Whitman’s shopping lists, Lorca’s night blossoms,
Dennis Cooper’s tender wolves, Thom Gunn’s night sweats,
long lines of calico princes in neon clubs dancing to diva songs,
Ginsberg’s personal ads for sex, Paul Goodman’s daily orgasms,
O’Hara’s interrupted lunches, Hemphill’s dead brothers—
the apple carts of San Francisco, relics of old Boston, freed slaves’
children blaring blues and disco in Chicago and Detroit—
somewhere there’s a gay poet who has just begun to be gay, and a poet.
Lightning presentiments from his elder, someday mentors encountered as
runes carved on black glass cliffs in Yellowstone and Blue Ridge,
shaping lust, memory, love, fear, passion, and promise
into tangoing fires of poems hung pulsing in air. Scanning every line:
roadtrips across the desert at 109 F driving naked sweating;
taking years to write his longest epic erotic poem,
because every several lines of stanzas he must break off writing
to jerk off, but that’s what happens when you write naked;
a thousand lovers queued into rhymes by city poets,
all dead, one way or another, all gone, emptied by time;
memories from boyhood summers of fumbling experiments
with neighbor boys, now consecrated and divinely glowing
because time can’t change them in memory anymore;
Black poets from Brooklyn and Jamaica whose
tropical mango and dirt fragrances died with AIDS;
Latino poets who only come out officially after mama dies;
Filipino man you sucked off in the truck’s front seat
one rainy California night in the supermarket parking lot
who wanted to come in your mouth—
some reverse-colonial psychological dominance maneuver
you kept encountering with Filipino men—
only you wouldn’t let him, a stranger after all, who
walked away in the rain, never seen again, then
you went in and bought your week’s groceries;
and all the litany of the dead, Assotto Saint,
sainted Hart Crane, sanctified Derek Jarman, and those still
living with their slow dying, fragmentary selves bound together
by meds, duct tape, and love; poems that come to you suddenly
an hour before sundown, never tame or avoidable;
poems coming suddenly over you like the bisexual nudist
you spent a day with, who when you were leaving told you
he liked to be tied up, maybe next time, who told you about
his first sexual night with a man in a car as you stood together
in the backyard pool, only half swimming,
then you went inside, he introduced his pet boa constrictor,
pulled you by hand to the living room couch for sweaty love,
him covering you with copious semen like poems, you cumming
on your own belly, him braced above you as you lay sweat-soaked,
covered in cum, you mixed fluids, rubbed them into your skin,
sacrament, lotion, cream of life, emollient;
young photography student who tried to flirt with the admired poet,
yet too shy to ask to photograph him nude, with books, with pen;
this same poet once had a lover who liked to stand naked and read
by the bookcase, loudly declaiming love poetry to each other
till both got hard and fucked, turned on by sensual language;
and poetry anthologies full of eros of all types, sensual gods,
Dionysus, Pythagoras, Hermes, restrained comments of Cavafy,
passions of Sappho and the anonymous ancient Greek Anthology,
humorous metaphors of Tokugawa samurai comrade lovers,
the Gulistan, Rumi and Shams, Wilde, Antler,
another endless list read and re-read till the clothes
come off, one hand propping the book open
while the other roams flesh, skin, nipple, thigh, heat of groin, cock,
suggestions and encomiums of poets, a thousand names known
and unknown, a thousand years, word-hoards only bards embrace,
orgasms of light inscribed as dark ink on yellow silk paper skin.
Showing posts with label sex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sex. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
A Personal Ad
A PERSONAL AD
Ginger gay Irish-American poet-bard seeks blushing friends with literary benefits. Must appreciate the eroticism of paper, and be willing to engage in clothing-optional story-song contests in library and bedroom alike. A taste for Bushmill’s goes a long way towards achieving détente. Even better if like me you practice the art of the literary personal ad, with a habit of posting erotic ecstatic poems, pastiches of Borgesian ficciones, odes to Whitman or Lorca or other queer bards, or essays about the Sacred Heart and what it means to a tantric gay muse-follower with a loaded word-horde. Has been known to write erotic haibun celebrating the joys of ginger-on-tan sex. Replies to this ad in tanka or sestina form will go to the front of the line.
•
A new entry in the genre of "literary personal ads" that I occasionally like to write. It's a fun way to stretch the literary muscles while having a bit of fun as well.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Summer Before Spring
(a prose-poem regarding unseasonably warm weather, a complaint against superficiality, and a lengthy exegesis regarding self-pleasuring, with examples)
These strange hot days in March before equinox, the temps have been in the 80s during the day and the 60s at night.
The hot weather makes my own sap rise. I’m horny all the time.
I think about posting a personal ad, asking to meet men for naked sex outdoors in the sun and heat, or in the gentle warm rain, or on my back porch, but then I don’t bother. I know what the outcome will be.
Unfortunately, since the first surgery, I have this ostomy shitbag attached to my belly, and a big scar.
I’ve had nothing but rejection from fickle men since then.
No one wants to play with me. They can’t see past the bag to the sensual lover.
Because now I have this scar, this disability. For now, till the next surgery, I wear my shit on the outside.
They can’t see the person who can show them how to have more pleasure than they’ve ever had before.
I am an artist of touch. I have musician’s skilled hands for erotic massage.
Most men think only of their own needs, their own pleasures, their own narcissism, their own cock. I think of your cock with joy.
But rejection and dislike are all I receive anymore, which can make me frustrated and cynical.
Since the life-saving surgery, my strength and health both returning, my libido is stronger than it’s been in years.
I want be naked all the time. I want to be sexy all the time.
Sometimes I despair, sometimes I just get pissed off.
The only difference between you and me is that for now I’m open and honest about my shit, while you keep yours hidden.
Fortunately I know how to give myself intense pleasure.
I stay naked at home most of the time, until I have a reason to get dressed.
I sleep naked, cocooned in blankets, a pillow bolstered against my belly because of the bag.
In the morning, I stay naked, going out to sit on the back porch, reading, writing, sipping my orange juice.
In this hot weather, the windows are open, and the breeze tickles me all day.
I sit out on the porch naked in the morning light and cool breeze.
I’m a very sensual person, and I can pleasure myself for an hour before I finally give myself an orgasm.
In this summer-like heat, I’ve been pleasuring myself from one to three times a day.
Maybe later in the day I’ll come back out to the porch and pleasure myself in the afternoon sunlight.
Maybe at night, cool humid breeze brushing my skin, I’ll play with myself again before bedtime.
I never rush, I always take my time. I do that when I’m with another man as well.
I don’t rush to stroke my erection, first I tease it with two fingers, a feather touch.
Your whole naked skin is a sexual organ. Touch yourself everywhere, gently.
I touch my belly scar, and the region next to it that’s a little numb since the surgery.
To get ready for the reconstructive surgery, and to make the shitbag go away, I have to continue to lose weight. I’ve lost a lot already.
My fingers are skinny piano-playing fingers again, and my face is thinner.
My belly is looser, smaller. Of course as I lose more weight the belly will be the last to go.
I can button shirts I haven’t before. T-shirts are looser on me.
There’s a little bump where the ostomy bag is, though.
My pants are too loose now. I’ve had to punch new holes in my belt.
When I come home from being out, I go into my bedroom, undo my belt and let my pants fall to the floor.
When I pleasure myself, I take a long slow time to begin.
I might play with just my cock head a long time, before I stroke the length to its base.
I might cup my balls with my hand while I squeeze the base of my cock, turning it in circles.
I might stroke once, twice, squeezing hard, then let go as my cock twitches.
I might hold my cock with one hand while I rub my cock head in circles with the open palm of my other hand. That friction alone can send you over the edge.
One of the most erotic places is that spot underneath, just below the glans.
Rubbing just there sends waves of pleasure throughout my body.
When I play with the head of my cock, stroking just that spot underneath, and up the piss slit, precum starts to flow, making everything wet.
I lift my fingers and smell and taste my own precum.
Last night it was still warm at midnight. I threw on shorts and t-shirt and went for a late night walk around the neighborhood.
Wishing I could walk naked in the warm night. Once when I was a boy, I rode my bike naked in the night rain.
I used to climb out my bedroom window onto the garage roof and play with my cock while looking at the stars. The cool night air gave me tingly goosebumps.
When I was young, I spent one whole summer playing naked games with the neighbor boy.
We played in the fields behind our houses, at the edge of town. He was never soft.
The first time I ever ejaculated was between his thighs. He was lying on top of me, face up, we were looking at the stars.
Much later that night, back in my bedroom, I jerked off again to be sure it wasn’t a fluke.
Ropes of cum soaked my screen window, surprising me all over again.
These memories arouse me all the more this morning.
I tease my cock, touching lightly and slowly.
I brush it from base to tip with feather-light fingers. I play with my pubic hair.
The insides of my thighs are incredibly sensitive.
There’s a place on your ribs, under your arms, that when pressed can send you into ecstasy.
My cock is getting harder and longer now.
My cock is fairly ordinary, just six inches, although it’s thick and has a flaring mushroom head. My pubic hair is still reddish.
Since I’m losing weight there’s a valley in my belly where the scar is. I can see my pubes.
Sometimes when I masturbate like this in the morning or afternoon sunlight I take photos of my erect cock.
I want to make a good image of a flattering erection, in good lighting.
I like the way the light and shadows from the window frame lie across naked skin.
Maybe I’ll use these masturbation photos for future personal ads, or for making art.
Maybe I’ll make them into a photo collage, a fine art print.
Maybe I’ll do a pastel drawing later of my erection.
I like to photograph men nude, out in nature, or by the sunlit windows, or in my basement studio.
I like to photograph men nude even if it’s not sexual, and even if we don’t play ever with each other.
One time I photographed a nude model at a nude beach by the ocean.
He was surprised when I took my pants off, too, as I was working with my camera.
It wasn’t sexual, I just wanted to be naked in the hot day next to the ocean.
I’m not into doing porn, but I like to make artistic erotica.
My camera loves the beauty of men.
I begin to stroke the length of cock, slowly at first.
I want to take my time, make the pleasure last.
One summer I lived in woods so remote I could stay naked all the time. I went for days without clothes.
One weekend, I had a visitor and he stayed naked all weekend too. It was all light and easy with him.
We moved smoothly and easily between making dinner and making love, for two days and a night.
The best most wonderful sex I’ve ever had has been outdoors, in the sunlight, the free open air, by the lake, in the woods, just beside a hiking trail.
Eventually I slide lower in my chair, raise my hips, and begin stroking in earnest.
I masturbate with my left hand, while my right hand roams everywhere on my naked skin.
My right hand makes love to my belly scar, where it curves around my belly button.
I press on my thigh, and play with my erect nipples.
I pause and run both hands again down from collarbone to shoulder over ribs to thighs.
My hands converge where the V of my hips and groin converge, till I am grasping my root in both hands.
I imagine my lover kneeling before my chair, sucking me off.
I can almost feel his lips on the head of my cock, his hands on my thighs.
I can almost smell his hair.
There is precum everywhere, wetting my cock, my fingers, my thigh.
I stroke the entire length of my cock now, from root to tip. My other hand cups my balls, roams up to my breast and lips.
From the tip of my cock, from the root of my groin, intense waves of electricity flow outwards in circles.
Waves of powerful energy like warm lightning ripple outwards in circles to the ends of my body.
Ripples of current roll towards the ends of my toes, the top of my head.
Once when in college I lived in a house that had a large private back yard surrounded by trees. No one could see in at night.
My bedroom was a basement entrance, with sliding glass patio doors.
I would go out naked into the yard at midnight, and pleasure myself under the stars.
One night I went out in the middle of a thunderstorm, instantly drenched with hard rain.
Lightning flashes strobed the trees. The air was full of electricity and light and roaring sound.
I lay in the soaked grass as the wind surged, covered with leaves and mud, like a caveman.
I felt primitive, atavistic, animal. I shouted with the thunder.
I had one of the most intense orgasms of my entire life.
Waves of electric pleasure are rolling out in circles from the root of my sex.
I stroke my lubricated cock intensely now. Precum flows like rain.
My other hand restlessly tries to touch every part of my body all at once.
My hips are bucking all by themselves. My right hand caresses my nipple.
I look down at my cock, which seems to be holding still while my hand blurs around it.
Finally I cum in my hands, a fountain of semen covering my cock, my balls, my pubes.
Sometimes when I intensely orgasm, a gob of semen lands on my breast, my collarbone, my hair, my belly.
After I cum, my cock is so sensitive it’s almost too much to bear to touch it.
I hold my cock gently as I rest after orgasm, till it softens. It twitches again if I move my hand.
One late night, after giving me a massage and making me cum, a boyfriend kept playing with my cock, till it almost drove me crazy.
I had to reach down and stop his hands.
He laughed, and stayed sitting between my legs, still holding my cock, but not just holding it. I never softened.
Later I gave him the same treatment, and he understood.
We were using cucumber-scented massage oil.
I rest for awhile, hands cupping my wet cock, till my heartbeat slows down.
Eventually I get up, clean myself off, and start my breakfast, start my day, although I stay naked as long as I can.
I stay naked all day, in this heat, if I can.
On these hot days, my strength returning, I might jerk off again in the afternoon, or at night.
I might touch myself from time to time, casually teasing my cock or my nipples or brushing my thighs and ribs.
Just idly giving myself sensual pleasure while I’m reading or working or cooking or making art. Roaming hands.
I wish I had someone I could share my sensual pleasure with.
Till you are naked with me, I pleasure myself.
Till you are here naked with me. Then.
Then we will pleasure each other all day and all night.
Maybe we’ll go for a hike and suck each other off in the woods, in the sunlight. Maybe we’ll stay on the porch and cuddle with roaming hands.
Till you are here with me. Till then.
These strange hot days in March before equinox, the temps have been in the 80s during the day and the 60s at night.
The hot weather makes my own sap rise. I’m horny all the time.
I think about posting a personal ad, asking to meet men for naked sex outdoors in the sun and heat, or in the gentle warm rain, or on my back porch, but then I don’t bother. I know what the outcome will be.
Unfortunately, since the first surgery, I have this ostomy shitbag attached to my belly, and a big scar.
I’ve had nothing but rejection from fickle men since then.
No one wants to play with me. They can’t see past the bag to the sensual lover.
Because now I have this scar, this disability. For now, till the next surgery, I wear my shit on the outside.
They can’t see the person who can show them how to have more pleasure than they’ve ever had before.
I am an artist of touch. I have musician’s skilled hands for erotic massage.
Most men think only of their own needs, their own pleasures, their own narcissism, their own cock. I think of your cock with joy.
But rejection and dislike are all I receive anymore, which can make me frustrated and cynical.
Since the life-saving surgery, my strength and health both returning, my libido is stronger than it’s been in years.
I want be naked all the time. I want to be sexy all the time.
Sometimes I despair, sometimes I just get pissed off.
The only difference between you and me is that for now I’m open and honest about my shit, while you keep yours hidden.
Fortunately I know how to give myself intense pleasure.
I stay naked at home most of the time, until I have a reason to get dressed.
I sleep naked, cocooned in blankets, a pillow bolstered against my belly because of the bag.
In the morning, I stay naked, going out to sit on the back porch, reading, writing, sipping my orange juice.
In this hot weather, the windows are open, and the breeze tickles me all day.
I sit out on the porch naked in the morning light and cool breeze.
I’m a very sensual person, and I can pleasure myself for an hour before I finally give myself an orgasm.
In this summer-like heat, I’ve been pleasuring myself from one to three times a day.
Maybe later in the day I’ll come back out to the porch and pleasure myself in the afternoon sunlight.
Maybe at night, cool humid breeze brushing my skin, I’ll play with myself again before bedtime.
I never rush, I always take my time. I do that when I’m with another man as well.
I don’t rush to stroke my erection, first I tease it with two fingers, a feather touch.
Your whole naked skin is a sexual organ. Touch yourself everywhere, gently.
I touch my belly scar, and the region next to it that’s a little numb since the surgery.
To get ready for the reconstructive surgery, and to make the shitbag go away, I have to continue to lose weight. I’ve lost a lot already.
My fingers are skinny piano-playing fingers again, and my face is thinner.
My belly is looser, smaller. Of course as I lose more weight the belly will be the last to go.
I can button shirts I haven’t before. T-shirts are looser on me.
There’s a little bump where the ostomy bag is, though.
My pants are too loose now. I’ve had to punch new holes in my belt.
When I come home from being out, I go into my bedroom, undo my belt and let my pants fall to the floor.
When I pleasure myself, I take a long slow time to begin.
I might play with just my cock head a long time, before I stroke the length to its base.
I might cup my balls with my hand while I squeeze the base of my cock, turning it in circles.
I might stroke once, twice, squeezing hard, then let go as my cock twitches.
I might hold my cock with one hand while I rub my cock head in circles with the open palm of my other hand. That friction alone can send you over the edge.
One of the most erotic places is that spot underneath, just below the glans.
Rubbing just there sends waves of pleasure throughout my body.
When I play with the head of my cock, stroking just that spot underneath, and up the piss slit, precum starts to flow, making everything wet.
I lift my fingers and smell and taste my own precum.
Last night it was still warm at midnight. I threw on shorts and t-shirt and went for a late night walk around the neighborhood.
Wishing I could walk naked in the warm night. Once when I was a boy, I rode my bike naked in the night rain.
I used to climb out my bedroom window onto the garage roof and play with my cock while looking at the stars. The cool night air gave me tingly goosebumps.
When I was young, I spent one whole summer playing naked games with the neighbor boy.
We played in the fields behind our houses, at the edge of town. He was never soft.
The first time I ever ejaculated was between his thighs. He was lying on top of me, face up, we were looking at the stars.
Much later that night, back in my bedroom, I jerked off again to be sure it wasn’t a fluke.
Ropes of cum soaked my screen window, surprising me all over again.
These memories arouse me all the more this morning.
I tease my cock, touching lightly and slowly.
I brush it from base to tip with feather-light fingers. I play with my pubic hair.
The insides of my thighs are incredibly sensitive.
There’s a place on your ribs, under your arms, that when pressed can send you into ecstasy.
My cock is getting harder and longer now.
My cock is fairly ordinary, just six inches, although it’s thick and has a flaring mushroom head. My pubic hair is still reddish.
Since I’m losing weight there’s a valley in my belly where the scar is. I can see my pubes.
Sometimes when I masturbate like this in the morning or afternoon sunlight I take photos of my erect cock.
I want to make a good image of a flattering erection, in good lighting.
I like the way the light and shadows from the window frame lie across naked skin.
Maybe I’ll use these masturbation photos for future personal ads, or for making art.
Maybe I’ll make them into a photo collage, a fine art print.
Maybe I’ll do a pastel drawing later of my erection.
I like to photograph men nude, out in nature, or by the sunlit windows, or in my basement studio.
I like to photograph men nude even if it’s not sexual, and even if we don’t play ever with each other.
One time I photographed a nude model at a nude beach by the ocean.
He was surprised when I took my pants off, too, as I was working with my camera.
It wasn’t sexual, I just wanted to be naked in the hot day next to the ocean.
I’m not into doing porn, but I like to make artistic erotica.
My camera loves the beauty of men.
I begin to stroke the length of cock, slowly at first.
I want to take my time, make the pleasure last.
One summer I lived in woods so remote I could stay naked all the time. I went for days without clothes.
One weekend, I had a visitor and he stayed naked all weekend too. It was all light and easy with him.
We moved smoothly and easily between making dinner and making love, for two days and a night.
The best most wonderful sex I’ve ever had has been outdoors, in the sunlight, the free open air, by the lake, in the woods, just beside a hiking trail.
Eventually I slide lower in my chair, raise my hips, and begin stroking in earnest.
I masturbate with my left hand, while my right hand roams everywhere on my naked skin.
My right hand makes love to my belly scar, where it curves around my belly button.
I press on my thigh, and play with my erect nipples.
I pause and run both hands again down from collarbone to shoulder over ribs to thighs.
My hands converge where the V of my hips and groin converge, till I am grasping my root in both hands.
I imagine my lover kneeling before my chair, sucking me off.
I can almost feel his lips on the head of my cock, his hands on my thighs.
I can almost smell his hair.
There is precum everywhere, wetting my cock, my fingers, my thigh.
I stroke the entire length of my cock now, from root to tip. My other hand cups my balls, roams up to my breast and lips.
From the tip of my cock, from the root of my groin, intense waves of electricity flow outwards in circles.
Waves of powerful energy like warm lightning ripple outwards in circles to the ends of my body.
Ripples of current roll towards the ends of my toes, the top of my head.
Once when in college I lived in a house that had a large private back yard surrounded by trees. No one could see in at night.
My bedroom was a basement entrance, with sliding glass patio doors.
I would go out naked into the yard at midnight, and pleasure myself under the stars.
One night I went out in the middle of a thunderstorm, instantly drenched with hard rain.
Lightning flashes strobed the trees. The air was full of electricity and light and roaring sound.
I lay in the soaked grass as the wind surged, covered with leaves and mud, like a caveman.
I felt primitive, atavistic, animal. I shouted with the thunder.
I had one of the most intense orgasms of my entire life.
Waves of electric pleasure are rolling out in circles from the root of my sex.
I stroke my lubricated cock intensely now. Precum flows like rain.
My other hand restlessly tries to touch every part of my body all at once.
My hips are bucking all by themselves. My right hand caresses my nipple.
I look down at my cock, which seems to be holding still while my hand blurs around it.
Finally I cum in my hands, a fountain of semen covering my cock, my balls, my pubes.
Sometimes when I intensely orgasm, a gob of semen lands on my breast, my collarbone, my hair, my belly.
After I cum, my cock is so sensitive it’s almost too much to bear to touch it.
I hold my cock gently as I rest after orgasm, till it softens. It twitches again if I move my hand.
One late night, after giving me a massage and making me cum, a boyfriend kept playing with my cock, till it almost drove me crazy.
I had to reach down and stop his hands.
He laughed, and stayed sitting between my legs, still holding my cock, but not just holding it. I never softened.
Later I gave him the same treatment, and he understood.
We were using cucumber-scented massage oil.
I rest for awhile, hands cupping my wet cock, till my heartbeat slows down.
Eventually I get up, clean myself off, and start my breakfast, start my day, although I stay naked as long as I can.
I stay naked all day, in this heat, if I can.
On these hot days, my strength returning, I might jerk off again in the afternoon, or at night.
I might touch myself from time to time, casually teasing my cock or my nipples or brushing my thighs and ribs.
Just idly giving myself sensual pleasure while I’m reading or working or cooking or making art. Roaming hands.
I wish I had someone I could share my sensual pleasure with.
Till you are naked with me, I pleasure myself.
Till you are here naked with me. Then.
Then we will pleasure each other all day and all night.
Maybe we’ll go for a hike and suck each other off in the woods, in the sunlight. Maybe we’ll stay on the porch and cuddle with roaming hands.
Till you are here with me. Till then.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
All I Really Wanted
from The Surgery Diaries
This was originally written a month or two before my surgery, when I was thinking about matters. The surgery has had and will have an impact on my sexuality, as well as on my spirit, body, emotions, and other aspects of self. Last week I had several days of what can only be called, in retrospect, post-surgery depression. The surgical staff tells me that's normal, and so was everything else I was feeling last week, and asked them about. Lots of internal sensations that I questioned, all of which they were familiar with. It's actually good to know that I'm not unique, that I'm feeling things other people have felt. That gives me hope that I'll recover as well those other people have.
•
April/May 2011
I've enjoyed chatting with a gay friend on his blog thread about three-way sexual experiences, and the questions and issues surrounding them. As I said there, I've been involved with good three-ways a couple of times. But I was lucky to be involved with mature, stable people, who were willing to talk openly about what they wanted and expected, and were all respectful of each others' feelings. Communication being the most essential thing, as always. My experience may be the exception to the rule, I don't know, but I do feel lucky. A great discussion of the topic, regardless.
And it got me thinking.
I've posted a few personal ads in recent months, although nothing has happened. I've spent a fair bit of time thinking, therefore, about what I really want, sexually, right now—which doesn't mean forever, just right now—and I've spent a fair bit of time talking these things over with one or two of my closest gay male friends. Thinking it through out loud. Working it out by talking it through.
I cannot find it in me to judge anyone for undertaking any sexual experience that brings more love and joy into the world. Shared joy is always increased, just as shared pain is always diminished. Even those sexual practices that don't interest me, or downright turn me off, if they bring more joy and love into someone's world, I don't have it in me to judge them.
I cannot find it in me to want to spend the energy it takes to meet the expectations of others, especially their unspoken and hidden expectations, when those expectations require me to be less than I am, or to change myself to meet their neuroses halfway. I ,i>will spend the effort to meet someone halfway who is being as honest and open with me as I am being with them. I will do my best to make sure that he has the best, most satisfying, most pleasurable playtime that I can give him: his joy is my joy, and I'm other-directed enough to want to be sure that anyone I am making love with gets off, too, even if I got off first.
So, what sort of sex play am I talking about here?
Honestly, most of my sex lately has been self-pleasure. I actually really enjoy a good wank, and I get very good orgasms. Sometimes I just ooze, some other times I spurt all the way to the ceiling. It depends on how turned on I am (and my physical energy level that day, which is dictated by my medical situation's effect on my daily energy budget). Sometimes I jerk off to pics I find online—I'm not into video porn very much, I prefer to linger over erotic still photographs, and besides most porn soundtracks are awful. I really don't own any porn. Almost as often, I just pleasure myself while using my imagination to conjure from memory or fantasy who I want to be with today. Solo sex can be very fulfilling sex. It's not a "substitute" for intercourse, nor is it "second best." In some ways, masturbation is the best sex I get, because, hey, I love who I'm with, and I know exactly how to please him. Seriously, there's no better way to learn about how a partner can give you pleasure (of course you have to tell them how) then by learning how to give pleasure to yourself.
With guys, I find myself these days mostly into cock and touch and play, rather than fucking. I find myself enjoying keeping it light, horny, even just mutual oral or sitting on the couch jerking off together while we both watch each other. I also like just hanging out nude, before and after, talking, having a cup of tea nude. Showering together after. I suppose for some this is all vanilla, but for now it suits me to keep it light and fun and mostly cock-oriented and with lots of rubbing. I really like frottage, for example. Pleasure rather than pain.
I've discovered real pleasure in something that isn't exactly a fetish, but is a little kinky: Masturbating his cock with my foot. (And vice versa.) I discovered how much pleasure that could give by accident, when I was playing around with a cute guy some years ago in San Francisco. He had a partial physical handicap, a twisted arm, a limp, a couple of other things; we were lying naked on his bed, facing each other, and I just sort of spontaneously moved my foot into his crotch, and he did reciprocated, and we both liked the sensations a lot.
I'm a very sensual person, anyway. I love lots of touch. I love being naked, hanging out nude at home, or out camping and hiking when far out in the wilds where no one can see us. I like nude hiking. I like being naked even when it isn't sexual! So this foot-play thing was a pretty cool discovery.
What do I want, right now?
Well, if anyone ever responded to one my personal ads, I would love to get naked together and play. I would say yes to a three-way, probably, if one materialized, if I felt the other guys were okay to both be with, and if we talked through our parameters beforehand. (The last triad I had was a cold winter night just over a year ago, and it was good. I was staying over at a friend's place to avoid having to drive home in a blizzard, between two consecutive concert nights. He and his old lover were both nudists, and the fireplace was warm. So it was very natural to move from mutual nakedness in the living room to mutual lovemaking in the bedroom, all three of us.)
My medical situation and my music-writing work right now make it unlikely I'll get into a long-term romantic relationship. So casual but loving sex is all I need. I don't need a 'relationship" just now (although I always keep that door open), but friends with benefits, getting together for mutual release and pleasure every so often, would be great.
I have to be at least a little bit in love with every man I have sex with. The emotional connection has to be there for me. In fact, casual sex only works for me if we connect on the energetic level, too. And casual sex with repeat sex would cement that, I think.
Otherwise, I'm perfectly content, just now, with everything else that's going on, to just have sex with myself. Once a day, on average lately; sometimes again before bedtime. Depending on the medical moment, and how it affects my day. Some days I ache, and am too tired.
You see, the thing is—and I know this will sound weird to some people—I like my cock. I always have. I like its size, I like shape, I know how to play it like a piano, and it gives me great pleasure. What more could a (gay) man ask for?
This was originally written a month or two before my surgery, when I was thinking about matters. The surgery has had and will have an impact on my sexuality, as well as on my spirit, body, emotions, and other aspects of self. Last week I had several days of what can only be called, in retrospect, post-surgery depression. The surgical staff tells me that's normal, and so was everything else I was feeling last week, and asked them about. Lots of internal sensations that I questioned, all of which they were familiar with. It's actually good to know that I'm not unique, that I'm feeling things other people have felt. That gives me hope that I'll recover as well those other people have.
•
April/May 2011
I've enjoyed chatting with a gay friend on his blog thread about three-way sexual experiences, and the questions and issues surrounding them. As I said there, I've been involved with good three-ways a couple of times. But I was lucky to be involved with mature, stable people, who were willing to talk openly about what they wanted and expected, and were all respectful of each others' feelings. Communication being the most essential thing, as always. My experience may be the exception to the rule, I don't know, but I do feel lucky. A great discussion of the topic, regardless.
And it got me thinking.
I've posted a few personal ads in recent months, although nothing has happened. I've spent a fair bit of time thinking, therefore, about what I really want, sexually, right now—which doesn't mean forever, just right now—and I've spent a fair bit of time talking these things over with one or two of my closest gay male friends. Thinking it through out loud. Working it out by talking it through.
I cannot find it in me to judge anyone for undertaking any sexual experience that brings more love and joy into the world. Shared joy is always increased, just as shared pain is always diminished. Even those sexual practices that don't interest me, or downright turn me off, if they bring more joy and love into someone's world, I don't have it in me to judge them.
I cannot find it in me to want to spend the energy it takes to meet the expectations of others, especially their unspoken and hidden expectations, when those expectations require me to be less than I am, or to change myself to meet their neuroses halfway. I ,i>will spend the effort to meet someone halfway who is being as honest and open with me as I am being with them. I will do my best to make sure that he has the best, most satisfying, most pleasurable playtime that I can give him: his joy is my joy, and I'm other-directed enough to want to be sure that anyone I am making love with gets off, too, even if I got off first.
So, what sort of sex play am I talking about here?
Honestly, most of my sex lately has been self-pleasure. I actually really enjoy a good wank, and I get very good orgasms. Sometimes I just ooze, some other times I spurt all the way to the ceiling. It depends on how turned on I am (and my physical energy level that day, which is dictated by my medical situation's effect on my daily energy budget). Sometimes I jerk off to pics I find online—I'm not into video porn very much, I prefer to linger over erotic still photographs, and besides most porn soundtracks are awful. I really don't own any porn. Almost as often, I just pleasure myself while using my imagination to conjure from memory or fantasy who I want to be with today. Solo sex can be very fulfilling sex. It's not a "substitute" for intercourse, nor is it "second best." In some ways, masturbation is the best sex I get, because, hey, I love who I'm with, and I know exactly how to please him. Seriously, there's no better way to learn about how a partner can give you pleasure (of course you have to tell them how) then by learning how to give pleasure to yourself.
With guys, I find myself these days mostly into cock and touch and play, rather than fucking. I find myself enjoying keeping it light, horny, even just mutual oral or sitting on the couch jerking off together while we both watch each other. I also like just hanging out nude, before and after, talking, having a cup of tea nude. Showering together after. I suppose for some this is all vanilla, but for now it suits me to keep it light and fun and mostly cock-oriented and with lots of rubbing. I really like frottage, for example. Pleasure rather than pain.
I've discovered real pleasure in something that isn't exactly a fetish, but is a little kinky: Masturbating his cock with my foot. (And vice versa.) I discovered how much pleasure that could give by accident, when I was playing around with a cute guy some years ago in San Francisco. He had a partial physical handicap, a twisted arm, a limp, a couple of other things; we were lying naked on his bed, facing each other, and I just sort of spontaneously moved my foot into his crotch, and he did reciprocated, and we both liked the sensations a lot.
I'm a very sensual person, anyway. I love lots of touch. I love being naked, hanging out nude at home, or out camping and hiking when far out in the wilds where no one can see us. I like nude hiking. I like being naked even when it isn't sexual! So this foot-play thing was a pretty cool discovery.
What do I want, right now?
Well, if anyone ever responded to one my personal ads, I would love to get naked together and play. I would say yes to a three-way, probably, if one materialized, if I felt the other guys were okay to both be with, and if we talked through our parameters beforehand. (The last triad I had was a cold winter night just over a year ago, and it was good. I was staying over at a friend's place to avoid having to drive home in a blizzard, between two consecutive concert nights. He and his old lover were both nudists, and the fireplace was warm. So it was very natural to move from mutual nakedness in the living room to mutual lovemaking in the bedroom, all three of us.)
My medical situation and my music-writing work right now make it unlikely I'll get into a long-term romantic relationship. So casual but loving sex is all I need. I don't need a 'relationship" just now (although I always keep that door open), but friends with benefits, getting together for mutual release and pleasure every so often, would be great.
I have to be at least a little bit in love with every man I have sex with. The emotional connection has to be there for me. In fact, casual sex only works for me if we connect on the energetic level, too. And casual sex with repeat sex would cement that, I think.
Otherwise, I'm perfectly content, just now, with everything else that's going on, to just have sex with myself. Once a day, on average lately; sometimes again before bedtime. Depending on the medical moment, and how it affects my day. Some days I ache, and am too tired.
You see, the thing is—and I know this will sound weird to some people—I like my cock. I always have. I like its size, I like shape, I know how to play it like a piano, and it gives me great pleasure. What more could a (gay) man ask for?
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Erotic Journal
WARNING: This essay is an explicit personal memoir about my teenage awakening to sexuality as a person and a writer. I've never written any of this down before, to share with others. I've told some of these stories to some of my Radical Faerie and other gay friends. But if it's not your cup of tea, or if such memoirs offend your sensibilities, don't read this!
•
I started my first erotic journal when I was fifteen. It contained mostly homoerotic poems that I was writing at the time. Some poems took more than one sitting to write, because while I was writing them, I would often become aroused, and pause in my writing to masturbate. I had already been seriously masturbating to orgasm for over a year by then.
I rediscovered this erotic journal amongst my other journals when I was organizing papers after moving house the last time. I also found some typewritten sex stories I wrote as a teen. I have scanned or photographed these papers, to preserve them digitally for myself, before putting them away again, with my other journals.
There was one long erotic poem, "naked boys," that I began writing when I was 15, that first appears in this journal, that I took out over time and added to, edited, rewrote, and changed, that took approximately 12 years to complete. It's a very long poem. The three or four longest poems I have ever written have been homoerotic poems. "naked boys" was a poem I would take out, write a section of, masturbate, orgasm, then put away for awhile. Honestly, it was impossible to write this poem without ending up masturbating; proof that words alone, and a good imagination, are enough to turn you on! I guess I've always been able to turn myself on by writing erotica. Sometimes I put the poem away for six months to a year, then got it out again to add to and edit; I might work on it, always erotically charged during the writing, for a few weeks, then set it aside again for awhile. This is the only poem that has ever taken me that long to rewrite, revise, or finish. I've written many other homoerotic poems over the years, especially since coming out, but none of them like this one.
"naked boys" was the poem in which I discovered, as a writer, about writing at white heat, about writing passionately, about making the writing itself as ecstatic and highly-charged with passion and energy as possible. Most of the revisions I made over the years were to heighten and refine the poem's energetic, passionate charge. This single poem taught me a great deal about ecstasy, about ecstasy in art and literature. It was only later, when I discovered ecstatic sacred poetry—from Sufi poets such as Rumi, from contemporary poets such as Harold Norse, Allen Ginsberg, and Antler, or from ancient Sanskrit love and devotional (bhakti) poetry—that I realized that "naked boys" was a poem about sacred sex. It wasn't really a pornographic poem, although it is very explicit at times, and very homoerotic, although I did masturbate during and after the writing. The poem can still inspire orgasms upon re-reading. It was a poem in which—without knowing yet that I was doing it, in my teenage questing, without having a conscious plan or words to describe my intentions—I was trying to celebrate sacred sexuality, the exquisite union of body-mind and soul. I had rediscovered for myself some of the core teachings about sexual energy from Tantric yogic practices, which I only later had names for. I published 'naked boys" as a very limited-edition chapbook poem some years later, a few copies of which I still have; I gave away a few copies to Radical Faerie friends who I knew would appreciate the poem, but I haven't ever before discussed this poem publicly. It is for me a personal sacred text, full of memories, full of my own sexual yearnings as a young man—not just teenage yearnings, since I was almost in my 30s before finishing the poem at last—and still a record of dreams, fantasies, actual sexual memories, and more.
A couple of years previously, probably the Christmas I was age 13, my parents had given my sister and myself identical Smith-Corona SCM portable typewriters. (My mother also received one, so I think this was a joint parental present in origin.) This was my first typewriter—like buying my first computer, this was an important milestone in my creative life. (I still have this typewriter; it became the foundation of my small collection of vintage and antique typewriters.) The SCM typewriter was in a large plastic and metal shell case. I got in the habit of typing sitting crosslegged on my bed in my bedroom. When you took the typewriter out of the case, set the case on the bed, closed it, and put the typewriter on top, it was a perfect height for me. On my typewriter I sometimes wrote erotic poems, and experimented with writing homoerotic stories, basically teenage porn about the neighbor boys, fantasies, etc. On hot, humid summer afternoons, with no one around, the door to my room closed, I sat on the bed crosslegged, naked, while typing. Naturally I became aroused; the only question was whether I sat down with an erection already, or developed an erection while typing. Needless to say, most of these writings took more than one session to complete, as I would masturbate, have an orgasm, clean up, and be finished with the writing for awhile. In some ways, I was just typing out my masturbation fantasies—but being an artist and writer already, I typed out my fantasies as poems, trying to make something other than simple porn.
During my coming-out period, both to myself and to the world, from my mid-20s to my mid-30s—I was in some ways a late bloomer, shy at core—I wrote in my regular journal as well, a journal which I have kept since I was in my 20s in college, some other entries detailing my thoughts about my own sexuality, about sex in general, about eros, the life-force, about mysticism, ecstasy, making love and making art. These are all tied together in my soul and mind. I still don't make distinctions between them: masturbation, sacred sex, mystical experiences, making love and telepathically achieving Tantric ecstatic union with my lover, etc. All of these are normative experiences for me, even in my teens. What I wrote in my journals was attempts to put these things into words. It was in my regular journal that I first admitted to myself that I was gay, that I liked boys more than girls, and always had.
When I was 14, I spent many weeks during the summer playing naked sexual games with the boy who lived across the street from me. Mike was between 2 and 3 years younger than me, smaller than me but already very grown up in some ways. When we first stripped our pants off to explore each others' naked bodies, it was his idea. He was the more aggressive player; I was still very shy at that age, a geeky awkward teen with glasses who wasn't athletic or popular, although I had already discovered my love of the outdoors. My love of the outdoors, in fact, was the root of our first encounter; we saw each other out in the fields behind our subdivision at the edge of town, on a hot sweaty afternoon, both of us already wearing nothing but the short gym-shorts boys wore in the 70s. We talked for awhile, walking through the fields. When we both became aroused, it was Mike who first took his pants down, then wanted to take mine down, too. We spent many afternoons naked together after that, always erect, no matter whether we were just walking in the woods or fields behind the neighborhood, which was on the northeast edge of town, or more engaging in sex play. (I had also played similar naked games with a neighbor when I was 11, and so was he; but that boy moved away.) The first time I ever had an ejaculation, Mike was lying on top of me, my penis between his thighs, one night out lying in the fields, while I rubbed his chest and groin as he lay on me, and together we looked up at the stars. (One of the long homoerotic poems I began, later in life, was about this summer of sex play with Mike; another long erotic poem, in this case still unfinished, as I haven't looked at the poem in years.)
Anyone who has read Kinsey or the reports of other sex researchers knows that what we did together that summer was very common, even typical, for teenage boys; if anything, our sex play was more innocent, even sweet, than many other stories in the research literature.
So a year later when I was 15, when I began writing these erotic poems in my erotic journal, and typing naked at my typewriter, I had already been masturbating to messy orgasms for a year or more. In fact, no doubt driven by teenage hormones, I think one reason I began to write homoerotic poems was to relieve the overwhelming sexual tension. The hormones needed to be expressed. So I began writing poems, doing my teenage best to turn sex into art. Looking back through the journal now, not all of these poems strike me as awful, or typically bad teenage poems. Even though I am bisexual enough that I was dating girls well into my 30s, including having two successful loving sexual relationships with women, one of whom is still among my best friends, all of these erotic poems in this journal were about boys. My erotic journal was entirely homoerotic. I didn't even try to make the poems androgynous, the way Walt Whitman attempted in some of his poems to at least pretend to be interested sexually in women. (Scholars have noted that these are among Whitman's least convincing poems.) I hadn't seriously read Whitman yet; that reading came later in life; but I was trying, as I said above, to evoke in poems that almost mystical sexual energy I was experiencing, not only in my body but in my heart and mind as well. Certainly, at that age, it was more lust than love, although I did love Mike, I believe. I certainly thought about him a lot, even after our summer of games had ended. I wonder if he too came out as openly gay later in life; looking back now, I think one reason we found each other that summer was an inarticulate understanding of what we shared in common.
I kept my erotic journal secret, from anybody and everybody, for a very long time. Not out of shame, not out of internalized homophobia—writing in this journal after all was one way I came out to myself, and it helped me with coming out to others, too—but rather, I felt the poems, like "naked boys," in this journal were too charged, too erotic, too powerful. I wasn't sure who I could ever safely share them with. The fear I still have about sharing any parts of this journal with anyone is fear of rejection: the poems were so personal to me, to my life and experience, that I could not be objective about them, as poems, for many, many years. I have since learned to get past several poetic-critical theoretical clichés about craft quality, objectivity vs. subjectivity, etc.: now I just appreciate these poems for what they were.
Keep in mind that I was a boy in my teens writing about having sex with other boys in their teens, my age or slightly younger. I was attracted to some men of my acquaintance, and some girls I knew, but writing in the journal was about boys my own age. This alone is highly-charged subject matter, in our culture of homophobia and sexual repression, our schizophrenic culture in which we sexualize underage children in pre-teen beauty pageants while simultaneously denying that such children are capable of expressing their sexuality, and punishing them if they do. None of that adult weirdness surrounding sexuality ever made sense to me when I was a boy—I was, after all, enjoying consensual, guilt-free pleasure with boys my own age—but I did already know how highly-charged the topic could be, and how hysterical adults could become about it. (Although I must give my mother a lot of credit: One time when I got caught playing naked games with a neighborhood boy, and was sent home in disgrace, when I was talking to Mom about why I had been sent home and finally blushingly admitted that we had been playing together naked, Mom's only comment was that maybe I should keep such games to my own bedroom in future. My parents were very progressive in some ways!) So I kept my erotic journal hidden and private. Keep in mind, once again, that I was a teenager writing about his sexual experiences and fantasies, as a teenager, with other teenage boys. It was a way to both privately express my thoughts to myself in art, and a way of recording some experiences, and also—perhaps dominantly, and most importantly—a way of relieving my own sexual tension via fantasy, self-pleasure, and eroticism. These days, with available new media technologies, teenage boys are taking nude photos of themselves with their cellphones and sending them to each other—how times have changed!
•
I started my first erotic journal when I was fifteen. It contained mostly homoerotic poems that I was writing at the time. Some poems took more than one sitting to write, because while I was writing them, I would often become aroused, and pause in my writing to masturbate. I had already been seriously masturbating to orgasm for over a year by then.
I rediscovered this erotic journal amongst my other journals when I was organizing papers after moving house the last time. I also found some typewritten sex stories I wrote as a teen. I have scanned or photographed these papers, to preserve them digitally for myself, before putting them away again, with my other journals.
There was one long erotic poem, "naked boys," that I began writing when I was 15, that first appears in this journal, that I took out over time and added to, edited, rewrote, and changed, that took approximately 12 years to complete. It's a very long poem. The three or four longest poems I have ever written have been homoerotic poems. "naked boys" was a poem I would take out, write a section of, masturbate, orgasm, then put away for awhile. Honestly, it was impossible to write this poem without ending up masturbating; proof that words alone, and a good imagination, are enough to turn you on! I guess I've always been able to turn myself on by writing erotica. Sometimes I put the poem away for six months to a year, then got it out again to add to and edit; I might work on it, always erotically charged during the writing, for a few weeks, then set it aside again for awhile. This is the only poem that has ever taken me that long to rewrite, revise, or finish. I've written many other homoerotic poems over the years, especially since coming out, but none of them like this one.
"naked boys" was the poem in which I discovered, as a writer, about writing at white heat, about writing passionately, about making the writing itself as ecstatic and highly-charged with passion and energy as possible. Most of the revisions I made over the years were to heighten and refine the poem's energetic, passionate charge. This single poem taught me a great deal about ecstasy, about ecstasy in art and literature. It was only later, when I discovered ecstatic sacred poetry—from Sufi poets such as Rumi, from contemporary poets such as Harold Norse, Allen Ginsberg, and Antler, or from ancient Sanskrit love and devotional (bhakti) poetry—that I realized that "naked boys" was a poem about sacred sex. It wasn't really a pornographic poem, although it is very explicit at times, and very homoerotic, although I did masturbate during and after the writing. The poem can still inspire orgasms upon re-reading. It was a poem in which—without knowing yet that I was doing it, in my teenage questing, without having a conscious plan or words to describe my intentions—I was trying to celebrate sacred sexuality, the exquisite union of body-mind and soul. I had rediscovered for myself some of the core teachings about sexual energy from Tantric yogic practices, which I only later had names for. I published 'naked boys" as a very limited-edition chapbook poem some years later, a few copies of which I still have; I gave away a few copies to Radical Faerie friends who I knew would appreciate the poem, but I haven't ever before discussed this poem publicly. It is for me a personal sacred text, full of memories, full of my own sexual yearnings as a young man—not just teenage yearnings, since I was almost in my 30s before finishing the poem at last—and still a record of dreams, fantasies, actual sexual memories, and more.
A couple of years previously, probably the Christmas I was age 13, my parents had given my sister and myself identical Smith-Corona SCM portable typewriters. (My mother also received one, so I think this was a joint parental present in origin.) This was my first typewriter—like buying my first computer, this was an important milestone in my creative life. (I still have this typewriter; it became the foundation of my small collection of vintage and antique typewriters.) The SCM typewriter was in a large plastic and metal shell case. I got in the habit of typing sitting crosslegged on my bed in my bedroom. When you took the typewriter out of the case, set the case on the bed, closed it, and put the typewriter on top, it was a perfect height for me. On my typewriter I sometimes wrote erotic poems, and experimented with writing homoerotic stories, basically teenage porn about the neighbor boys, fantasies, etc. On hot, humid summer afternoons, with no one around, the door to my room closed, I sat on the bed crosslegged, naked, while typing. Naturally I became aroused; the only question was whether I sat down with an erection already, or developed an erection while typing. Needless to say, most of these writings took more than one session to complete, as I would masturbate, have an orgasm, clean up, and be finished with the writing for awhile. In some ways, I was just typing out my masturbation fantasies—but being an artist and writer already, I typed out my fantasies as poems, trying to make something other than simple porn.
During my coming-out period, both to myself and to the world, from my mid-20s to my mid-30s—I was in some ways a late bloomer, shy at core—I wrote in my regular journal as well, a journal which I have kept since I was in my 20s in college, some other entries detailing my thoughts about my own sexuality, about sex in general, about eros, the life-force, about mysticism, ecstasy, making love and making art. These are all tied together in my soul and mind. I still don't make distinctions between them: masturbation, sacred sex, mystical experiences, making love and telepathically achieving Tantric ecstatic union with my lover, etc. All of these are normative experiences for me, even in my teens. What I wrote in my journals was attempts to put these things into words. It was in my regular journal that I first admitted to myself that I was gay, that I liked boys more than girls, and always had.
When I was 14, I spent many weeks during the summer playing naked sexual games with the boy who lived across the street from me. Mike was between 2 and 3 years younger than me, smaller than me but already very grown up in some ways. When we first stripped our pants off to explore each others' naked bodies, it was his idea. He was the more aggressive player; I was still very shy at that age, a geeky awkward teen with glasses who wasn't athletic or popular, although I had already discovered my love of the outdoors. My love of the outdoors, in fact, was the root of our first encounter; we saw each other out in the fields behind our subdivision at the edge of town, on a hot sweaty afternoon, both of us already wearing nothing but the short gym-shorts boys wore in the 70s. We talked for awhile, walking through the fields. When we both became aroused, it was Mike who first took his pants down, then wanted to take mine down, too. We spent many afternoons naked together after that, always erect, no matter whether we were just walking in the woods or fields behind the neighborhood, which was on the northeast edge of town, or more engaging in sex play. (I had also played similar naked games with a neighbor when I was 11, and so was he; but that boy moved away.) The first time I ever had an ejaculation, Mike was lying on top of me, my penis between his thighs, one night out lying in the fields, while I rubbed his chest and groin as he lay on me, and together we looked up at the stars. (One of the long homoerotic poems I began, later in life, was about this summer of sex play with Mike; another long erotic poem, in this case still unfinished, as I haven't looked at the poem in years.)
Anyone who has read Kinsey or the reports of other sex researchers knows that what we did together that summer was very common, even typical, for teenage boys; if anything, our sex play was more innocent, even sweet, than many other stories in the research literature.
So a year later when I was 15, when I began writing these erotic poems in my erotic journal, and typing naked at my typewriter, I had already been masturbating to messy orgasms for a year or more. In fact, no doubt driven by teenage hormones, I think one reason I began to write homoerotic poems was to relieve the overwhelming sexual tension. The hormones needed to be expressed. So I began writing poems, doing my teenage best to turn sex into art. Looking back through the journal now, not all of these poems strike me as awful, or typically bad teenage poems. Even though I am bisexual enough that I was dating girls well into my 30s, including having two successful loving sexual relationships with women, one of whom is still among my best friends, all of these erotic poems in this journal were about boys. My erotic journal was entirely homoerotic. I didn't even try to make the poems androgynous, the way Walt Whitman attempted in some of his poems to at least pretend to be interested sexually in women. (Scholars have noted that these are among Whitman's least convincing poems.) I hadn't seriously read Whitman yet; that reading came later in life; but I was trying, as I said above, to evoke in poems that almost mystical sexual energy I was experiencing, not only in my body but in my heart and mind as well. Certainly, at that age, it was more lust than love, although I did love Mike, I believe. I certainly thought about him a lot, even after our summer of games had ended. I wonder if he too came out as openly gay later in life; looking back now, I think one reason we found each other that summer was an inarticulate understanding of what we shared in common.
I kept my erotic journal secret, from anybody and everybody, for a very long time. Not out of shame, not out of internalized homophobia—writing in this journal after all was one way I came out to myself, and it helped me with coming out to others, too—but rather, I felt the poems, like "naked boys," in this journal were too charged, too erotic, too powerful. I wasn't sure who I could ever safely share them with. The fear I still have about sharing any parts of this journal with anyone is fear of rejection: the poems were so personal to me, to my life and experience, that I could not be objective about them, as poems, for many, many years. I have since learned to get past several poetic-critical theoretical clichés about craft quality, objectivity vs. subjectivity, etc.: now I just appreciate these poems for what they were.
Keep in mind that I was a boy in my teens writing about having sex with other boys in their teens, my age or slightly younger. I was attracted to some men of my acquaintance, and some girls I knew, but writing in the journal was about boys my own age. This alone is highly-charged subject matter, in our culture of homophobia and sexual repression, our schizophrenic culture in which we sexualize underage children in pre-teen beauty pageants while simultaneously denying that such children are capable of expressing their sexuality, and punishing them if they do. None of that adult weirdness surrounding sexuality ever made sense to me when I was a boy—I was, after all, enjoying consensual, guilt-free pleasure with boys my own age—but I did already know how highly-charged the topic could be, and how hysterical adults could become about it. (Although I must give my mother a lot of credit: One time when I got caught playing naked games with a neighborhood boy, and was sent home in disgrace, when I was talking to Mom about why I had been sent home and finally blushingly admitted that we had been playing together naked, Mom's only comment was that maybe I should keep such games to my own bedroom in future. My parents were very progressive in some ways!) So I kept my erotic journal hidden and private. Keep in mind, once again, that I was a teenager writing about his sexual experiences and fantasies, as a teenager, with other teenage boys. It was a way to both privately express my thoughts to myself in art, and a way of recording some experiences, and also—perhaps dominantly, and most importantly—a way of relieving my own sexual tension via fantasy, self-pleasure, and eroticism. These days, with available new media technologies, teenage boys are taking nude photos of themselves with their cellphones and sending them to each other—how times have changed!
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Writing Eros 2
whichever way the wooden lathe
turns from roller to printer
the emergent wave of light
returning text to line
image of love in words and paean
torso and sigh and simple passion
in word and sigh the end of love
beginning of forever
Saturday, January 15, 2011
That Loneliness Thing
So, in this small town I live in now, pretty much nobody really knows me, or wants to. You get to feel so lonely at times. I do have friends here, but most of them were friends of my parents first, and only became my friends when I moved back here to be my parents' live-in caregiver for their last years of life. Only one or two of those is really someone I can count on as a real friend. Most of the rest have grown casually distant. People are generally friendly here, but not very intimate.
In moments of crisis, I'm almost always in the role of caregiver. When I'm having a crisis, it's almost always impossible to find anyone to turn to. It's like they all evaporate. Some are no doubt uncomfortable with seeing moments of vulnerability, weakness, and doubt in someone who they have turned to, who they rely on: the illusion of invulnerable competence is what they cannot bear to see disproved.
That has been a lifelong pattern: People turn to me for support, but don't usually reciprocate. I have one friend I can turn to, when I need a shoulder, but it's almost always on the phone, not face to face. Those late night things, from across a few state lines.
How do you define success? Is it happiness? Wealth? Having fun? Love relationships? Surviving one more day? Being married for decades with your partner? I define success in very small terms: I survived one more day. Most of the time that's all I can manage. The truth is, there are lots of times when I get so alone that I don't feel like there's any reason to go on living. Some nights you don't care if you live or die. Yet I've always been stubborn. Even if it hurts, which it can, a lot, I'm too stubborn to give in. It's not that I have any hope that "things will improve." I have no faith in that at all. I just go on enduring. Most of the time it's not much fun, just to go on enduring.
Lots of people think that their love relationships, or their religions, or their work, are the solutions to all their problems, all their difficulties, unhappinesses, and sorrows. They flush themselves with pride in their connections. They rely on their partner for all things emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical. Many such relationships crack under the strain of trying to carry too much in one container. Marriage is a container, but not necessarily a good container for all things.
Whenever I post a personal ad looking for some physical contact, sex, jerking off, massage, with another man, in this small rural area I invariably get a majority of responses from married men. Guys who want boys on the side. It gets annoying, after the first few rounds. You end up not wanting to post a personal ad, because of the predictable responses, which tend to make you feel even more alone. Some of them are recognizably from the same men, time after time. That can get boring, which can also add to the loneliness.
I'm not a sentimental person, not even slightly. I don't drown by choice in the romantic fantasies of blissful married life (no matter who you're married to) that seem to be the stock fantasies of most. I'm romantic, actually very romantic, but it takes awhile to get there, so if you were to come digging for it, you'd have to dig awhile before you struck gold. Mainly I don't like clichés of romantic love, etc.
That's one more thing that sets me up to be alone: Not conforming to the mass fantasy of romantic love. Not caring much about the painstaking reaction in real life of such fantasies. Caring even less for reenacting fantasy scenes from novels and poems and movies.
Although I can be swayed with flowers. Or a kiss on the back of the knee. We all have our erogenous zones.
I don't confuse loneliness and solitude. Most people are afraid of solitude because they're afraid they'll feel lonely. Frankly, most people are pack animals. I'm not afraid of solitude. I seek it out. I do enjoy sharing my favorite places of solitary sojourn with one other, on occasion. You like to share the places you love, hoping that your lovers will love them, too. But as an artist I'm used to be alone a lot of the time. Alone and in silence is how best I hear those voices that lead me to poetry, to music, to visual art.
Loneliness is yearning in a way that solitude is not. Being solitary is complete of itself. Being in solitude is recharging, for people like me. When I'm alone, I usually don't yearn. I yearn more for company when I've had a recent fight with someone I care about, perhaps; and I yearn more for comfort when I'm suffering; and I yearn sometimes when I want to engage in something other than solo sex.
Loneliness is part of the spectrum of life, though. If it comes over you, savor it, experience it to the hilt, don't hold back. It's one of the bitter, more alkaline emotional flavors. Savor it. Don't try to mask it, or cover it over, with sweeter flavors. That does neither justice, and makes both hollow, in the long run. People who pretend to be happy all the time when clearly they're not do not serve themselves.
If I need to weep, for my own sake I must let it rain. And sometimes you get so filled with unspeakable joy, so full of feelings, that you can't say anything, words fail you. Don't hold anything back. It's only in letting it all happen, clean and honest like rainstorms and summer winds, that you cleanse yourself, and keep yourself from becoming mired.
I have to relearn what I once knew: Let it all out. Get it out of the body. Don't stifle it, and don't let it fester. Let it flow, in the moment, of the moment, and then when it's done, it's done. Harbor nothing. Save nothing. Just spend it all.
I know that lots of people in the rural culture I live in view that as impossible for themselves, that emotional flow, and they spend most of their lives suppressing their deepest feelings, especially in public. Not too much salt, never too much pepper. I know that I'm a heretic of deep feeling and intense living, here where I live. I've learned that I can't be any other way, and survive. For my own sake, I have to let it rain. And even when I'm feeling lonely, I have to feel lonely with every fiber of my being, knowing full well that I'll feel differently later, tomorrow, or some other day soon arriving.
In moments of crisis, I'm almost always in the role of caregiver. When I'm having a crisis, it's almost always impossible to find anyone to turn to. It's like they all evaporate. Some are no doubt uncomfortable with seeing moments of vulnerability, weakness, and doubt in someone who they have turned to, who they rely on: the illusion of invulnerable competence is what they cannot bear to see disproved.
That has been a lifelong pattern: People turn to me for support, but don't usually reciprocate. I have one friend I can turn to, when I need a shoulder, but it's almost always on the phone, not face to face. Those late night things, from across a few state lines.
How do you define success? Is it happiness? Wealth? Having fun? Love relationships? Surviving one more day? Being married for decades with your partner? I define success in very small terms: I survived one more day. Most of the time that's all I can manage. The truth is, there are lots of times when I get so alone that I don't feel like there's any reason to go on living. Some nights you don't care if you live or die. Yet I've always been stubborn. Even if it hurts, which it can, a lot, I'm too stubborn to give in. It's not that I have any hope that "things will improve." I have no faith in that at all. I just go on enduring. Most of the time it's not much fun, just to go on enduring.
Lots of people think that their love relationships, or their religions, or their work, are the solutions to all their problems, all their difficulties, unhappinesses, and sorrows. They flush themselves with pride in their connections. They rely on their partner for all things emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical. Many such relationships crack under the strain of trying to carry too much in one container. Marriage is a container, but not necessarily a good container for all things.
Whenever I post a personal ad looking for some physical contact, sex, jerking off, massage, with another man, in this small rural area I invariably get a majority of responses from married men. Guys who want boys on the side. It gets annoying, after the first few rounds. You end up not wanting to post a personal ad, because of the predictable responses, which tend to make you feel even more alone. Some of them are recognizably from the same men, time after time. That can get boring, which can also add to the loneliness.
I'm not a sentimental person, not even slightly. I don't drown by choice in the romantic fantasies of blissful married life (no matter who you're married to) that seem to be the stock fantasies of most. I'm romantic, actually very romantic, but it takes awhile to get there, so if you were to come digging for it, you'd have to dig awhile before you struck gold. Mainly I don't like clichés of romantic love, etc.
That's one more thing that sets me up to be alone: Not conforming to the mass fantasy of romantic love. Not caring much about the painstaking reaction in real life of such fantasies. Caring even less for reenacting fantasy scenes from novels and poems and movies.
Although I can be swayed with flowers. Or a kiss on the back of the knee. We all have our erogenous zones.
I don't confuse loneliness and solitude. Most people are afraid of solitude because they're afraid they'll feel lonely. Frankly, most people are pack animals. I'm not afraid of solitude. I seek it out. I do enjoy sharing my favorite places of solitary sojourn with one other, on occasion. You like to share the places you love, hoping that your lovers will love them, too. But as an artist I'm used to be alone a lot of the time. Alone and in silence is how best I hear those voices that lead me to poetry, to music, to visual art.
Loneliness is yearning in a way that solitude is not. Being solitary is complete of itself. Being in solitude is recharging, for people like me. When I'm alone, I usually don't yearn. I yearn more for company when I've had a recent fight with someone I care about, perhaps; and I yearn more for comfort when I'm suffering; and I yearn sometimes when I want to engage in something other than solo sex.
Loneliness is part of the spectrum of life, though. If it comes over you, savor it, experience it to the hilt, don't hold back. It's one of the bitter, more alkaline emotional flavors. Savor it. Don't try to mask it, or cover it over, with sweeter flavors. That does neither justice, and makes both hollow, in the long run. People who pretend to be happy all the time when clearly they're not do not serve themselves.
If I need to weep, for my own sake I must let it rain. And sometimes you get so filled with unspeakable joy, so full of feelings, that you can't say anything, words fail you. Don't hold anything back. It's only in letting it all happen, clean and honest like rainstorms and summer winds, that you cleanse yourself, and keep yourself from becoming mired.
I have to relearn what I once knew: Let it all out. Get it out of the body. Don't stifle it, and don't let it fester. Let it flow, in the moment, of the moment, and then when it's done, it's done. Harbor nothing. Save nothing. Just spend it all.
I know that lots of people in the rural culture I live in view that as impossible for themselves, that emotional flow, and they spend most of their lives suppressing their deepest feelings, especially in public. Not too much salt, never too much pepper. I know that I'm a heretic of deep feeling and intense living, here where I live. I've learned that I can't be any other way, and survive. For my own sake, I have to let it rain. And even when I'm feeling lonely, I have to feel lonely with every fiber of my being, knowing full well that I'll feel differently later, tomorrow, or some other day soon arriving.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
An Anti Personal Ad
WARNING: Vitriolic, mean, and spiteful, written out in a moment of frustration and annoyance after yet another bit of online coitus interruptus thanks to Craigslist.org and the people who use them. Actually tried to post this, but CL's new log-in and password policy is so bloody opaque and hard to use, that I didn't get it out there. So, here it is. A bit of creative snark. Mind the gap.
•
An Anti Personal Ad
Don't bother.
I'm tired of being accomodating towards others when they're not towards me. Guys only want to get together with me when they feel like it, not when I do. So when I don't feel like it, don't bother. Your timing and your schedule are not actually more important than mine.
Don't bother with those responses to Craigslist ads when you're married and want me to be "discreet." Even more so, don't bother when you didn't tell me that up front, but only revealed it later on. And don't expect a repeat visit. I don't play with married men. Even if you ARE the only men out here in the wilds of Wisconsin who bother to reply to personal ads, I'm sick of you.
I may be horny, but I'm not desperate. Certainly not as desperate as you are. Why did you ever get married in the first place, if you still want boyz on the side? Live honestly, or don't expect me to have anything to do with you. You need to grow up, be honest, and live with some shred of personal integrity about your sex lives—or I can't be bothered.
And if you haven't been out of the closet for at least a few years—long enough to have gotten through the "kid in a candy store" phase and the "finding myself" phase—then I don't want to date you. I don't want to be your teacher, your therapist, your guide, your guru, or your one-night stand. When you get past those early stages of coming out, when you've found some balance, when you've settled down a little—call me then, and we'll talk.
While I do indeed enjoy men who are exploring their gayness for the first time, while I do enjoy younger men, oh yes indeed I've had some great sex with younger men, I'm nobody's daddy or sugardaddy, nobody's guru, nobody's therapist. While indeed I've done my share of sexual healing while having sex—both mine, and yours—and had a good time opening up that way, I'm not your healer. I want to be your partner. It has to be mutual, and reciprocal, and it has to go both ways.
See, I have the same problem with most gay subcultures: most of them, with only a couple of rare exceptions, even now remain appearance-based. Even Bear culture is appearance-based, it's just a reversal of the usual buff or smooth gay stereotypes. Most of the worst aspects of gay culture—those ways which we beat each other up—remain shallow and appearance-based. Not liking what you see, and being too fucked up to be tolerant of it because of your own internalized homophobia, is the root of sissyphobia, of ageism, of looksism, of every little discriminatory snipe and snark with which you deride each other, mercilessly and without compassion. In a community supposed to be tolerant of diversity, intolerance is the rule. And it's alll very shallow.
It's ALL drag, whether it's boy drag, or girl drag, or businessman drag, or naked drag, it's ALL drag. That's the most profound truth of gay life: Everything is a performance. You can perform whoever you want to be, and you can change several times a day, and nobody has the right to tell you you're wrong. But neither do you have the right to tell others they are wrong—because if you demand respect for yourself, for just being who you are, then you must offer the same respect in return. Or it's ALL meaningless.
So if you don't like me because I don't look like your ideal fantasy image of what you want, fuck you. Or rather, UNfuck you. Who'd want to fuck you, anyway, if you're that shallow? So if you don't like the things I have to say, or how I say them, unfuck you. If you're so self-centered that you only want to nookie when it's convenient for YOU, and you can't be bothered caring about the feelings of your partner, then you're only in love with yourself, you narcissistic little wanker, so unfuck you.
The definition of love that works pragmatically and practically, all romantic and sentimental bullshit aside, is this: You love your partner if you care more about their feelings and their highest good then you do your own. Real love can even mean letting them go, so they can be free to be themselves. Yes, it hurts to let them go, and when will it ever be YOUR turn to be happy and fulfilled? Yes, that can suck. But that's what love is: The heart that is open to risk, and to being hurt, and to taking chances with your own feelings. take a chance! The closed fist can never hold onto anything anyway.
It may all be role-play, it may all be drag, but the drag that I want to role-play, and have done so for years, is to be the most authentically myself that I know how to be. I won't pretend to be anything other than myself for you, and I won't offer anything other than everything I have to give, honestly and totally and completely with full authenticity. I won't hold anything back, I'll give you everything that I am, and if that freaks you out or intimidates you or makes you run away, that's YOUR problem. Accept me as I am, just as I accept you as you are, and no games, no bullshit, no headgames of mindfucks, and we might make something magical between us. I give as good as I get, just you wait and see.
Lose the dirty talk during sex. It pulls me right out of my body and into my intellect, and shuts me right down sexually, when you're being verbal like that. Grunt, moan, tell me it feels good, tell me to keep going, but that dirty talk shit is major turn-off. I love hearing what pleasure I'm giving you. I love hearing the animal sounds that men make when their ecstasy has taken them past all words. You can roar, and moan, and sigh. But enough with the dirty talk. Enough with the narratives. Enough with the porn dialogue. It's all bad dialogue when it's porn dialogue. If you think what you see and hear in porn is real and not just some fantasy, I pity you.
If you're easy-going about most things in life but passionate about those things you really care about, and passionate in bed, then I want to hear from you. Because I'm an intense, passionate person myself. I've scared people with my intensity, I've intimidated them with my unintentional wacky Zen brilliance, I've freaked them out with my weird sense of humor. I don't care. Take me as I am, or don't expect the same in return. Make it mutual, or piss off.
If all this was too long for you to read, or get through to this far, you have the attention span of a gnat and I don't want to meet you anyway. If you DID make it this far, gimme a call, and we can take it from there.
•
An Anti Personal Ad
Don't bother.
I'm tired of being accomodating towards others when they're not towards me. Guys only want to get together with me when they feel like it, not when I do. So when I don't feel like it, don't bother. Your timing and your schedule are not actually more important than mine.
Don't bother with those responses to Craigslist ads when you're married and want me to be "discreet." Even more so, don't bother when you didn't tell me that up front, but only revealed it later on. And don't expect a repeat visit. I don't play with married men. Even if you ARE the only men out here in the wilds of Wisconsin who bother to reply to personal ads, I'm sick of you.
I may be horny, but I'm not desperate. Certainly not as desperate as you are. Why did you ever get married in the first place, if you still want boyz on the side? Live honestly, or don't expect me to have anything to do with you. You need to grow up, be honest, and live with some shred of personal integrity about your sex lives—or I can't be bothered.
And if you haven't been out of the closet for at least a few years—long enough to have gotten through the "kid in a candy store" phase and the "finding myself" phase—then I don't want to date you. I don't want to be your teacher, your therapist, your guide, your guru, or your one-night stand. When you get past those early stages of coming out, when you've found some balance, when you've settled down a little—call me then, and we'll talk.
While I do indeed enjoy men who are exploring their gayness for the first time, while I do enjoy younger men, oh yes indeed I've had some great sex with younger men, I'm nobody's daddy or sugardaddy, nobody's guru, nobody's therapist. While indeed I've done my share of sexual healing while having sex—both mine, and yours—and had a good time opening up that way, I'm not your healer. I want to be your partner. It has to be mutual, and reciprocal, and it has to go both ways.
See, I have the same problem with most gay subcultures: most of them, with only a couple of rare exceptions, even now remain appearance-based. Even Bear culture is appearance-based, it's just a reversal of the usual buff or smooth gay stereotypes. Most of the worst aspects of gay culture—those ways which we beat each other up—remain shallow and appearance-based. Not liking what you see, and being too fucked up to be tolerant of it because of your own internalized homophobia, is the root of sissyphobia, of ageism, of looksism, of every little discriminatory snipe and snark with which you deride each other, mercilessly and without compassion. In a community supposed to be tolerant of diversity, intolerance is the rule. And it's alll very shallow.
It's ALL drag, whether it's boy drag, or girl drag, or businessman drag, or naked drag, it's ALL drag. That's the most profound truth of gay life: Everything is a performance. You can perform whoever you want to be, and you can change several times a day, and nobody has the right to tell you you're wrong. But neither do you have the right to tell others they are wrong—because if you demand respect for yourself, for just being who you are, then you must offer the same respect in return. Or it's ALL meaningless.
So if you don't like me because I don't look like your ideal fantasy image of what you want, fuck you. Or rather, UNfuck you. Who'd want to fuck you, anyway, if you're that shallow? So if you don't like the things I have to say, or how I say them, unfuck you. If you're so self-centered that you only want to nookie when it's convenient for YOU, and you can't be bothered caring about the feelings of your partner, then you're only in love with yourself, you narcissistic little wanker, so unfuck you.
The definition of love that works pragmatically and practically, all romantic and sentimental bullshit aside, is this: You love your partner if you care more about their feelings and their highest good then you do your own. Real love can even mean letting them go, so they can be free to be themselves. Yes, it hurts to let them go, and when will it ever be YOUR turn to be happy and fulfilled? Yes, that can suck. But that's what love is: The heart that is open to risk, and to being hurt, and to taking chances with your own feelings. take a chance! The closed fist can never hold onto anything anyway.
It may all be role-play, it may all be drag, but the drag that I want to role-play, and have done so for years, is to be the most authentically myself that I know how to be. I won't pretend to be anything other than myself for you, and I won't offer anything other than everything I have to give, honestly and totally and completely with full authenticity. I won't hold anything back, I'll give you everything that I am, and if that freaks you out or intimidates you or makes you run away, that's YOUR problem. Accept me as I am, just as I accept you as you are, and no games, no bullshit, no headgames of mindfucks, and we might make something magical between us. I give as good as I get, just you wait and see.
Lose the dirty talk during sex. It pulls me right out of my body and into my intellect, and shuts me right down sexually, when you're being verbal like that. Grunt, moan, tell me it feels good, tell me to keep going, but that dirty talk shit is major turn-off. I love hearing what pleasure I'm giving you. I love hearing the animal sounds that men make when their ecstasy has taken them past all words. You can roar, and moan, and sigh. But enough with the dirty talk. Enough with the narratives. Enough with the porn dialogue. It's all bad dialogue when it's porn dialogue. If you think what you see and hear in porn is real and not just some fantasy, I pity you.
If you're easy-going about most things in life but passionate about those things you really care about, and passionate in bed, then I want to hear from you. Because I'm an intense, passionate person myself. I've scared people with my intensity, I've intimidated them with my unintentional wacky Zen brilliance, I've freaked them out with my weird sense of humor. I don't care. Take me as I am, or don't expect the same in return. Make it mutual, or piss off.
If all this was too long for you to read, or get through to this far, you have the attention span of a gnat and I don't want to meet you anyway. If you DID make it this far, gimme a call, and we can take it from there.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
Brief Lives Sutra (Tantrayana)
i.
Nothing casual about it.
You arrived so unexpectedly, it had
to have been planned.
So I had you for a day,
part of a day and a night,
though it seemed much more.
In sleep a beast whose breathing
was rough and tender,
probably from smoking;
I was content, enveloped in
the warming touch of your skin.
Shall I be jealous of a dog? But she’s
your best friend, the only one you really trust,
who never leaves your side.
Deep brown spaniel eyes, dark and ageless,
watch me with dismissal: I’m not you.
Your marriage of eyes and walking
has preserved you best: so be it.
She has you forever. If I only have you
for a day, that’s enough.
ii.
Comfortably naked after showering, after
a morning of sweaty woods work,
plagued by flies and biting sun.
I didn’t want to get dressed.
Room enough in the shower for two.
He wanted to watch everyone bathe,
but had to coaxed out of his clothes.
Walking nude down to the lake,
half-hard, I hid myself with my sarong
in front, nothing behind.
Boots and shaman necklaces enough to wear.
The blue sky, the endless water,
spring-clear and icy. Loons called all morning, lost.
Not only the body naked.
Lying on my back on the raft, sunlight, and cool breeze.
He said, “May I?” and I said,
“Feel free.” And before I knew what,
his lips encircled my cock, worshipful.
Instant electric pulse through the entire body,
back arched on the wood of the raft,
warm and soft-sliding little noises.
Imagine my surprise.
I touched his hips and cock and chest
and the obstetric line hatcheting his groin
below full balls.
His cock bigger than mine,
but he kept telling me how much
he loved mine.
Kissing nipples till I came.
Came everywhere, endlessly,
in the heat and sun,
on the floating raft by the marsh grass
and rocks. “Wow, that was a big load,
you must have been saving it for a long time.”
Imagine his surprise.
To be pursued, surprised, caught
and released. I am God’s fish,
the favorite catch of the day.
Talking in the tingle of afterwards,
kissing. The smoothest skin in any state,
the roundest shoulder, the firmest breast.
Fulfillment of a prescient wish:
to make love naked by the water
in the sun in the woods naked
and alone and alive the whole world vibrating.
Now the sky bells, blue ringing.
Worth a little sunburn.
In the cool cabin light he says:
“I can’t wait till tonight,”
and kisses me.
Who is the fish? Who is the fisherman?
The Beloved caught up in the catching,
hooked by hooking.
I have waited so very long.
Nothing casual about it.
You arrived so unexpectedly, it had
to have been planned.
iii.
the effeminist, androgynous torso
soft still very male
in the as yet unheard echo
bonfire crackling under stars as they turn
deer cries, owls, songs of tamarack
needles crying out as they cast free and plummet
narrow-hipped Nataraj
dancing in and out of nearness
leaping the bonfire nude
an instant before dry balsam explodes
missed searing his scrotum
by microseconds
but I catch him on film
not a repose between dances
rather a stillpoint amidst turnings
a fast enough shutter
to freeze an illusion of stillness
caught outside time’s black flow
iv.
the loons call throughout the night
surrounding your senses with flight and benediction
in the coldest hours I want to snuggle
close to your back, breathe your sweat,
burrow deep inside your heart,
remind myself of existence
sleep comes fitfully: how many years
sleeping alone, naked, comfortless?
even in the darkness I see your whitened skin
the dark hair that so contrasts
even in the dark, you lighten the tent
beeswax candles flicked the aureoles of your breast
as head back, kneeling above me, you came
I worship at the shrine of your semen
climbing a thin white rope towards god
v.
in the dark mustiness of the cabin noon,
pants down around my ankles,
you sucking my cock,
the slam of the screen door
as someone comes in.
odd that it doesn’t bother me
to be caught like this.
but it’s just my brother,
he smiles and waves,
grabs the ash bucket and goes.
back to business.
sleeping in the cold night tent,
bodies pressed together for warmth.
it had been hot in here earlier,
lit by one candles and two bodies.
he sleeps deep and long,
not noticing or not minding
when I touch his torso
in the middle night,
wondering if all this is real.
(which is the dream? butterfly or sex?)
he snores in stages, four growly honks
a ruminating grizzly
then quiet for awhile.
and before it fades to black,
a few brief scrawled letters
then back to the long listening:
one shoulder naked
in northern lights
sun aurora sentinel moon
shoulder breast and body
glowing by firelight moonlight candlelight
skywheel spinning behind your head
halo of stars
before it fades
before
Nothing casual about it.
You arrived so unexpectedly, it had
to have been planned.
So I had you for a day,
part of a day and a night,
though it seemed much more.
In sleep a beast whose breathing
was rough and tender,
probably from smoking;
I was content, enveloped in
the warming touch of your skin.
Shall I be jealous of a dog? But she’s
your best friend, the only one you really trust,
who never leaves your side.
Deep brown spaniel eyes, dark and ageless,
watch me with dismissal: I’m not you.
Your marriage of eyes and walking
has preserved you best: so be it.
She has you forever. If I only have you
for a day, that’s enough.
ii.
Comfortably naked after showering, after
a morning of sweaty woods work,
plagued by flies and biting sun.
I didn’t want to get dressed.
Room enough in the shower for two.
He wanted to watch everyone bathe,
but had to coaxed out of his clothes.
Walking nude down to the lake,
half-hard, I hid myself with my sarong
in front, nothing behind.
Boots and shaman necklaces enough to wear.
The blue sky, the endless water,
spring-clear and icy. Loons called all morning, lost.
Not only the body naked.
Lying on my back on the raft, sunlight, and cool breeze.
He said, “May I?” and I said,
“Feel free.” And before I knew what,
his lips encircled my cock, worshipful.
Instant electric pulse through the entire body,
back arched on the wood of the raft,
warm and soft-sliding little noises.
Imagine my surprise.
I touched his hips and cock and chest
and the obstetric line hatcheting his groin
below full balls.
His cock bigger than mine,
but he kept telling me how much
he loved mine.
Kissing nipples till I came.
Came everywhere, endlessly,
in the heat and sun,
on the floating raft by the marsh grass
and rocks. “Wow, that was a big load,
you must have been saving it for a long time.”
Imagine his surprise.
To be pursued, surprised, caught
and released. I am God’s fish,
the favorite catch of the day.
Talking in the tingle of afterwards,
kissing. The smoothest skin in any state,
the roundest shoulder, the firmest breast.
Fulfillment of a prescient wish:
to make love naked by the water
in the sun in the woods naked
and alone and alive the whole world vibrating.
Now the sky bells, blue ringing.
Worth a little sunburn.
In the cool cabin light he says:
“I can’t wait till tonight,”
and kisses me.
Who is the fish? Who is the fisherman?
The Beloved caught up in the catching,
hooked by hooking.
I have waited so very long.
Nothing casual about it.
You arrived so unexpectedly, it had
to have been planned.
iii.
the effeminist, androgynous torso
soft still very male
in the as yet unheard echo
bonfire crackling under stars as they turn
deer cries, owls, songs of tamarack
needles crying out as they cast free and plummet
narrow-hipped Nataraj
dancing in and out of nearness
leaping the bonfire nude
an instant before dry balsam explodes
missed searing his scrotum
by microseconds
but I catch him on film
not a repose between dances
rather a stillpoint amidst turnings
a fast enough shutter
to freeze an illusion of stillness
caught outside time’s black flow
iv.
the loons call throughout the night
surrounding your senses with flight and benediction
in the coldest hours I want to snuggle
close to your back, breathe your sweat,
burrow deep inside your heart,
remind myself of existence
sleep comes fitfully: how many years
sleeping alone, naked, comfortless?
even in the darkness I see your whitened skin
the dark hair that so contrasts
even in the dark, you lighten the tent
beeswax candles flicked the aureoles of your breast
as head back, kneeling above me, you came
I worship at the shrine of your semen
climbing a thin white rope towards god
v.
in the dark mustiness of the cabin noon,
pants down around my ankles,
you sucking my cock,
the slam of the screen door
as someone comes in.
odd that it doesn’t bother me
to be caught like this.
but it’s just my brother,
he smiles and waves,
grabs the ash bucket and goes.
back to business.
sleeping in the cold night tent,
bodies pressed together for warmth.
it had been hot in here earlier,
lit by one candles and two bodies.
he sleeps deep and long,
not noticing or not minding
when I touch his torso
in the middle night,
wondering if all this is real.
(which is the dream? butterfly or sex?)
he snores in stages, four growly honks
a ruminating grizzly
then quiet for awhile.
and before it fades to black,
a few brief scrawled letters
then back to the long listening:
one shoulder naked
in northern lights
sun aurora sentinel moon
shoulder breast and body
glowing by firelight moonlight candlelight
skywheel spinning behind your head
halo of stars
before it fades
before
Friday, May 29, 2009
How Do You Choose?
One of my biggest problems in gay life is that I appear not to be shallow enough. I don't go out of my way to judge people on their appearances, kinks, or preferences. Instead I go to the core of the matter, as quickly as possible. The man with x-ray eyes.
When I spend time reading online personal ads, which I don't spend a lot of time on, one thing I note is how often men put out, in an occasionally desperate tone of voice, a long list of criteria and demands that one is expected to meet, or conform to, in order to get through.
Now, it's one thing to state preferences and desires. it's entirely different to set so many conditions on people that no-one can actually live up to them. Setting conditions creates borderlines, creates prejudices, creates the very kind of judgmentalism so many of us claim to dislike when we encounter it directed at ourselves. Yet we turn right around again and make our own judgments. That's a clear double standard: don't judge me, but I can judge you."
It's hard for me to take anybody seriously who sets so many conditions on even a first date that one must navigate a maze of ideals in order to reach the prize at the center: an actual conversation, an actual date. Eye contact seems to be optional.
I've always tried to make it clear that when I state my preferences, they're just preferences. They're not demands, they're not requirements. They're just likes, or dislikes. For example: I prefer non-smokers to smokers, but I've dated, kissed, and made love to smokers. It doesn't mean I like smoking, it does mean the person is more important than the things they do.
Another example: I really like skinny younger guys, but I've been with lots of larger, older men. Older men seem to be attracted to me, and a few younger men. I had to laugh out loud one time, years ago, when a lover said goodnight to me from the sidewalk, near dawn, as I stood naked in the doorway, wishing him a goodnight after a long evening and night of orgiastic sex; he said to me, "Good night, Adonis," and he seemed to mean it. I was pleased. But I've never thought of myself as an Adonis, and I haven't been "height/weight proportional" since my 20s.
If you keep setting so many conditions on your own loving, it's no wonder you're alone.
Love with those you can genuinely name as lovers is meant to be unconditional: without conditions. Love with conditions is usually fantasy-love, the actual person hidden behind a fantasy-filter you project onto them. If you really want a long-term relationship, then you'd better let go of the fantasies and meet the actual person. As the saying goes, "Domesticity isn't pretty."
So much gay dating is unfulfilling precisely to the extent that it is conditional. We reject everyone who doesn't measure up to some standard of perfection, then wonder why we've either spent the night alone, or had another emotionally-empty one-night stand. Even if the sex itself was good. I never want to have sex where one person ends up crying afterwards.
There are many people in the personal ads whose criteria and conditional expectations I can't live up to. What they don't seem to understand is: Nobody wants to try to. If you make the barriers too strong, too precise, you will be alone. If you put up walls that are too thick, or have no windows, you might be safe in your castle, safe from the world's chaos and unpredictable dangers, but you will most certainly be alone. I've known young men who were abused, even raped. They have problems with trust, and with letting people in—understandable problems—yet paradoxically some have no clear boundaries about what they will or won't do in bed. Some of these have the courage to cry afterwards. Mostly they don't reveal anything really important about themselves, ever. Once burned, thrice shy.
The reason I state preferences instead of conditions is precisely to leave the windows and doors open to the unexpected, pleasant surprise. I've had encounters with loving men that matched none of my preferences, and we had a wonderful time together. You have to remain open to the possibility that something unpredictably wonderful will come into your life, when you least expect it. That's why putting too many conditions and criteria in the way ultimately does more harm than good: as well as blocking out the people you know you don't want to meet, it also blocks out the wonderful men you might have met if your criteria weren't so judgmental. It's okay to make people work a little to get through to you. But you do yourself no favors by making that work so hard that no one wants to take it on. There are plenty of men who I would like to get to know, as friends if nothing else, but they put so many barriers in the way, it's too much work to try to get through to them; only to get rejected because you don't match the fine points on their lists.
Prickliness doesn't serve us well. Neither do fantasies of the perfect soulmate or lover. Romantic delusions keep us from seeing what's really there, right in front of us, that could be wonderful, and genuine, and loving, and true. The flower doesn't close itself in the sunlight, it opens. The flowers take what it is given, as it is given, even as it seeks more by rising ever higher into the light and air. The flower doesn't demand sunglasses to filter out the UV rays; it adapts.
Now, to be clear: It's no bad thing to know up-front what someone's boundaries and limits are: knowing one's desires, borders, edges, dislikes. It's no bad thing to be honest and clear from the outset.
It takes a level of self-knowledge and self-awareness to know your own boundaries, and likes and dislikes. What I'm talking about here is when men go looking for a body first and foremost—for appearance rather than essence—when they do that, they miss many good men of good wit and character.
While it can save time by "weeding out" the replies to your personal ad that don't interest you, having a list of criteria can also be used as a bludgeon to put people down, to reject them for essentially shallow reasons—and it can be used as defense mechanism: as walls, as barbed wire, as fortress battlements. A list of criteria can be used to try to force the world to live up to your expectations, or to pretend not to see what you don't like seeing. It can be used as a tool for denial.
I've been rejected based on someone's criteria as often as anyone else has. My response is: Too bad; you don't know what you're missing, and now you'll never experience what I have to offer. Something good might have come from it, and now neither of us will get the chance to find out.
If you are clear about your criteria, chances are eventually you will someone who matches your criteria. If your criteria are all appearance-based, ageist, sissyphobic, or similarly internally-homophobic—and don't think your readers can't tell—you eliminate any possibility of meeting and being with someone who could blow your mind. You closed that door before it could ever open.
That's a missed opportunity most men aren't even aware of, but they still can't fill that empty void in themselves. Their deepest desire may well be a fantasy about a body type.
Here, I'll give an example of why they will remain forever unfulfilled, if that's all that attracts them:
I was once at a Radical Faerie Gathering at Short Mountain, TN. There was this guy, nice enough, who was after me; he kept coming up to me, pursuing me. He was a definitely a chubby chaser; in several years of seeing him interact with men at Gatherings, he was always with a heavier, older man. (Gathering boyfriends or fuckbuddies are fairly common. Two men make a couple all during Gathering, but may never see each other elsewhere, or ever again, because Gatherings draw people from all over.) This year, he was pursuing me. I could have had a boyfriend for the whole Gathering, and as much sex as I wanted. But when I looked into his eyes, and watched his body language, I saw an emptiness in him, a deep void, that he was trying to fill. I turned him down. Later on, I saw he'd found another man to be with during Gathering, and we said hello courteously enough, but that was it. I chose not to spend my entire time trying to fill his emptiness; I had better things to do.
I'll tell you who your perfect lover, the one we all look for online and in the bars and everywhere else, who your soulmate is: Your soulmate is the person who drives you crazy, who makes you grow, and grow up. Who doesn't buy into your games, but loves you for who you are.
A person of character. The problem with having too many appearance-based criteria is that you're never likely to meet that person. It's probably impossible, because he can be camped out on your threshold for years but you'll never let him in the front door.
And that's too bad.
When I spend time reading online personal ads, which I don't spend a lot of time on, one thing I note is how often men put out, in an occasionally desperate tone of voice, a long list of criteria and demands that one is expected to meet, or conform to, in order to get through.
Now, it's one thing to state preferences and desires. it's entirely different to set so many conditions on people that no-one can actually live up to them. Setting conditions creates borderlines, creates prejudices, creates the very kind of judgmentalism so many of us claim to dislike when we encounter it directed at ourselves. Yet we turn right around again and make our own judgments. That's a clear double standard: don't judge me, but I can judge you."
It's hard for me to take anybody seriously who sets so many conditions on even a first date that one must navigate a maze of ideals in order to reach the prize at the center: an actual conversation, an actual date. Eye contact seems to be optional.
I've always tried to make it clear that when I state my preferences, they're just preferences. They're not demands, they're not requirements. They're just likes, or dislikes. For example: I prefer non-smokers to smokers, but I've dated, kissed, and made love to smokers. It doesn't mean I like smoking, it does mean the person is more important than the things they do.
Another example: I really like skinny younger guys, but I've been with lots of larger, older men. Older men seem to be attracted to me, and a few younger men. I had to laugh out loud one time, years ago, when a lover said goodnight to me from the sidewalk, near dawn, as I stood naked in the doorway, wishing him a goodnight after a long evening and night of orgiastic sex; he said to me, "Good night, Adonis," and he seemed to mean it. I was pleased. But I've never thought of myself as an Adonis, and I haven't been "height/weight proportional" since my 20s.
If you keep setting so many conditions on your own loving, it's no wonder you're alone.
Love with those you can genuinely name as lovers is meant to be unconditional: without conditions. Love with conditions is usually fantasy-love, the actual person hidden behind a fantasy-filter you project onto them. If you really want a long-term relationship, then you'd better let go of the fantasies and meet the actual person. As the saying goes, "Domesticity isn't pretty."
So much gay dating is unfulfilling precisely to the extent that it is conditional. We reject everyone who doesn't measure up to some standard of perfection, then wonder why we've either spent the night alone, or had another emotionally-empty one-night stand. Even if the sex itself was good. I never want to have sex where one person ends up crying afterwards.
There are many people in the personal ads whose criteria and conditional expectations I can't live up to. What they don't seem to understand is: Nobody wants to try to. If you make the barriers too strong, too precise, you will be alone. If you put up walls that are too thick, or have no windows, you might be safe in your castle, safe from the world's chaos and unpredictable dangers, but you will most certainly be alone. I've known young men who were abused, even raped. They have problems with trust, and with letting people in—understandable problems—yet paradoxically some have no clear boundaries about what they will or won't do in bed. Some of these have the courage to cry afterwards. Mostly they don't reveal anything really important about themselves, ever. Once burned, thrice shy.
The reason I state preferences instead of conditions is precisely to leave the windows and doors open to the unexpected, pleasant surprise. I've had encounters with loving men that matched none of my preferences, and we had a wonderful time together. You have to remain open to the possibility that something unpredictably wonderful will come into your life, when you least expect it. That's why putting too many conditions and criteria in the way ultimately does more harm than good: as well as blocking out the people you know you don't want to meet, it also blocks out the wonderful men you might have met if your criteria weren't so judgmental. It's okay to make people work a little to get through to you. But you do yourself no favors by making that work so hard that no one wants to take it on. There are plenty of men who I would like to get to know, as friends if nothing else, but they put so many barriers in the way, it's too much work to try to get through to them; only to get rejected because you don't match the fine points on their lists.
Prickliness doesn't serve us well. Neither do fantasies of the perfect soulmate or lover. Romantic delusions keep us from seeing what's really there, right in front of us, that could be wonderful, and genuine, and loving, and true. The flower doesn't close itself in the sunlight, it opens. The flowers take what it is given, as it is given, even as it seeks more by rising ever higher into the light and air. The flower doesn't demand sunglasses to filter out the UV rays; it adapts.
Now, to be clear: It's no bad thing to know up-front what someone's boundaries and limits are: knowing one's desires, borders, edges, dislikes. It's no bad thing to be honest and clear from the outset.
It takes a level of self-knowledge and self-awareness to know your own boundaries, and likes and dislikes. What I'm talking about here is when men go looking for a body first and foremost—for appearance rather than essence—when they do that, they miss many good men of good wit and character.
While it can save time by "weeding out" the replies to your personal ad that don't interest you, having a list of criteria can also be used as a bludgeon to put people down, to reject them for essentially shallow reasons—and it can be used as defense mechanism: as walls, as barbed wire, as fortress battlements. A list of criteria can be used to try to force the world to live up to your expectations, or to pretend not to see what you don't like seeing. It can be used as a tool for denial.
I've been rejected based on someone's criteria as often as anyone else has. My response is: Too bad; you don't know what you're missing, and now you'll never experience what I have to offer. Something good might have come from it, and now neither of us will get the chance to find out.
If you are clear about your criteria, chances are eventually you will someone who matches your criteria. If your criteria are all appearance-based, ageist, sissyphobic, or similarly internally-homophobic—and don't think your readers can't tell—you eliminate any possibility of meeting and being with someone who could blow your mind. You closed that door before it could ever open.
That's a missed opportunity most men aren't even aware of, but they still can't fill that empty void in themselves. Their deepest desire may well be a fantasy about a body type.
Here, I'll give an example of why they will remain forever unfulfilled, if that's all that attracts them:
I was once at a Radical Faerie Gathering at Short Mountain, TN. There was this guy, nice enough, who was after me; he kept coming up to me, pursuing me. He was a definitely a chubby chaser; in several years of seeing him interact with men at Gatherings, he was always with a heavier, older man. (Gathering boyfriends or fuckbuddies are fairly common. Two men make a couple all during Gathering, but may never see each other elsewhere, or ever again, because Gatherings draw people from all over.) This year, he was pursuing me. I could have had a boyfriend for the whole Gathering, and as much sex as I wanted. But when I looked into his eyes, and watched his body language, I saw an emptiness in him, a deep void, that he was trying to fill. I turned him down. Later on, I saw he'd found another man to be with during Gathering, and we said hello courteously enough, but that was it. I chose not to spend my entire time trying to fill his emptiness; I had better things to do.
I'll tell you who your perfect lover, the one we all look for online and in the bars and everywhere else, who your soulmate is: Your soulmate is the person who drives you crazy, who makes you grow, and grow up. Who doesn't buy into your games, but loves you for who you are.
A person of character. The problem with having too many appearance-based criteria is that you're never likely to meet that person. It's probably impossible, because he can be camped out on your threshold for years but you'll never let him in the front door.
And that's too bad.
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