Suspension

Dear Readers,

In light of my abysmal standing in the polls the current financial crisis, I have decided that I must suspend all activity on The Neighbors Will Hear so that I can try to figure out some way to pull my campaign out of the crapper focus my attention on helping our leaders transfer still more money from the middle class to hedge fund managers bring our economic system back from the precipice. I understand that some other bloggers who are less white self-sacrificing than I may not choose to follow my lead, and that, of course is their choice. Far be it from me to suggest that they are Black unpatriotic. I will return to blogging tomorrow/as soon as I can think of a less easily disproven lie with which to slime my opponent/when I've memorized which countries are members of NATO when political economic circumstances permit. Thank you, and God bless the United States of America.

Perambulatory

This morning, as happens most mornings, I was taking a look at my user stats. I've long since stopped caring how many people read this blog (It's not very many people, but it's certainly more than I ever expected.), but I'm very interested in where they're from, and I like checking the location page in the morning because that's when I'm most likely to see that a majority of the twenty most-recent readers are from outside the U.S. Most mornings, it's still pretty close to 50/50 American/non-American, but if I see more recent readers from away than from home, I take it as a good omen for the day. I was in particular need of a good omen this morning because as I was sitting in my car, waiting to make the turn onto the block where my building sits, a blue jay dropped from the sky onto the road in front of me, dead. Had it been a pigeon, I might have been able to ignore it as urban background noise, but the sudden and plop-ful arrival of a dead blue jay is hard to take as anything other than a harbinger of doom. You may want to be especially nice to your loved ones today, just in case tomorrow sees fit not to arrive.


Sadly, eleven of nineteen recent visitors (there is often one whose location is "unknown," which I prefer to think of as a metaphysical state rather than a failure of technology) this morning were domestic, and that would have been an end of it had I not noticed that I had a visitor from Zoetermeer, the twelfth most populous city in Holland (Please note: I really did have a visitor from Zoetermeer, but that twelfth-most-populous thing and any other data I may throw out are mostly just made up; if you really care how many people live in Zoetermeer and/or whether there are eleven more populous cities in the Netherlands, then I'm sure you can find out. Also, I mean no disrespect whatsoever to Zoetermeer, which appears, from the pictures I've seen, to be a lovely town. I'm just too lazy to find out.) and Europe's fourth leading consumer of Gjetost. Zoetermeer is, apparently, in a province called Zuid-Holland, and on a map, it appears to be a stone's throw from both Amsterdam and Utrecht. If you have a really, really strong arm, or maybe a missile launcher.


I have always wanted to go to Amsterdam (though not so much to Utrecht, as I don't really have much need for drafting supplies), and I suppose that there's a decent chance I'll get there someday, but I have no plans for foreign travel in the foreseeable future. The dollar recently staged a mild rally, but it was still horribly weak against the Euro (and most everything else), and the incipient increase in the U.S. money supply that will be necessary to bail out the financial industry is likely to send the dollar skittering to new lows. So Europe, especially, seems out of the question in the near term. Which means my chances of catching a picture out a train window as we speed past Zoetermeer (which translates as either "Sweet Lake" or "Sea of Overbaked Pastry," depending on how much you've had to drink) on our way to or from Amsterdam are probably slim to none.


Financial considerations aside, I have very mixed feelings about travel. On the one hand, it's immensely fun, and you get to see a lot of things that you wouldn't otherwise see. On the other hand, I always suspect that people who have their best and/or most interesting times when they're away from home are either demonstrating a lack of substance (Some people are born drifters, and there's nothing wrong with or insubstantial about that, but those people carry their homes with them.) or need to move. Back on the first hand, I think that I usually see more attractive men when I'm traveling. But then on the other hand, again, it's easier to hook up when I'm home.

Of course, I don't think that a desire to stay home necessarily indicates the presence of substance. A lot of people just don't want to travel because they're either narrow minded or xenophobic. I will never forget the time that I was alone on a flight back from Paris (because b&c thought that he had lost his passport -- or so he claims: it mysteriously reappeared in his suitcase after I got on the plane and he headed off to the embassy, and he got an extra day in Paris, alone), and there was a group of young (somewhere between sixteen and twenty, I think) American tourists (By the way, it is absolutely, positively worth going to see Vicky Cristina Barcelona just to see the venom with which Maria Elena -- played by Penelope Cruz -- utters the phrase "turistas Americanas.") , one of whom said, "I'll be glad to get home to mac and cheese and Taco Bell; I've had about all of that baguette crap I can take." Travel evidently didn't broaden the horizons of that young woman.


I like to think that I'm sufficiently open minded that I can broaden my horizons by inviting the world to me rather than by going out to see the world. In practice, I think that means where you used to see those graphics showing all the countries that someone has visited, I'd prefer to have a graphic showing all the countries-of-birth for the guys I've fucked. I think you can see how challenging it might be to darken the entire map, even with years and years of effort. There are a number of countries (Belarus, Slovenia, Surinam, and North Korea leap to mind, but I'd probably have to do a lot of research to make a complete list, and, well, you see how little research I was willing to do about Zoetermeer, which really cries out for research, given that it has the fifth largest gay pride celebration among cities where more than twelve percent of the land mass is below sea level.) that don't export many bottoms to the U.S., and, worse, the world map is constantly changing. Right now there isn't an independent Kurdistan or South Ossetia (as far as I know), but someday there might be. I'm sure I could put an ad on craigslist for a submissive Kurd, but my window of opportunity for a South Ossetian (i.e., the period of time between when the breakaway republic leaves Georgia and joins Russia, unless that's already happened, in which case it's already too late) might be so small that I will have forever lost my chance.


All of this is, sadly, compounded by the perilous position of America in the world. I think by now we can all agree that the 20th century was the American century. Back when I was born, there was no more fortunate place to be born than in America, and that's almost certainly no longer the case. These days, you're probably most fortunate to be born in Europe, but China will almost certainly be the dominant power by the end of the 21st century. I, for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords, mostly because I know that people who are in positions of great authority are highly likely to be sexually submissive, and a big crop of cute, submissive, small-cocked, smooth, uncut Chinese guys seems like more than adequate compensation for losing whatever status accompanies being a citizen of the world's greatest superpower. Especially if, like me, you're inherently suspicious of nationalism. In any case, I plan to be ready. The money I save from not traveling can be ploughed back into (sorry) the farm, so that in twenty-five years, when the regional governor comes to collect tribute, I'll be able to offer him, in addition to the government's share of fruit from my orchards, the hospitality of my dungeon.

Miscellany

Last Friday afternoon, YFU called me to say that she wanted to spend the night at a friend's house, and I said she could. That meant that I unexpectedly had the evening free, but I was bound and determined not to hook up. Not out of any sort of moral qualms, mind you: it's just that I'd hooked up so much last week that my cock was feeling a bit sore from overuse. But the best laid plans, and all that, you know. I tried emailing my buddy George to see if he wanted to catch a movie and/or dinner, but he was still hosting his aged parents. So I went to Costco and picked up a box (three dozen) of navel oranges so that I could make a huge batch of candied orange peel. I figured that it would take me most of the evening to remove the peels and begin processing them. I was about halfway through the box when Nike texted me to ask whether he could suck my cock. And I figured that, because b&c would be home the next night and for an entire month, I should probably let him. So I did. We also made out a lot, and I got somewhat aggressive with the face fucking, which pleased Nike beyond measure. I didn't shoot a load, though, and I took that as something of a moral victory. I asked b&c, after he got home, whether he wanted Nike to come over sometime and suck both of us off, and he said sure, so maybe it won't be a whole month before I see him again. After I'd dropped Nike off, I still had to finish working on the orange peels, so I was up until 3 am. No pleasure without pain, I reckon.


I am currently feeling a twinge of something like guilt because now that b&c is back, I mostly can't play with the guys I was playing with. Usually, that's not a problem because most of them aren't repeat offenders, but certainly Judd, who still texts me daily to say hello, is disappointed, and it's likely that Logan is, though I'd have to guess that if Logan can find another willing cock, that'll be good enough for him. I would arrange for b&c to meet one or both of them, but in addition to his being around, I'm working really late, so there just isn't much time. It's only a twinge because a) I was up front with both of them, and b) I just don't think about them all that much. They're both pretty great in the sack, but so are lots of other guys. I suppose I could see whether either of them is free for dinner on Sunday, but I'm pretty sure they're not.


When I got home last night, around 8:45, b&c told me that he's going to be a grandfather in March. I, naturally, replied, "Great. So now when all those young'uns call you 'Gramps,' at least it'll be legit." B&c said, "That's exactly what my son said." "Oh?" I replied, "Did he also tell you that this will make you much more popular on Silver Daddies?"


B&c has been having some trouble with the new bed, which he says is too soft. I hope that he will get used to it (maybe some back exercises) because I really love the bed. Also, I'm not sure he can just trade it in on a firmer model without taking a big financial hit. I'm happy to pay for half of one bed, but probably not for half of two. Mattresses are expensive. He will probably like the bed more if I fuck him more in it. I've been at work late every day since he got home, so I'll probably have to set the alarm earlier if I want to do that. I like morning sex a lot, anyway.


A serious domestic dispute has been averted at the chez nous. Shortly after Obama sewed up the Democratic nomination, b&c announced that because his candidate (aka Senator Clinton, who was also my candidate) didn't win and because Obama had slightly shifted his positions on one or two unimportant issues, b&c was either not going to vote or was going to vote for McCain. I gave him that look that I had been keeping in reserve in case there ever came a day when he would tell me that he was going to leave me for the reanimated corpse of Tammy Faye Bakker. And then I got angry, though I left the room in lieu of tearing him the new asshole that he so richly deserved. I mean, one is enough, right? I figured he was just doing that petulant child thing that he does sometimes and that he'd come around when he'd had some time to focus on the horror that is McCain. And when he got back from Colombia, he was making some disparaging comments about the extremely senior Senator from Arizona, so I asked, "Does this mean that you've given up on voting for him, then?" He made some joke about voting for Nader before saying that he'd decided that Obama wasn't so bad after all and would be getting his vote. I can't tell you how much of a relief that is. Legitimate political differences are one thing, but letting a fit of pique influence your vote is something else entirely. If he'd followed through on voting for McCain, I'd have had to move out. If you lose respect for your partner's values and intellect, there isn't much left, is there?


Speaking of politics, I note that late yesterday, a number of gay blogs began publishing the apparent fact that McCain's chief of staff, Mark Buse, is gay. I also note that this story doesn't appear to have been picked up by the mainstream media, or even most of the larger political blogs (though it's apparently an item of some interest on Daily Kos). In a way, I find the failure of this story to find wider coverage encouraging. On one level, it means that it's just not that big a deal that a chief campaign aide is gay. I have no trouble with the outing, by the way. If you're a public figure, you should expect to be held up to public scrutiny. And anything that serves to highlight Republican hypocrisy is okay by me. I continue to fail to get the whole concept of gay Republicans, but then I don't really get the concept of straight Republicans, either.


As it happens, b&c and I will be spending this weekend in Rehoboth with a couple of gay Republicans, but I plan to make it clear that politics cannot be discussed. I'm pretty sure they'll agree, especially given how poor their arguments are this time around. If not, I have my speech rehearsed: "Listen, if you try to tell me that Sarah Palin is qualified to be the Vice President, I'm gonna have to slap you. You know you're lying, and I know you're lying, and you know that I know that you're lying, and I know that you know that I know that you're lying, so just shut the fuck up already and let's go to dinner." (Note to Senator Obama: feel free to use those exact words in the debates. You might have to change the "let's go to dinner" line, though.)

Cut/Uncut

In the comments section of my last post, a couple of people thanked me for the pictures of uncircumcised male genitalia, and Will remarked that he was glad to see that more guys are being left intact these days. It is true, obviously, that I consciously selected uncut meat pics for the last post. I like there to be some common theme to the pictures, even when the pictures have nothing whatsoever to do with my writing. But I'm pretty much an agnostic on the topic of male circumcision.

Fair warning: two or three of the pictures in this post could reasonably be considered disturbing, and in no event do you want to view them during or immediately after a meal. Sorry about that.


Or, more accurately, I'm apathetic on the subject of routine infant male circumcision. I was circumcised at birth. I certainly have no conscious memory of the procedure, and you would be hard pressed to convince me that I'm suffering from any sort of unconscious psychic wound because someone got rid of some of my foreskin (for whatever reason, the doctor performing the procedure left a fair amount of foreskin, and some of my less experienced playmates have initially mistaken me for an uncircumcised man, though that's probably because my cock shrinks so much when it's flaccid that the remaining foreskin covers the head; that mistake hasn't happened in a while, though, probably because I usually don't bare my lower half until I'm already erect).


Adolescent or adult circumcision is another matter entirely. A few years ago, my father was having another urologic procedure done, and the doctor told him that it made sense for him to "go ahead and have the circumcision" taken care of while he was getting this other procedure. Mind you, my father was over seventy at the time, so exactly why the doctor thought that there was some sort of imminent, foreskin-related problem remains unclear. My father's not one to ask questions of medical professionals, so he agreed to have himself circumcised. He told me that the recovery was very painful. That procedure certainly did strike me as a form of mutilation.


The same is true for cultures where circumcision is considered a rite of passage into adolescence or adulthood. Frankly, it seems barbarous to cut off the foreskin of anyone who's old enough to know what's going on or to remember what's happened. I don't have a problem with rites of passage per se, but wouldn't some sort of required accomplishment (I dunno: killing a rhinoceros with your bare hands or slamming the door on your first Jehovah's Witnesses or raising a tomato from seed or something) be better than painful mutilation? I mean, really, is it any wonder that men still go to war when the people who are meant to protect them take sharp objects to their penises? If you look around the web, you can find pictures of cultures where the boy is all dressed up as he's on his march to the abattoir knife. I couldn't help wondering what sort of cake one serves at the accompanying party. And one presumes that the local Hallmark equivalent has a tasteful assortment of circumcision-related greeting cards.


But I just can't get all worked up over routine infant circumcision. I don't want to get into an argument with anyone, and I understand all the reasons against clipping the skin, but there are also arguments in its favor, most notably that circumcision appears to significantly cut (ahem) the rates of AIDS transmission. And, of course, there's always smegma.

Back before I was a parent, the ex and I discussed the issue briefly, and it wasn't really a close call for us: if we'd had a boy, we'd have left his foreskin intact. I mean, I know that some men think their sons' penises need to resemble their own, but why? And why are grown men so worried about the appearance of their sons' penises in the first place? How much time are you going to spend looking at your boy's dick? If you're changing his diaper, you'd better keep it covered up, or its circumcisional status is going to be the least of your worries.


There was certainly a period during which I was fascinated by uncut cock. It was something exotic, something I didn't have, and I'm told that we, as individuals and as a society, find attractive that which we lack. (Except, of course, for when we don't: I know lots of cut men who will only play with other uncut men. Oh well, more for me.) But while I certainly enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) playing with skin when I found it, it was never that big a deal to me. And nowadays, I really just couldn't care less. I've seen enough uncut cock that it's just not exotic any more, and as a friend of mine once told me: ultimately, every cock is interesting. (I, of course, would add to that: ultimately, every cock is less interesting than the ass on the same guy, but chacun a son gout, n'est-ce pas?)


Anyway, I certainly don't mean to cast aspersions on the crusaders who are out to End Circumcision Now! but I just can't get that worked up over it. On the whole, I find circumcision a bad idea, but it seems to me that there are probably greater injustices in the world. For starters, let's get rid of flip flops in all cases where you're more than fifty yards from a major body of salt water. Or perhaps we should start with all those people who wear Birkenstocks with socks. Or, you know, maybe we could get started on that whole world peace thing.

I just think that circumcision is one of those areas where we can all get along. I mean, sure, celebrate the foreskin if they guy's got one. Treat your foreskins well. Whatever. But let's not pretend that there aren't both uncircumcised and circumcised penises of great beauty. All penises are worthy of celebration (though, again, all asses are worthy of more), but, really, what a guy's cock looks like is so far down on my list of physical characteristics (and physical characteristics are already below mental characteristics) that it's hard for me to envision a situation where two guys are otherwise so similar that the presence or absence of a foreskin is the tie breaker. And if that situation ever does arrive, I'll probably just resolve the dilemma by taking both.

Stuff

Early Saturday morning, I was on my way to pick up YFU from her best friend's house, where she'd been for an overnight visit, when I heard the unmistakable thump thump thump of a flat tire. I pulled onto a side street and proceeded to change the tire, with the encouragement of a cute Hispanic guy, who spoke no English whatsoever, but who appeared to be there waiting for another guy to come pick him up for a job of some sort. I know how to change a tire, so I didn't really need help, but he seemed very interested in watching me and occasionally offered helpful advice that I couldn't understand. Anyway, I'd known I was driving on borrowed time, and I'd been wondering that very morning whether I'd have time to drive to Costco and get my tires replaced, but once I had my mini-spare on and had picked up YFU, driving all the way to Costco didn't seem like such a good idea, so I drove to Tires Plus where they offered to give me a new set of tires, change my oil, and align my car, all for the low, low price of $525.

And two hours of my time, which was the real problem. I'd handed over the keys to the car, so I couldn't fetch anything out of it to occupy myself or YFU, so we sat in the waiting room for a quarter-hour or so, and she watched TV, while I read the paper. Then she said she was hungry, and I hadn't had anything to eat, either, so we walked across the street to KFC, where she got a two-piece chicken meal, and I got an order of deep-fried cheese curds (yum!). But then we were sitting there in our booth with more than another hour to kill, and I knew that YFU was about to get very bored. YFU is an extremely well-behaved and whinge-free child, but 1.5 hours with nothing to do is beyond what any twelve-year-old should have to endure.



YFU and I get along very well, naturally, but there's only so much that she's interested in talking about with me, and we'd mostly covered that pretty quickly. If you're alone in a fast food restaurant booth with an adult, it's pretty easy to keep conversation going. With a kid, however, you need some stuff. Stuff to play with. So I asked her, "What do you have in your purse?" And she looked through, and -- in addition to uninteresting things like eight kinds of lip gloss and a cell phone -- she came up with five Dum-Dum pops and a Dum-Dum pop wrapper. I checked my pocket and found three quarters and a dime. She seemed disappointed with the haul, but I looked at the pile of stuff and said, "Great! Now we have toys."

With three quarters, a dime, and a smooth tabletop, you can try to get all four of your coins spinning at the same time. This task is harder than it sounds because spinning coins precess, and the dime is very small, so it's tough to get going in the first place. And with a single quarter, you can play a modified version of tabletop football, where you push the quarter towards your opponent's goal and attempt to make it hang over the edge without falling. The Dum-Dum pop is useful here because some calls are very close, so you can use the lollipop stick as an official Stick of Judgment to determine whether the quarter is clear of the edge. When this gets old (if, say, you're way better at it than your twelve-year-old child), you can stack the Dum-Dum tops into interesting shapes and then you can spin the quarter at them in a highly modified version of bowling. And then if that fails, you can fold the extra Dum-Dum wrapper into a more standard tabletop football so that you can play a game that involves both touchdowns and field goals.



What's amazing is how few pieces of stuff you need to have a good time. This is more obvious in other arenas, of course. If you're by yourself, you don't need any stuff at all to have a good time since every guy carries his favorite toy with him wherever he goes. And if you're with the right sort of friend, there are a lot of activities you can get into where no stuff at all is required. Like any good occasional dom, I have a supply of toys, but with submissives -- as with kids -- the need for stuff indicates a failure of the imagination or a lack of security. And often it's a perfectly reasonable lack of security. The piece of stuff that you most often need when playing with men is a condom, and you need that because you can't safely and securely play without it. It's necessary, but its necessity is regrettable. Sometimes, of course, stuff is very helpful. Restraints can be very helpful at times, but there's really no denying that a submissive who needs to be tied down is higher maintenance than one who doesn't.

I would guess that I share with many people a desire for less stuff. Or, more accurately, a desire to feel less of a need for stuff, because, really, I like stuff a lot more than I should. Sometimes when I'm feeling unsettled, there's nothing like a trip to Overstock to set me right. I recognize that this should not be so, and I do my best not to overdo it. Also, I'm much less of a shopper than many guys I know, but there's no denying that the pair of binoculars and the tripod I ordered last week in anticipation of our January vacation made me happy. Also, I give Amazon a lot more business than I ought, and probably for the wrong reasons. It's good to read, but it's certainly better to borrow the book from the library, right?


If the Judeo-Christian mythology is to be believed (a big if, I admit), then the happiest couple on earth were pre-eating-from-the-tree-of-knowledge Adam and Eve, who, one supposes, had no stuff at all. They didn't need any stuff: they were fully secure and had all their needs covered. But then they did the wrong thing, and suddenly they needed to collect fig leaves:

6: And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
7: And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
8: And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
9: And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, WTF? Dude, you got stuff!
10: And then did the shit hit the fan.

We live in extraordinarily uncertain and insecure times. This cannot help but mean that the desire for stuff will continue to grow just as the ability to afford stuff will shrink. I predict a (further) explosion of dollar stores.

YFU's and my luck with limited stuff ran out when Tires Plus called to say that my power steering fluid needed to be flushed and that the cylinders for both rear brakes were leaking and needed to be replaced so that they would need another hour and an additional $500. YFU eventually got bored of beating me at Dum-Dum wrapper football, so we went walking around the shopping center, hoping to find a pack of cards. Sadly, the dollar store that used to be there had closed down. I had mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, it would appear to refute my hypothesis. On the other hand, it was one of those crummy dollar stores where almost nothing is actually a dollar. So they likely went out of business because people couldn't get enough stuff cheap.


Still, YFU kept the complaining to an absolute minimum, and we did get finished with the Tires Plus, and it only cost three hours and fifteen minutes and $1,093. Naturally, those expenses made me feel a little less secure, as did the copy of Sims2 that I bought YFU to make up for the last ninety minutes of our automotive repair adventure, but later in the day, I went to a real dollar store ("Everything, and we mean everything, is one dollar!) and walked out with some hella cool Halloween ice cube trays. So now my autumn beverages can be cooled with miniature skulls and pumpkins.

I also picked up some cheap (two boxes of four for one dollar each!) storage containers, some masking tape, and a sharpie marker so that I could freeze the chili I made to take for lunches. That was four dollars, and the chili probably cost me an additional nine or ten dollars to make, but I got fifteen lunch-sized servings out of the giant pot that I made. When I add in my homemade Greek-style yogurt, I'm at less than $1.50 a day for lunch, so I certainly saved enough to cover my dollar store purchases and Sims 2. I'm still out of pocket for the auto repairs, but sometimes you have to be happy with small victories.


I'm still worried about my stuff addiction, but I'm glad that I can attribute my (usually minor) purchases to concerns about the economic and political environments rather than to some fundamental dissatisfaction with my life. I think fundamental dissatisfactions with your life must manifest themselves in more significant purchases, like fast and expensive cars or jewelry or something. I drive a Taurus, and the only jewelry I have is my watch, which cost me $15, on Overstock, so I guess I must be happier than most people. Or at least happier than almost everyone of my income level. I'm sure that anyone who's taken a vow of poverty is happier still, having that close walk with their God(s) and not having any stuff to worry about.

I might be tempted to take a vow of poverty once the kids are through college. I thought about writing to these guys and asking them whether either 1) not being Catholic or 2) a constant attempt to get into most of their cassocks would disqualify me from joining the order, but I don't think my French is good enough to get me laid, so I abandoned the idea. I've been thinking about starting my own order, the Brothers of Perpetual Extasis, instead. More on that another time, perhaps.

Indian Summer

I don't understand why some men let themselves become jaded about sex. I mean, sure, on one level, I tend to think of sex as a necessity, something like eating. But just because you gotta eat doesn't mean that you don't occasionally bow down in awe of a particularly fine extra bittersweet chocolate truffle or a really good steak or a fresh tomato from your garden or fig from your backyard, right? One of the best sexual compliments I ever received was from the first guy I had sex with, nearly ten years ago now. I think it was the second time we hooked up, and I was telling him how great it had been, and he agreed and then said, "You're just like a kid in bed." By which he meant eager, not unskilled. Years later, I'm just as eager and just as much in awe. And hopefully more skilled.


But a lot of guys who've been sexually active as long (or longer or not as long) tell me that they have very dull sex lives, and they seem to accept this as an ordinary and inevitable consequence of life. I disagree. Strenuously. If you find sex boring, or, for that matter, if you find sex something that's not interesting enough to plan your day around, then you're really missing out. Most guys who become jaded about sex are suffering from a lack of imagination, coupled, perhaps, with a lack of variety. I'm sure that in some cases there are also physical factors, but you can work around those with enough imagination and/or variety.

I don't wish to wade into the exclusivity (you can call it monogamy if you must, but you're almost certainly mistaken) debate here. Let's just say it: if you believe that sexual exclusivity should be required in a relationship, then you likely think that I'm an immoral slut. Conversely, I probably think of you as an insecure¹, stuck-up prude. Except on days when I'm feeling less charitable, in which case I think of you as an insecure, stuck-up prude who cheats on his boyfriend when you're sure that you won't get caught. (Fortunately, I'm usually an extremely charitable person. Also, for the record, I will only cop to being an amoral slut.) Anyway, I don't want to knock the one-man men out there (especially the ones who are happy in their exclusivity). I'm just saying that, for me, a variety of men helps to keep me appreciative of the awesomeness of sex.


And speaking of awesome sex, I apparently misspoke earlier this week when I said that my romp with Judd (also awesome) was to be the last extracurricular fuck of summer. I had thought that Logan was blowing me off, but it turns out that there was a bit of a miscommunication. His written English, apparently, is not quite up to the level of his excellent spoken English, so figuring out exactly what he's saying in email involves some guesswork. Anyway, on Wednesday, I got another email from him saying that he did, indeed, want to spend the night last night. And then yesterday, I got another email saying that he'd fallen in the shower and hurt his back, so that he wouldn't be able to spend the night because he had a doctor's appointment at 8 Friday morning. And then another email clarifying that he still wanted to come over for a while but that spending the night would have to wait until another time. Or at least that's what I think they all said. In any case, he showed up last night not long after ten, which gave me just enough time to get home from choir practice², shower, and dress before he showed up.


I decided to mix things up a bit, so instead of grabbing him, kissing him hard, and pushing him upstairs, I drew him to me gently (in consideration of his back), kissed him softly for a few moments, and offered him a glass of wine. We sat on the love seat for a little while, and in between sips of wine, I kissed him softly and lightly traced my fingertip along the outside of his ears and massaged his neck. And I probably would have sat there and done that for a quarter hour or so, except that every time I kissed and/or touched him, he went immediately to his happy place and so lost focus on everything else that I was sure he'd spill his wine. So after a couple of minutes, I pulled him off the love seat and pushed him upstairs.


It's clear to me now (and it has been for some time, really) that what I most want from a sex partner is that he melt at my touch. Which is just another way of saying that a) we're compatible and b) he loves sex as much (or nearly as much) as I do. I had amazing sex with both Judd and Logan this week, and in a lot of ways they couldn't be more different. Judd is a compact, vocal, amusingly vulgar American. Logan is a tall, reserved, elegant European. Logan is coming out of a twenty-five year marriage and is really just starting his sexual exploration with men. Judd has been around the block more times than a Manhattan taxicab. But when I kiss either of them, he turns to molten lust in my hands. At one point last night, I'd been licking and sucking and lightly biting Logan's nipples (which have clearly not seen much action), and he was writhing, but it was a restrained, quiet writhing, and I was pretty sure he was having a great time, but I asked, anyway, whether he liked it when I played with his nipples, and he said, "Oh yes. I love it all." That sort of response is very intoxicating.


I took my time getting his clothes off last night. When we got upstairs, he sat on the edge of the bed and took off his jacket and shoes while I ran my hand along the strip of skin that was showing above the back of his waistband, but then I laid him out on the bed and started to kiss him before he could take off his t-shirt or slacks. He's a wonderful, deep, soft kisser, although his kisses take on an additional urgency when I get on top of him and pin his hands down over his head. There is clearly a submissive streak in him, and I hope that I get the chance to explore it in further depth sometime, but it's probably not wise to offer to put restraints on a relative newbie with a back injury, so I settled for eating his nearly hairless pits. I may very well have been the first person to do that, judging from his reaction. Then again, he had the same reaction when I licked along his jawline, so who knows?

I got his slacks undone and pulled his cock out so that it was held down by the elastic of his underwear, and I continued exploring his long, smooth body. I had his t-shirt pushed up and ran my tongue across his abs and over to his side, gently nibbling his side just above his waist and then went back to his nipples, sucking them between my lips and quickly flicking my tongue over them. He's the sort of guy who reacts quietly to overwhelming stimulation, and I would, as well as my own passion allowed, listen carefully for the low groans and intakes of breath that indicated just how lost in it all he was. And when I got an audible response, I'd smile around his nipple and work harder.


Eventually, his ecstatic stupor gave way to a desire for more activity, and he started to play with my cock, which was by then almost painfully hard. I took a quick break to remove his pants and underwear and my boxers, then I lay beside him again, and he ran his tongue down my chest until he was face to slit with my cockhead. I grabbed his hair tightly, making him gasp, open wide, and go down on me. I pushed his head down on me a bit, but then I lay back and relaxed for a while as he got more and more into the cocksucking. I pulled him off me for some extended kissing, but then I let him get back to it until he seemed to have had enough. When he collapsed next to me and we began kissing again, I rolled him onto his stomach and ran my tongue from the small of his back up to his shoulders. Then I bit down lightly on his shoulders while I rubbed my cock along his asscrack.

He clearly wanted to be fucked, so I knelt up, reached over to the table, grabbed a condom, and slid it on. Then I reached over to the other table for a little lube. He reached back to guide my cock into him. I slid into him slowly, but not too slowly because he was pushing his ass up as I pushed my cock in. I bent down to bite his shoulder some more, and before long, I was pistoning in and out. He was quietly, but clearly, ecstatic. The way he was moving his ass didn't always mesh perfectly with the way I was moving my cock, but I got accustomed to it quickly enough so that I could continue to plow for a while. I'd gotten an email earlier that evening from a reader who told me that the way I describe myself sometimes makes me sound like a fuck machine. I haven't really thought of myself in those terms before, but I guess it's a mode I do reasonably well. In any case, I was consciously thinking, "fuck machine" as I fucked Logan. And it was great.


After an extended pounding, I flipped him onto his back. He's tall and slender and agile, so it was easy to push his legs forward and wrap his ankles around my neck and continue to fuck him while we kissed. That was heavenly, but I alternated that position with something more fuck machinish where I pushed his ankles down around his ears, reared up, and banged his prostate really hard. No matter how I fucked him, he just smiled, and the longer I went, the wider his smile became.

We'd been fucking for a good long time, so I decided to take a break. We lay next to each other and made out some more, and he got more and more animated until he pushed me on my back and mounted me. He bounced up and down on my cock and squeezed his ass so tight that I was sure I'd cum. I didn't, but he made my cock feel amazing, and the way his body responded when I twisted his nipples or grabbed his side made me feel even better. Eventually, though, I was starting to feel like I might get a cramp in my calves from pushing up into him, and he seemed pretty much equally blissful no matter what we were doing by then, so I pulled him off my cock, put my left arm around him, and we began to kiss deeply and hungrily as I started to jerk myself off. He rubbed my nuts and ass as I stroked. He was on his side, and I'd planned to cum all over him, but when I shot, I shot a frighteningly huge load all the way past his torso and head to hit the bed and pillows behind him. And he's very tall, so that spunk flew a looooong way. He smiled and gave a satisfied sigh when he heard it hit behind him.


And then we continued to lie there and kiss. He hadn't cum, but he was so clearly blissed out by the whole thing that I only played with his cock for a little bit before figuring that he'd gotten everything he wanted from everything I'd done. He told me that he was very comfortable with me and that he was sorry that he had to leave. I told him that it was okay, and, in any case, it was a while before he moved. We just stayed there wrapped around each other.

I tried to engage him in a bit of chat, but he seems to be a man of few words, or maybe he was just too happy to want to talk. He said again how comfortable he was, and we kissed some more, and he asked me what time it was, and when I told him it was midnight, he said that he really had better get going. He still didn't seem very resolute about getting up, but a few minutes later he finally sat up and then started to get dressed. I washed off a bit and started to pull the sheet off the bed. It was really drenched with cum. Then I sat next to him and rubbed his neck while he finished getting his shoes on, and he apologized again for having to leave and said that he would really like another opportunity to spend the night. I'd already explained to him that b&c is coming home this weekend, so I won't be able to entertain overnight guests for a while, but I'll certainly extend an overnight invitation when I can. He feels good in my arms.


¹Some moron actually left a comment on Eric's blog calling Eric insecure for having visited a German bathhouse. There are a few things that are probably useful in a German bathhouse (the entrance fee and mouthwash come to mind), but insecurity is not one of them. I pray for the day that I'm secure enough to go into a German bathhouse.

²A short conversation from last night's choir practice:

TED: So you decided not to sing with the [other local UU church] choir?

Soprano 1: The director there said that he wasn't sure my voice would fit in with the other sopranos. Apparently it's not thin enough.

Soprano 2: Yeah, you have to audition to be in that choir, and everyone who joins is on probation at first.

TED: Huh.

Sop1: The director there is kind of particular and a little bit of a control freak. The choir is a little bit scared of him.

TED: Vicious queen, eh?

Sop1: No, no, I didn't mean that.

TED: Oh, come on, I don't mind. You know that joke, right? How many straight male choir directors does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Sop2: How many?

TED: Both of them.

Sop2: [laughs]

Sop1: No, no, he's not gay. He's married.

TED: [Sliding his arm around Sop1's shoulder.] Oh, sweetie. Let me explain something to you.

Sop2: [laughs, helplessly]

Connected, Un-

I was coming up in the elevator from the parking garage at work yesterday morning, and two hot guys got on the elevator at the lobby level. Only one of them reached out to push a button for a floor, and I assumed they were together. I didn't really make that assumption because they didn't push separate floors: I made it because they were both very attractive, and it's rare for any hot guys to get on the elevator in my office building.


One of the guys was probably in his late thirties or early forties. He was tall, perhaps 6'2, and muscular with a shaved head, a blue, embroidered shirt, and jeans. The other was likely in his mid-twenties, equally tall, but very slender, with short, carefully groomed hair, trendy glasses, a bright white t-shirt under a light gray cardigan with thin white stripes, thin jeans, and Keds. He looked a lot like the model. And he was wearing some sort of cologne with a smell that was pleasantly murky and that you would not have been able to detect unless he was standing right next to you in a crowded elevator, as he was standing next to me.


I got a much better look at the younger guy (who, I believe, would be considered more classically handsome than the man with the shaved head, but who would generally be -- and was -- less attractive to me) because he was on the elevator longer. As it happened, only one of them had pushed a button because the other was going to a floor that had already been selected. They weren't together after all, which is what you'd normally expect from two handsome strangers on an elevator.


I have long been aware of my own propensity to try to find a connection between any two things which seem out of place. I suspect this to be a natural tendency, but I have no data to back up that suspicion, and it may very well be another tendency (one that I'm sure is nearly universal): the tendency to assume that one's own experience is typical. Or what I sometimes call the unfortunate habit of extrapolating the universe from a single data point. I'd like to think that I'm somewhat less guilty of that particular bad habit, but here again, I have no evidence.


I think I first began thinking about false connections twenty or so years ago when I was standing on the platform at the Kendall Square T station in Cambridge. The platform was relatively full, and I remember looking towards the opening from which the train would approach and seeing a sort of illuminated golden mist, as if someone had sprayed finely ground gold into the air and then shone a light through it. I never did figure out exactly what it was, but it may very well have been a cloud of dust with a yellow-gold light shining into it.


In any case, I hadn't seen anything like it before, and it didn't seem to belong in a T station, and as I was thinking about it, I turned around and saw a man with an artificial arm. I realize that people who use artificial limbs are not all that uncommon, but this wasn't a man wearing an artificial arm. This was a man holding an artificial arm in his hand. He was turning away from me, and he was wearing a thick blue jacket of the sort that blue-collar workers often wear, so I couldn't see whether he had one regular arm or two. So I don't know whether he was carrying his own artificial arm, or that of someone else, but neither of those sights is something I'd seen before or since.


I was struck with the instant desire to find the connection between the golden glow and the man with two or three arms, and I was immediately afterward struck with the utter ridiculousness of my initial impulse. And then I laughed at myself and thought that it would make an interesting party game to come up with a plausible (or implausible) story to connect these two, or any other two, clearly unrelated phenomena. And then I realized that I very rarely went to parties in those days, so it just became something to think about occasionally.


Just now it occurs to me that linking unrelated phenomena into a plausible or implausible narrative is just what the brain does during dreams, so I suppose the tendency is universal after all, at least in the unconscious mind. Personally, I believe that dreams are merely the minds way of flushing out that which is no longer needed, so I think that it's folly to try to find meaning in them, but this is one of those areas where I'm perfectly to say YMMV, live and let live, and so on and so forth.


I hope you weren't expecting me to arrive at some sort of conclusion here. I just started with talking about two hot guys and let my mind wander and my fingers try to keep up. You might be surprised to find that my thoughts run from two hot guys to all that rather than to matters carnal, but that's yet another example of my unfortunate lack of visual orientation. My thoughts might have gotten more carnal if the slender young man had worn a different cologne, and they would much more likely have gone in that direction if the two men had spoken to each other, provided, of course, that I liked their voices. I imagine that they both had deep voices, one smooth, the other gravelly, but, of course, I have no way of knowing, any more than I know what the hell that guy was doing with that artificial arm.