasy over my left eye. My roommate and I went to the Hemlock first and marveled at the scene, the endless crush of hipsters and not so hipsters moving, moving, moving. I talked to the people around me, I opened up. I felt as if the heat inside of me could not be contained by the shape of my body, and so I smiled wide, hoping that people could see the back of my cavernous throat. I discovered, while watching him tell a story about Bob Dylan for the third time, that I no longer had a crush on my roommate but felt a camaraderie and tenderness towards him that I can only describe as brotherly.

The night progressed, we were a car packed with people. A ship out to sea. We were mesmerized by a couple of prostitutes flashing their wares to passing potential johns.

And before long we were parking in front of a house we had never been to, climbing up the steps past bikes and kids with big unwieldy hair towards an unlocked door. Up more steps, looking for Thea, finding her, laughing. I feel unlocked, loose, ready for anything. As if she can read me she takes me by the hand to the circle of kids, the circle all watching the spinning bottle of wine, the bottle that holds our fates.

It was all quite innocent. I locked lips with girls and boys of many shapes and sizes, reveling in the sweet and different types of beery breath, the clash of tongues and teeth. I kissed a tall blond boy awkwardly and confusingly, feeling like a twelve year old. Some girls were very forward, mussing my hair and my tie, leaving my lips wet and overwhelmed. I kissed a strapping black guy for almost a minute, instantly feeling the sexual connection missing from all the cute and smooth lips of the young girls. The bottle came to me many times, magnetized by my desire to spread my good will outward, for there to be a message found in the simplicity of physical contact. I kissed the girl who my roommate is seeing and not seeing. I told her she was a good kisser, her tongue had been gentle and purposeful and fruity. She told me that I was the best looking guy in the room, and I agreed with her.

The night unraveled with many faces, and most of them smiling broadly. Party conversations that are alternately deep and shallow. Staring at the life of those who live there, represented by their bedrooms, their posters, the cleanliness of the bathroom. Sometimes when at a party I am so taken by the need to understand the lives of others that I snoop in their medicine cabinet, as if the mirrored door holds the answer to what it is to be someone other than oneself.

I kissed some more, joked some more, butted in and out of conversations. A boy invited me to a slumber party of gay guys. And before I knew it, I was leaving the party with my roommate. All in all, the night was destined to be spent with the straights.

We were walking to the car when I saw the guy I had enjoyed kissing the most leaving too. I watched him talking on the phone and slowly turning the corner and followed my instinct. I ran after him, grinning like a fool. We exchanged phone numbers, I kissed him hard for a moment and ran back to the waiting car holding his card and the words he had said as I turned away from him. "If you kiss like that, I have to call you."

The night pressed forward, imperceptibly heading to morning. It was just me and my roommate then, we laughed about our messy lives and felt wise. He put on a Bob Dylan song, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue". 1965. My resistance to Dylan evaporated. I felt like riding on the stern of a ship, the spray of salt water on the tip of my tongue. I realized that I have friends all around me, if I will just accept them. That I can have anything I want, even if it doesn't last long.

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last.
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast.

Christian Brothers

I was told recently that I'm a "messy dater". Apparently there is a way to meet people and keep it safe and clean and easy. Maybe that's true. But I've always been the kind of person who jumps into muddy puddles, who digs through the trash. I think that if I found a way to believe in and pursue such order, that white picket fence, I would find a way to grind it into dust.

I went out on Friday to go on a date with this college student. The plan had been for me to go to the Castro around 7:20 and wait for his call, at which point we would decide where to eat. He called me 20 minutes late, after the chilling wind and rain had found its way under all my protective layers. He was already several drinks in, hanging with friends, he was sorry to call late, could I meet him at the Bar? I sensed his immaturity, I said it was ok. On the way there I prepared my shoulders for what I could already tell would be a challenging evening.

And it was. He pranced and preened around everywhere we went like a cockatiel. He talked, a lot, too much. He dropped names and novels. He learned nothing about me, because he never asked. He told me that he hated white people and yet all of his friends were white. He told me that he hated talking to people in bars but made a point to start conversations with any strangers in our vicinity. His endless movement made me feel simple and too serious.

A friend of his, around 32, provided entertainment. Every time College would run off, 32 would look at me with sad eyes and ask me to come home with him. He would beg for my number, he would stick his hand down my shirt. I enjoyed the attention, yet found his neediness unsettling. While College never asked me a question, 32 asked too many. Was he too old? Did he look fat? Was he boring? How old did he look to me? Was he too old? They both managed to never see me, just their own darkening reflections.

I grew exhausted yet restless. I wanted to be alone, in an open space, to breathe clean night air.

Later...

I'm peeing, the urinal is familiar. A cough. I am self conscious, I realize that someone is in the stall next to where I'm standing, and that the stall's wall has holes drilled into it. Another cough. I look down and realize a foot and it's shoe are inching towards mine. My heart starts to beat faster. I push my shoe into his. The sound of my urine stream stops abruptly, as if someone had put their hand in the way. A young voice. Come here. I don't know what I'm doing, the alcohol tells me to move. I turn around and see my reflection in the mirror for a split second, I avoid the sight of my own eyes. The stall door opens and I see and recognize his face. The black curly hair, the crooked grin. This is the face of the young Christian. Maybe 19 or 20, I have watched him command the attention of the girls he travels with. Now he has mine. Our eyes connect, he keeps them locked to mine as he pulls me in and closes the stall door behind me. His eyes are clear and staring into me as he unbuttons my pants and pulls my painfully hard cock out of my curduroys. I can not stop looking. He takes me into his mouth and closes his eyes. I sigh. My knees are shaking, I wonder if anyone will walk in. For a second I am nervous, and then the heat of his tongue makes me forget. It slides around my thick cock head. I gasp. I feel it under the length of my shaft all the way to the base as he starts to go at it. I feel his drool fall down my pant leg. He grunts. His teeth scrape me but I do not care. I run my hand through his thick curls, along his too smooth jaw. I feel like I am falling. I whisper to him as he takes me in and out and in again that I am going to cum and I start to cum and I feel it shoot out of me in huge spurts and he keeps his mouth clamped onto my dick and I can't imagine where it can all be going and he makes a noise like an animal and looks at me with such tenderness and I push my hand against the tile to steady myself and he looks at me and looks at me and I laugh, like I always do. He laughs too. Suddenly I feel nervous, and I say thank you and tell him that he is sweet. I leave quickly and in a daze, afraid to look back but doing it anyway. He waves innocently and goes to the sink to wash his hands, his mouth.

I am outside in the clean night air and the rustle of leaves is strong. I hear an owl hoot, the solitary flap of one wing. A Smiths song comes to mind and I begin to hum it and think: How wonderful it would be to be a believer--to truly believe in the order of things!

Seventy Five Cents?

I drank a lot this weekend. I just got back from an Oscars party (Heath didn't win!?!) where I drank more than I have in months, and feel completely sober. Mostly because of last night. I woke up this morning in my white briefs, lightheaded both because of my haircut and the insane hangover crushing my skull. The only thing I could think, after downing a couple aspirins, was how quickly I'm losing weight. It took so long to start and now its just falling off. I do not feel like myself.

Last night was mostly spent with my friend Danny. I love him. He is the closest thing right now that I have to a true gay friend, and I don't know what I would do without him. He's crazy, not in the cute way, but that's part of why I like hanging out with him. Yesterday we both needed to go out, to show ourselves off, to give our middle fingers to the world. So where else is there to go? The Castro.

I'm not a fan. The snooty pussy retail, the clones, I hate. And not just a little. But there really is not better place for me to a get a little ego boost. We went to the Bar, which is elevator house music in terms of music, atmosphere, and guys. Snore. The young bartender and I played the eye game, but after a minute I realized that he was a guy I had crushed out on back in my Berkeley days. Thats the way I roll lately: nostalgia. I got a lot of looks there. Two guys sat next to me and just stared at me, not speaking to each other. An old man tied his shoe next to me on the patio and tried to start a conversation with me based on it. I did for a minute, then grew bored. After two drinks, Danny and I felt a yawn growing in our minds. We left.

Next: Powerhouse in SoMa. I had never been, but Danny had all sorts of stories about how raunchy it was. When we got there the first thing I noticed was that it was nearly empty and that the Indiana Jones pinball cost a ridiculous 75 cents. About ten older guys, daring anyone to look them in the eye while they grope a growing dick through their khakis. There are grainy images of wrestlers on 80's tvs, the mottled green static coloring and distorting their tight bodies and cocks. As a joke I put my hand on Danny's inner thigh and asked him if I should blow him in front of everyone, to put on a show. We laughed but I felt empty inside, thinking about Froggie and all our plans to have public sex. 90's R&B blaring lasciviously, Danny and I decide to leave.

We have taken to singing the new Gossip album, Standing in the Way of Control. Especially the sixth track, "Your Mangled Heart." We scream the song until our voices are raw and hoarse, the night air accepts our bandages, the words:

I don't want the world,
I only want what I deserve.

We end up, somehow, back in the Castro. Dancing at Badlands is the next thing on the agenda. I hadn't been there since the whole strike and discrimination scandal hit the place. Not because of the strikes, but because I just never really liked it in the first place. This night ends up being no different. Mariah Carey and Madonna pumps through the speakers, nobody looks like they're having an iota of fun. I saw a guy walking back and forth with a hungry and glazed look in his eye, wearing shiny track shorts. He can not see anyone because he does not have eyes. He is one giant erect cock, waiting to explode. This is Badlands. Danny and I danced nevertheless, we danced ourselves sweaty, we made people stare at us, we left after half an hour.

One more place. We went to the Rickshaw Stop in Hayes Valley, to see a band I'm familar with but have no real love for: Tussle. The location is actually pretty cute. A little upscale, chock full of yuppie scenesters, but I preferred it to the apocalyptic emptiness of Badlands. The band played well, and I was faced once again with the phenomenon of people who are too cool to dance. It started to piss me off so I went to the front alone and I danced the entire time. I knocked my knees out, I kicked the air, I pumped my fists. I did it for me.

My friend Chris was there with his dad and sister, who I have developed a harmless crush on. It is not that I have feelings for him, but that he reminds me of an old crush. I find him safe, and kind. His sister was wasted, we went to look for her and I asked him if he wanted to hang out alone sometime. He looked at me surprised and said yes, and I realized after he said it that I didn't really want to. We didn't find his sister.

At one point, when things started to get hazy, I lost track of my friends. I got into a small argument with the bouncer about going outside. I stuck my head out the door to look for my pals and he told me that there were no more "ins and outs" and sticking one's head out the door qualifies as an "out". I paused, looked at him with contempt and said, "Lighten up, fatso."

Unsurprisingly, shortly after that they asked me to leave. I took a cab home feeling satisfied in the evening. I approached it on my terms and I felt alive, which is a new thing for me. It is at this moment, when the foggy air is sliding through my fingers, when the cabbie's soft jazz cradles my thoughts like my mother's voice, that I realize something extraordinary. I never got an erection, not once, the entire night.

No Smell But My Own

When you have someone, whether completely or just to think about, the idea of freedom is not exactly real. Its like standing on the edge of the cliff while leaning on a railing, or riding a rollercoaster strapped in. You feel the excitement, but none of the fear. But real single-ness, real solitude, is a much more terrifying endeavor. Its the jump out of the plane with no parachute, falling down a dark well with no rope.

The worst part is waking up. There's no warm scruffy smelly body to bury my face into, there's no hand to hold, no head to kiss. I toss and turn and hug a pillow, wishing it would work, just once, as a surrogate. These days, once I wake up, I'm up for good. Going to sleep at night is easy, I can always just jack off really hard, pull my knees up and cum on my furry belly and chest. Then, sleep is a relief. But getting up, facing the day with no plans but your own, facing yourself with no emails or phone calls waiting, facing yourself alone--that's a kind of hell.

Its not easy to find that relief of going back to sleep when your stomach is already in knots, and you know that not just anyone will do. Because some random guy would almost be worse. And too often in that situation I end up being the jerk, asking them to leave before their eyes even open. Dealing with a stranger's morning breath, worse than my own? Idle and inane morning chatter? Starting the morning with someone you feel absolutely no connection to? Torture.

But I guess this is what it's about. So often I would look at the time frame of the day and feel weighed down by it, knowing that I had to run that errand before 6, knowing that I had to shower and change for the party I'm dreading; it was a hassle. I wished for an open schedule. And now that I have it I miss the order of the obligations, I miss the structure. So I have to make my own. Which is something I don't think I've ever done before. I don't remember the last time I asked someone to do something I had thought of. I've never felt secure enough to think that someone else would want to do something I liked. These were the things I fantasized about doing the day I had nothing to do, which would never come. Now I have a calendar full of them.

Though the well is dark and covered in lichen, though I'm stifling a scream and scraping my hands on the crumbling brick, I know that I'll find something on the bottom. There will be ground to stand on, and the ground will be wet with my brains and my blood and my heart.

Muffing it Up

The age of thirteen is an oily time at best, the awkward confluence of zits on already awkward and changing faces belie the changings beneath, and the sudden realization that things are no longer safe. Junior high is when you realize that the world is a dangerous place, that you can get beaten up, that you can beat yourself up, that you can beat yourself off.

At this time I spent the majority of my time hiding. I wore big converse and baggy clothes to hide my slight body. I wore the same hoodie everyday because it was a baby blanket blue and I could hide my hands, my face, my eyes. School was torture and so was home, any time anyone looked at me or spoke to me it was a challenge, it was aggressive. I watched a lot of TV, I played a lot of video games, I read. I wanted to exist only as something that passively saw, and processed information.

So when school would let out, I was gone. My absurdly full backpack was slung over my right shoulder, I was the first out the door, down the hill, on the street, heading home. I had no one to talk to after class, I had no gossip. This was never questioned, and I would amble home, dragging my hand on railings, checking for thrown away porn in apartment dumpsters (a surprisingly fruitful endeavor).

Imagine the scene: I begin my usual trek home, the Santa Ana winds bruising my eyelashes, wondering at the inevitability of my rhythmic conversed footfall, and I see someone walking in the street looking over at me. I recognize him immediately. This is Tony, a quiet guy with a shaved head and an obsession with the military. He is already covered in hair at the age of 13, it pours out of his sleeves and the top of his camo t-shirt, he has a unibrow, his wide jaw is always shadowy. I look at him and I feel helpless in my attraction, I look away. He calls out a Hey and I start to panic, waiting for the name call, or trouble. I think he wants to beat me up. I think this is the only thing that anyone could want from me. He calls out again and I tentatively look at him and respond with a nod. He runs over smiling.

"You're Justin, right?"

"Yep... Tony?"

"Yeah."

This is how it began. This is how we started walking home together every day. This is how we started talking about sex every single time we did.

"What do you think it feels like to have your cock sucked?"

We always talked about sucking cock. It was an obsession on his part, one that I didn't quite understand yet, or was ready to. He would look at me with a challenging twinkle in his eyes and ask me if I had ever felt a hot mouth on my dick, if I had ever thought about it, if I thought someone could take the whole thing in, if it would go down a throat, if girls like to lick balls, why girls are afraid of cocks, would a girl guzzle our cum? He would ask me all these things and I would be terrified, and I would shift my hard prick around in my jeans, I would reach down my pants and fumble my way through talking about things I knew nothing about, and I would look him in the eyes while I did this.

"I'm not gay but what do you think it feels like to suck a cock?"

When he asked me this and I told him I thought about it all the time, things started to change. He started looking at me like he wanted something. He started asking me to come over to his apartment complex, to tell me that his parents weren't home. He asked me why I never showed him where I lived. He asked a lot of questions. When he asked me questions about my self I thought it was because I was a joke to him. He would tap me on the back, punch me lightly on the arms (something that even today I consider the height of flirtation). My heart would be ready to burst when we would reach the point where we parted ways, I always wanted him to say something but I had no idea what. We talked, but he spoke a language I could not hope to understand. Not yet, anyway.

"I bet you would give a good one."

"A good what?"

"You know, blowjob?"

So of course I muffed it up. After winter break it was hard to pick up the momentum of where we had left off. He seemed shyer, less sure of things. And when he brought up blowjobs again I lied through my teeth to impress him. I told him that a friend of one of my cousins had blown me, I described in detail what she had looked like and how I came in her hair. He looked at me strangely during the walk. His eyes lost some of the energy and when he said goodbye, when we went our separate ways, he seemed lost. He looked back at me a couple times, I waved goodbye. He never spoke to me again. I told myself it was because he knew I was lying.

"How big is your dick?"

"I dunno."

"How can you not know?"

"I dunno, I just never measured it."

I look back and I wonder how he knew to talk to me. Maybe it was in gym. When we were all on our respective numbers and bent over to touch our toes, did he look at my ass? Did he notice me looking at someone else's? Did he notice me stare at Matt Gardner when he took off his shorts? Did he notice me glance at the occupied urinals in the changing room? Did he notice one of my thousands of erections during aimless baseball, football, soccer games? Did he notice me? Did he notice?