Three Strikes

I was chatting recently with a regular reader and fellow blogger who told me that I had an unrealistic notion about how easy it is to find sex. He feels that it's much easier for me because I live in the DC area. Out in the provinces, he claimed, men aren't so easy to find. Naturally, my immediate response was to check on gay.com and tell him that there were 73 men currently on the site in the room for his city. He then suggested that most or all of those men were younger than his preferred age range, prompting me to do a quick count and assure him that more than 2/3 of the guys currently in his local room were within his parameters. Then we chatted a bit more, and he said goodbye, saying he "to take a call." I'm pretty sure that "I have to take a call" means "I logged onto the local room and now there are six guys knocking on my door for an impromptu orgy that I expect to last through the holiday weekend." I hope he had plenty of beer in the house. And condoms. By the way, if you're heading to an orgy, you really should bring some condoms with you, but if you're hosting, you should have some extras, just in case. If you run out of condoms, the fun can grind to a halt; if you have too many, the worst that can happen is that you end up in a Chinese fashion show.

Anyway, if I'd had more time to think about it, I'd have said some or all of the following in response to what he said about the hot and cold running gay boys here near the nation's capital.

1. DC is already the provinces.
2. I don't live in or all that close to DC. I live in a Maryland exurb, and there aren't hordes or gay men roaming the streets here, either.
3. I hear/read the same complaints from guys who live right in DC.
4. I have bad luck, too, sometimes.

The thing is, well, do you remember that obnoxious commercial that has some mildly overweight late-twenty-something of early-thirty-something guy trying to bake a cake and making a huge mess and laughing as he fails miserably? The narrator says something about how Babe Ruth had 714 home runs but also struck out 1330 times? I hate that commercial. First of all, making a cake really isn't that difficult an endeavor. Anyone who follows the instructions should be fine. Second, they don't even mention that the Babe's pitching statistics. Hell, he won 24 games back in 1917. Still, the commercial has a point about continuing to step up to the plate, which is a horrific metaphor for sex because neither the pitcher nor the catcher steps up to the plate. Are all batters supposed to be versatile? If you step up to the plate, are you volunteering to be the meat in that sandwich? And if we extend the metaphor further, what would represent an intentional walk?

Anyway, bad sex and no sex happen, but you keep going because good sex happens, too, but today's entry is not, principally, about good sex. It's about bad sex and no sex, mostly no sex.

Thursday night, I unexpectedly had the evening free. There was no choir practice, and b&c had scored free tickets to the symphony, so he was likely to be out until late. The responses to my CL ad were uninspiring, so I hopped on gay.com

I chatted with a couple of guys, both of whom seemed into all of what I was offering. I'd chatted with the first guy once before, and we hadn't hooked up, but I couldn't remember why until we'd been chatting for a while, he'd agreed to come over, and he said, "I have to make one call, then I'll be back for the address and directions." I had a decided feeling that I'd had this same conversation before, but by the time I had typed out that he should just give me his phone number and offered my own, he was already offline. Oh well: next!

The next guy was a lot more promising. We'd negotiated what we were going to do, checked out pictures and such. I'd given him my address and number, and he'd googled for directions and had given me an ETA, and he'd said he was about to head out. And then nothing. He was offline, but he was never on my doorstep. He was coming from a bit of a distance, and it's easy to get lost coming here, so I'd waited twenty minutes after his ETA before deciding that I'd been flaked on. Worse still, he'd said he wouldn't arrive until almost 9, and when I'd gone online to check the running time for the concert, it said the curtain was at 7 and ran for 95 minutes. So while I expected b&c and his buddy to go for dinner after the concert, there was a chance b&c would be home before 10. So I -- totally unnecessarily as it turned out -- had to call b&c. He had his cell phone switched off, so I left him a message saying that if he and Lazlo weren't already going out for dinner or a drink, it would be a really good idea if they did go out for dinner or a drink, or they might want to consider catching karaoke night at De Lounge. How embarrassing is that? Here I am calling my partner to suggest that he subject himself to karaoke just so that I can have a chance to play with a guy who doesn't even show up.

Or it could have been humiliating, anyway. As it happened, b&c didn't turn his phone back on until the next morning, and when he mentioned it to me the next night, it was just a passing reference, and when I told him what had happened, we spent a while swapping stories about disappointing men, and it was mildly entertaining, but it certainly COULD have been humiliating. For all douchebag#2 knew, he could have been the cause of a huge fight between me and b&c, without even giving me a good time as compensation.

Anyway, by the time I realized I'd been stood up, it was getting late, so I'd given up on playing, but I hopped back on gay.com to see if one or both of these guys were online so that I could give them some shit.

It is, of course, pointless to snipe at guys who stand you up, but if you know in advance that it's pointless, it can be a lot of fun. You can say things to them that would be rude and crazy in other situations. Hell, they may still be rude and crazy in this situation, but who cares: you know you're never going to meet the guy, and you can at least pretend to be self-righteous. And the whole stand-up thing doesn't happen to me that much (Thursdays seem to be the worst night for it, and I'm rarely free then), so when it does, I indulge myself.

Sure enough, douchebag#1 was online, so I started a conversation. I may not have bothered to change his screen name because, well, he's a douchebag.

TED: Damn. That was a long call you had to make.
mogden1967: ?
TED: You were going to make a quick call and then come right back and get my address. Does that sound familiar, or do you do it so many times a night that you can't remember who the guys are?
mogden1967: I got a call from my best friend. he had a heart attack and had to be rushed to the hospital and needed me to look after his daughter.
TED: Wow. He had a heart attack and could still call you. A real iron man.
mogden1967: his wife called me and asked me to take their kid. hes still in the hospital so I have to watch her all night.
TED: So you have his daughter now, and you're back on gay.com. It must be very educational for her.
mogden1967: shes three months old, asleep in the other room.
TED: And you're here looking for cock. You know, your story would all be slightly less ridiculously incredible if you hadn't blown me off in a similar manner once before.
mogden1967: what are you talking about? I never talked with you before tonight.
TED: Then you should really get after that guy who's using your same name, location, profile, and pictures. Do you think he was raised by wolves, too?
mogden1967: I said Im sorry. theres no need to be an ass about it. Im a nice guy.
TED: Your parents must be so proud. And, actually, you didn't say you were sorry. mogden1967: u suck
TED: Not very often, actually, but that wasn't something you said you wanted.
mogden1967: what?

And then I stopped. Because it's not much fun after they stop making up ludicrous and easily debunked stories. And when they get to thinking that you're the bad guy, that's not fun, either, even when they're obviously wrong.

I didn't see the other guy online until the next day. It took a while for him to respond, so there were long pauses between the first three phrases I typed.

TED: WTF?
TED: No response? Damn. Usually I get an unbelievable explanation and/or an insincere apology.
TED: Of course, it's been more than twelve hours, and I can't expect you to remember every guy you say you're going to come have sex with.
aeiouoiea: Oh, hey, I was doing my laundry. I'm sorry about last night.
TED: Well, there's the insincere apology. At least that's something.
aeiouoiea: I couldn't make it because I witnessed a traffic accident.
TED: And there's the unbelievable explanation! Bravo! I don't suppose that you could have called me on your cell phone to tell me you couldn't make it.
aeiouoiea: I don't have a cell phone
TED: Or a home phone, apparently. And everyone has a cell phone.
aeiouoiea: I don't.
TED: You know, that's a first-rate excuse. Because everyone has a cellphone, there are hardly any pay phones any more, so you can say that you couldn't find a pay phone to call me. I'm not sure why you asked for my number in case you got lost, though.
aeiouoiea: So I could call you from a pay phone if I got lost.
TED: But you couldn't call me to say you weren't coming because you couldn't find one, right?
aeiouoiea: Right.
TED: It's like the perfect crime. And you couldn't call when you got back home because?
aeiouoiea: I just forgot.
TED: Oh, dude. Not so perfect.

And then he disappeared. It was time for the conversation to end, though, so I applaud his timing.

Sex is about the (hopefully) pleasant and intense physical sensation, but it's about more than that. It's often about affirmation: the idea that someone wants to get naked with me means that I'm desired and therefore more valuable. Most guys feel this way, though a lot of them either won't admit it or (more commonly) simply aren't aware of it. It's specious reasoning, but it's also human nature, so I have to live with it. Otherwise, instead of being on the hunt for a new ass to rave about my cock, I'd just call one of my FWPs for a play date. God knows that's what I should have done from the get go last night, when b&c and one of his girlfriends went to the opera in Baltimore. I knew in advance that I'd be free, and I did actually call Reggie to see whether he'd be free, but he had to work. I meant to arrange with Christopher for a sex, dinner, and more sex evening, but I forgot. Besides, there was this guy, this married guy who'd been after me for a while to fuck him. He was very eager, and he was sporting a sort of Marlboro Man/hard life weathered look that I found attractive for some reason, so I set something up with him for yesterday evening.

He was driving me just a bit nuts with repeated emails making sure that I was going to be home when he got there and making sure that I was prepared to be dominant. I told him to stop worrying so much and leave the evening's events to me.

I want to make clear that I was very particular with this guy about what I wanted to do. I mentioned several times, both in the original ad and in our subsequent correspondence, that making out was of vital importance to me, and he told me that making out was fine and that he only wanted to please me. And, you know, sometimes guys say that and it's fine. Other times, you kind of have to force them to make out with you, sometimes by physically restraining them, but they eventually open up and roll out the tongue, and it's all good as long as they can tell themselves they had no choice.

But when this guy got to the house, he was really not playing along at all. I backed him up against the wall in the foyer and started to kiss him, and he kept his lips clamped closed and turned his head. I grabbed his head and held it in place, but I still couldn't pry his lips apart. Oh, and he smelled like the Marlboro Man, too, though in his case, it was actually Kools, but sometimes the smell of tobacco on a guy's breath turns me on a little. He suggested that we go to the bedroom, so I pushed him up the stairs. He got rid of most of his clothes very quickly, so I threw him on the bed, straddled him and went for the lips again. Even when I had his arms pinned to the bed, I was getting nowhere. So I went after his nips for a while, which, alas, gave him the opportunity to speak. "Show me that big dick," he said. Three times. Finally, I grabbed his hand and put it on my crotch, and he held my cock through my slacks and then started to undo them while I kept working on his nipples.

I was still getting nowhere on the kissing front, which was pretty impressive resistance on his part given that I had his head immobilized and that I have a very strong tongue. He slid out from under me, got my pants and briefs down, and started to give me head. He was okay at it, but not great. I was playing with his ass some, but it smelled weird. Not feces weird, but odd weird like maybe he'd douched a with cheap sangria. Am I conveying that it wasn't a particularly appetizing smell? I hope so. In any event, I just fingered and spanked him for a while. Then he got on his back and started saying, "I want that cock up my ass." Keep in mind that he'd been in the house maybe ten minutes and that he'd originally said that he wanted a long session. AND THAT HE WOULDN'T KISS.

Oddly enough, my mind was somewhere between mild disgust and intense eye rolling, but my cock was all "let's go!" and I suppose the easiest thing to do would have been to glove up and give him the ninety seconds of plowing that probably would have sent him over the edge. But I thought, "Do I really want to waste a condom on this guy?"

I looked at him and said, "Dude, I don't think this is going to work out." Then I stood up and put on my shorts. He looked puzzled and said, "What?" so I repeated, "This isn't going to work out." He looked at me for a few seconds, stood up, got dressed, and headed out of the bedroom and downstairs. I stopped him to hand him his Kools and lighter as he was starting down the staircase.

After he left the front door, I went to the window -- I was still upstairs -- to make sure he got in his car and left. I saw him open the passenger door, and when the car light went on, I saw there was another guy in the driver's seat. A serious WTF moment. So I guess the guy was rushing to get my cock in his ass because he didn't want his buddy/boyfriend/partner to have to wait too long in the driveway. Or something. I can't think of any reasonable explanation, but I'm glad I sent the guy away.

So three pretty unpleasant experiences in a row. Unusual but not unheard of even here in the supremely glamorous gay mecca that is Washington, DC. Or whatever.

Fortunately, our story has a happy ending.

I was feeling pretty annoyed at this point, mostly because of what had just happened, but also because I was extremely tired. I stayed up until about 3:30 am on Saturday night making chili and baking cookies for the church bazaar, and I'd already been up late every night during the week, plus I'd had to get up at 4:30 on Thursday morning to be in the office before 6:15, for reasons that are unimportant and reflect badly on my ability to organize. Anyway, I considered calling it a night and catching up on some badly needed sleep, but it was only a little bit after 6, so I called Christopher.

There's no escaping the fact that making a booty call to one of your good friends at 6:15 on a Saturday evening is rude. But I owed him a visit because I'd promised to help him set up his profiles on gay.com, manhunt, and so on. Plus, I was feeling really down. So I figured I'd ask about Sunday morning and go over then unless he sounded not busy. When he answered, he was at the supermarket, and he said that he was shopping for a tailgate party that was starting tomorrow morning. At 8:30 am. There's a 4:00 kickoff, but Redskins fans take their partying very seriously. So I asked him if he was free for the evening, and he invited me over at 7, giving me 45 minutes to shower and scrub away the tobacco smell and self-disgust.

And we had a fully awesome time, much of it naked. Hopefully, I'll remember to share the details later, but for now, I'll just say that I'm glad I didn't give up.

Even though "giving up" would have meant watching TV for half an hour, napping for four hours and the giving b&c a really hard anger fuck when he got home. He would probably have wondered where the frustration was coming from, but he's learned not to look a gift horse in the mouth.