the merry go

Wii, Mii and Kweh

2006-11-10T22:50:00.000-08:00

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

2006-10-11T17:41:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-20T13:57:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-15T10:56:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-18T17:36:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-06T19:24:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-24T14:31:00.000-07:00

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.

Evening Wood

2006-05-10T16:07:00.000-07:00

Twice last week, I found myself sporting erections in the dark safety of a theater. That's fine. I've been doing that since I was 10 years old. But for the first time since I was that age, those erections were aimed at women.

Threat #1: Missy Peregrym from Stick It.

Now, the movie was forgettable. It was definitely no Bring It On. Not too funny or interesting, with some laughable acting, I still found myself transfixed. Miss Missy was just irresistible! She played a tough girl, wearing baseball caps and oversized hoodies in camo or illustrious tagging. Her face is feminine, but in a teenagey boyish way that I can only compare to the skater boys that tortured me with crooked grins and sun bleached bangs in the summers of my So Cal youth. Her problems with authority, her bratty dialogue, the band tees (I know she probably has never listened to Black Flag but a boy can dream...) all furthered my amorousness.

I found myself blushing with desire for the soft and tanned skin covering her muscled abs, the purposeful curve of her shoulders.

Threat #2: Chan Marshall (Cat Power)

I saw her at the Palace of Fine Arts with some friends last week and although I went in an exhausted and bad mood, I left in a jubilant daze. The show had been perfectly orchestrated from beginning to end. Her presence on stage a tornado, her voice a beam of dusky light.

There's something about her that has always fascinated me. The first time I saw her was in LA at the Knitting Factory, fumbling and hiding from the increasingly angry crowd surrounding her. I stood there frozen and transfixed and in a way, I've been in love ever since. I listen to her records more than any other female artist and am oddly protective of her when people complain about her performances or her supposed substance abuses. But it was always one of those gay boy crushes, an admiration, a starry eyed idolization.

Half way through the PFA show, she changed into a little strapless white dress, lace webbing its way along the hem. It was a force. It's power immediately hit me, and as I sat there in the dark I found myself feeling physically drawn to her. She sat at the piano and stamped away at the foot pedals; I could barely breathe as I watched her knees bouncing and her lips brush the round tip of the microphone. She stood at the microphone with a guitar strapped around her brown freckled shoulders; I was hard. And when she put on a backwards baseball cap and some white adidas, bouncing around the stage like the little sister of a bunch of dusty boys playing baseball, my desire was painful, loud, bone-crushing.

A couple years ago I saw her at the Great American Music Hall with The Dirty Three. She went first, oddly enough, and when The Dirty Three began their mournful performing I suddenly felt a tug on my arm and the drunken brush of wet lips on my ear. I turned, a little annoyed, and was in utter shock to see her, Chan Marshall herself. She was shorter than me, drunk, and she looked up at me and smiled before saying "Aren't they great? Aren't they amazing??" I just stood there, unable to say anything, until she said bye and moved further up towards the stage. To this day I wish I had said something, anything. Something to let her know how cool I think she is, like: "I love you."

Considering my two secret straight crushes, I wondered what they had in common. I was in awe of their shoulders, which I have decided is my favorite part of a girl. They're strong and yet delicate, like wings. Men's shoulders are functional, like the hull of a ship. So many of my straight friends go after the little wispy girls. The girls who look like porcelain dolls: tiny wrists, little pink mouths, pale skin. I've never understood that. I could love a tough girl, especially if she's got straight brown hair naturally cascading down either sides of her face. I don't want her to act shocked or delicate, I want her to clench her nail-bitten fists. I want her to look like she spends most of her time outside, getting into trouble. Nothing sexier than a girl smiling, white teeth framed by a tanned face.

So I guess I like my girls a bit boyish. Which isn't that surprising. Ironic though, considering the only girl I fooled around with was a paragon of femininity, all blonde tits and makeup. I still think I'm going to switch teams, because boys? Yeah, they look better naked, but those fuckers have failed me one too many times.

A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama

2006-04-26T16:47:00.000-07:00

The pressure of blogging, at least for me, is that once you find the thing you want to write, you can't let it go, even if (and especially) it's difficult to get out. I had the idea to write about the first boy I ever met off the internet. A tragically comedic story, it is also complex and lengthy. I put it off for over a week, instead spending too much time with friends and beers. And then I sat down with a cup of coffee a couple night ago and wrote the bitch. It wasn't fun, but it was satisfying to challenge myself in the telling of the story, describing my horror upon seeing him come down the stairs with q-tips sticking out of his ears, yellowed with wax, my utter lack of attraction. I re-read the piece, my longest post by far, and was proud of it. Obviously I lost it. Obviously something happened and it's gone and I can't get it back.

Writing pissed me off a little, or maybe it was blogging, or computers themselves. Maybe I was most angry at my own carelessness. I may try to write the story out again someday, but not anytime soon.

The sun was out today, and the weather calm and nearly precious. I spent the time reading outside and then I got out my pad and pens and did some drawing. I feel a sense of relief after writing and drawing, as if I'm a too-full balloon and these actions are the tiny pinprick that lets out the funny little burst of air. So I drew Sanji, the chef of the crew in One Piece. Not bad, eh?

There's something great about drawing in the sun. The light is perfect, the shadow of the pen so satisfying, the imperceptible grain of the paper confiding. I think this is the best thing I have ever drawn, this detail of the woman loving, the smoking chef Sanji.

I'm off tonight to watch a movie with a 19 year old whom I feel very little attraction for, and in a couple days I will be meeting a man 20 years older than that for a little hike and chat. I have no idea what I'm doing, so don't ask. You'll just be met with a blank stare, an embarrassed sideways grin and a curlicue eyebrow.

Shortly. Thus. And So.

2006-04-09T00:33:00.000-07:00

I woke up last Friday with the kind of nausea that makes you forget you ever felt any other way. The kind that makes your forehead break into a cold sweat, the kind where you don't even know if you can make it to the bathroom because moving will only make it worse. I vomited several times over the course of 3 hours, until it got to the point where nothing was coming out but the most basic fluid, the yellowy pain known as bile. I saw myself in the mirror and was frightened by the look in my eyes. I felt disgusting and pathetic, I felt like Rusty Brown.

I recently read Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library 16 and was completely blown away. His layouts have reached new levels of cinematics, so much to the point where I find myself remembering it in movement. The art of comics has long intimated at movement: the scratch marks by a inky cape, a red vinyl boot, a green and shiny gloved fist. But Ware's movement is slow and purposeful, like the precise snowflakes that decorate the opening pages.

ANL 16 has many characters other than the profoundly pathetic Rusty Brown (with whom I feel an unwelcome kinship towards). There's his future friend by default, Chalky White. His sister Alison, beautiful and real. A collection of teachers at the snow blanketed school from Rusty's father to Mr. Ware himself. All different but all struggling to make sense of their loneliness. Everything seems to point to some semblance of order or fate, a reasoning for these people to be brought together: the clean lines, the rounded edges, the reference to snowflakes, the architecture of the school itself, the square panels.

But that's not the case. He let's you know this by an omniscient voice on a blackboard referring to something not hinted at by visuals, the commingling smells of the school itself. The inherent pointlessness of "dissecting" out of the miasma the origin of each separate odor. We do this thing in our heads, we make ourselves main characters in a story. When we're probably a lot closer to the static that TSSHHT's across the title page of ANL 16. A random and loud scattering of specks, impossible to differentiate.

Like in One Piece, I want all the people I care about to be on a ship outside of reality. Floating on the sea, together forever. Outside influences are only quick distractions from the loyalty of our friendship and our crew, waiting for defeat. I know that this is a fantasy, and it gets me hurt often. This is why I am like the sad collector Rusty, his denial of reality in exchange for plastic. I refuse to acknowledge the randomness of our intertwinings, I refuse to swallow that existential moment. When Chris Ware draws himself into the story, miserably trying to be helpful, thinking about getting dumped while his paintings loom above him explosively cold, I cringe. I respect it, but disavow it entirely. Surely life isn't so desperately lonely!

And then I see myself: not thinking about anything at all, my knees pressed into the graying linoleum, my mouth stretching over the nauseatingly smooth curves of the toilet, vomiting loudly.

2006-04-09T00:32:00.000-07:00

heeeere's usopp! the one in the upper left hand corner sucks, i know.

2006-03-30T02:15:00.000-08:00

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. :)

2006-03-30T02:14:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-30T02:11:00.000-08:00

these turned out well

The One Piece Obsession Continues

2006-03-30T02:04:00.000-08:00

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"

2006-03-24T18:40:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-23T01:51:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-19T23:37:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-13T00:30:00.000-08:00

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?

2006-03-06T00:45:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-03T15:24:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-01T19:11:00.000-08:00

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?

Hariboner

2006-02-22T17:27:00.000-08:00

I've never been much of a fan of candy, but there really isn't anything sexier than a gummy bear. When you first pop one into your mouth and your saliva mixes with its sugary skin, it gains a sticky moistness, like when the lube on a cock begins to dry out. You roll the little bear around in your mouth, a blueberry in a bowl, a french kiss. Its stumpy little arms and legs dissolving, you can't help but explore them with the tip of your tongue, like little nipples. I like to bite the head off with my front teeth and before the whole bear starts to disappear chew on everything with my back molars. Then, its fruity gristle, its too sweet, it slides down the back of your throat like the drop of precum oozing off a stiff dick that you never notice.

Candied perfection. Especially when jacking off quietly in a dark theater, and the stiff denim of your jeans pull on your aching nuts. Especially when the movie also happens to be about the dangers of youth. That's a gummy bear. The dirty, spoiled rotten and sticky sweet flavor of childhood.

The Mouse & the Maven

2006-02-16T14:15:00.000-08:00

There were very few classes in high school that I actually enjoyed, especially that first awkward year. I always loved my English classes, and developed a strangely protective connection with all of my English teachers. They were often the subject of derision by my peers, and I would go out of my way to let them know that I appreciated them and understood their efforts.

The best though? It had to be last period: Art 1. This was the kind of class where every day was a free-for-all. But in the organized way that I preferred, unlike the terrifying daily ordeal known as lunch. The "teacher" was a burnt out pothead named Ms. Su who nodded serenely whenever presented with any student's work. We had vague ideas that certain assignments were due by a certain time, but the truth was that you could slap anything together the day that it was due and it would be accepted.

My freshman year I was placed at a table with a fellow freshman, Mike Macias, and a junior girl. Her name was Jenny Hasa and I found her fascinating. She always wore long black skirts and Led Zeppelin tees. She never smiled, and would often ditch class to makeout with her senior boyfriend, an artistic guy with long hair and reportedly, a long penis. I was enthralled by her drawings of skulls and slit wrists. I wanted her. I wanted to be her. I loved her. I was jealous of her. I wanted her acceptance.

What made this situation mortifying was that little Mike Macias (who was fond of the nickname, Mouse Mike) was the worst kind of irrepressible horndog. He would pester me the entirety of the hour and a half with demands to talk about which chicks I wanted to bone and requests to draw girls with big tits and open vaginas (somehow I was discovered to be the best at this in the class, and a paradoxical theory was developed by Mike that it was because "fags know women's bodies"). Mouse Mike loved teasing me about being gay too, even though I wasn't even close to coming out yet, and would sneak up behind me try to give me wedgies.

I was desperate to make Jenny Hasa impressed by me but the most I ever got was a quiet laugh. More often than not she never even looked at us once, and on the rare days that she did it was usually a look of scorn. I gave up after awhile.

One day Mike dared me to draw a picture of two guys fucking. He convinced me that if I didn't do it, that would be enough to prove my gayness. So I did it. I drew a blond guy bent over in profile, his mouth open with pleasure, a stream of spit pouring from his protruding tongue. His hand was penciled on one of his ass cheeks, to ease the entrance of the huge veiny cock penetrating him. I drew it as I had imagined it a million times. The guy fucking my blond bottom boy had dark stubble and big hairy arms and pecs and had one hand resting on his fuck's back. The other hand pushed through the receiver boy's charcoal strands of hair, pulled just a tiny bit. I drew every detail I could imagine.

I lost track of time. I was both top and bottom. I became lost in the sexual fantasy of the paper, each erasing and re-erasing an attempt at further verisimilitude. I drew closed eyes, taut stomachs, tensed asses, spread fingers and toes, hanging hairy balls, the drip of precum from an erect cock. It did not occur to me to draw a condom.

I should not have been surprised when Mouse Mike snatched the paper from the shadow of my tensed shoulders. I should not have tried so hard not to cry when he started showing all the kids in the class what I had done. People turned and looked at me in disgust or outright laughter. When he showed Jenny Hasa I flushed with shame and buried my head in my arms and wished for the swift release of death. Finally, unable to resist even this, he ran over to the stoned Ms. Su and brought down on me 2 saturday detentions, which had to be awkwardly explained to my parents.

But in the short moment between showing Jenny Hasa and running over to our teacher, the quiet girl who was too cool to ever look me in the face put her hand on my shoulder and said loudly, "Dude. You drew that? Fucking hot."

It was, hands down, the coolest moment of 9th grade.

Slipping a Mickey

2006-02-10T17:44:00.000-08:00

On the last day of 8th grade I took my best friend Aaron aside and told him: "We can't be friends anymore." He looked at me for a shocked second and started to laugh. I smiled at him and walked away, turning back on the crabbed lawn to bark out a mean chuckle.

When his father called my house a week later and asked to talk to my mother I pretended I wasn't thrilled. I tried not to smile when I told my mom that everything was fine and that I definitely did not want to talk to Aaron. This was my first breakup, this was how I learned how to protect myself.

His father used to go for green swims at night and would return while the two of us giggled over veiny episodes of Ren & Stimpy. He would take off his black speedos in front of us and I would sit up a little and ignore the panicked look in my best friend's eyes when he noticed me looking at his father's hairy ass and crotch.

Aaron Senior would shower with the door open and I would ogle him soaping his toned body, yearning to look closer, to gently push on the door, to touch him. When Aaron would sleep I would take his father's damp speedos into the bathroom and smell them while I jerked wildly. His father used to wink at me; I found his father irresistible.

So sometimes when Aaron and I would lay on the floor together, in our makeshift mystery piles of blankets we would touch each other. I would slide my hand under the elastic band of his cheap white underwear, under the brown blanket, under the crisp vinyl of the sleeping bag. He had pubic hair different from mine, straight and wispy and soft. I would grab his growing penis in my hand and squeeze it while he journeyed between the dark and faintly curly mass of my youth.

We would just hold each other, and talk about girls. Or masturbating. I was proud of the fact that I had started cumming, he was jealous. I thought of his father while my dick hardened. Maybe he thought about the calendar of Cindy Crawford he had recently received as a gift. I found her softly curving tits a betrayal. We never did anything else.

When my brother and Aaron went to DisneyWorld the year after I stopped talking to him, they returned with a cartoonish zoo of souvenirs. I would often laugh when I looked at them, the same hard laugh I used every time I saw Aaron in high school years later. I thought of how we had always talked about going to DisneyWorld and ditching his father. We would run into the manicured avenues, our voices breaking in the highs and lows of our secret language. We would disappear in the lurid safety of a false world. We would disappear with our hands down each others' pants.

Secret Exhibition

2006-02-07T13:34:00.000-08:00

I can cum quietly, like a finger brushing an eyelash off a face.

I must have learned how to when my family had been poor and jammed into a 2 bedroom apartment. There were many times I beat off in the bathroom, running my fingers over my smooth adolescent chest, or the soft curve of my ass cheeks. But more often than not it was in my bed, just a few feet from my hopefully sleeping brother and stepsisters. And when I would cum I would shudder imperceptibly, roll to my side and fall asleep.

I began to feel the need to push this boundary, and often found myself getting turned on by the possibility of cumming on someone without their knowledge, or to be spurting in my shorts while someone spoke to me unawares.

The challenge: to cum in the middle of class. To cum while its quiet, when even the slightest moan would be heard.

It was 8th grade in Mrs. Cooper's class, 4th period. Right before lunch. She would give us "quiet time" when she was nursing her southern hangover, and during this time we could do whatever we wanted as long as it was quiet. Some of the jocks would sleep, girls would doodle or write notes, and nerds like myself often read.

I did not plan this, but it occurred to me to write a dirty story. I remember little of what turned me on at 13, but I have the vague recollection that it had something to do with a supposed girlfriend of mine exposing her breasts to me and having sex with someone else while I watched.

As the pencil's scratchings became louder and more frenzied I felt the heat of my hardon pressing on my white briefs, the tension increasing with each t-crossing, each dotting of an i.

I was wearing a blue hoodie at the time. One of those articles of clothing that I chose as part of my eternal wardrobe, as if I was a character on the Simpsons. I stuck my hand in the front pocket so that I could shift my dick into a more comfortable position, and did so quietly and without an obvious movement. As I did I felt the wetness of my precum and somehow my awareness of this fact gave me the unavoidable premonition that I was going to cum.

I began to squeeze the tip of my cock with the fingers of my left hand while I wrote with my right hand. It didn't take long. My writing got sloppier, unable to hold itself on the lines of the college ruled paper, but I never stopped. In my mind's eye, I see the pencil grinding a thick charcoal line on the white paper that I am unable to quit, it just goes on.

I feel the cum shooting out of my cock into the pocket of the hoodie. I wipe my fingers inside and sit up a little. I make a tiny cough. I become paranoid that someone is smelling my semen. I look down at the paper and it somehow seems to prove my guilt and I quickly crumble it up and throw it in my bag. The bell rings and I sit up looking for a challenging eye. No one is looking at me.

I go to lunch, my erection subsiding. The cum dries in my kangaroo pocket.

Looking back, I wonder if the whole class knew what I was doing and couldn't say a thing. As if I was performing for all 30 plus kids. As if it was turning them on too. In that amorphous age where even a toothbrush can arouse you, maybe we all needed that release in English.

Mrs. Cooper yelled at me the next day for yawning. She said, "If class is that boring for you, why don't you take it outside in the hall." So I went into the bathroom and jacked off into the urinal. The only sound, the oil and vinegar drip of my semen into the pale urinal water.

Helping Hand

2006-02-06T22:40:00.000-08:00

It started when I went to the public pool with my aunt and cousins, I must have been 8 or 9. I saw some men showering and was completely in awe of their penises. One man in general, who spoke loudly (as I am sure is often the case with those well hung and exposed) had the thickest and longest cock. The soapy water was collecting in his pubes and dripping off his low-hanging balls. I became instantly hard and went into one of the stalls.

Pulling down my wet swimming trunks I stared down at my small erection. I felt overwhelmed at the sight of someone's father's dick and disappointed in my own. I felt nauseous and dizzy and I needed something to hold onto. I put my hand on the underside of my young cock and grabbed my balls, rubbing the ball of my hand into me. It felt good. It at least made me feel less like I was in a whirlwind. It gave me somewhere to focus. Still wishing I could look at the men's cocks, but much too afraid, I continued rubbing myself on the toilet. And afterward.

Underwater through my vinyl trunks. Lying in bed at night, sometimes through my underwear, sometimes bare. Against a pillow, a blanket, a sheet. I would look at something and wait for a chance to rub it against my cock, to see how it would feel. The jets of a jacuzzi. Stuffed animals, shirts, balloons. I often did it in front of people without their realizing, with my hand in my pocket. I shared my room with my brother and, every other weekend, with my stepsisters. There were many nights that I rubbed myself in the bunkbed right next to them. I never felt like it was wrong, but I felt like it was private.

Perhaps because I could not cum yet it became something I did purely for the pleasure of it. There was never any release, so sometimes it would drive me a little crazy. Like a huge buildup of emotion with nowhere to go with it. But childhood is one long buildup of emotion anyway. When I was anxious about getting older, when I was anxious about death, when I was anxious about feeling attracted to boys, when I was anxious about my stepfather hitting me... it was always there, this little pleasure, and it made everything just a little easier.

2006-02-06T16:59:00.000-08:00

butt pirate