Steal Hearts, Steel Bonds/ This is Pittsburgh

i wish i still had this picture of myself.  i remember, mary tremonte said it made me look sexy.  i remember thinking that was vastly inappropriate. 

i want to write these people.  they gave me money.  what becomes of people?  it wouldn’t change things, but it’s worth it to note, that i got none of the “mentoring” i was supposed to receive, just a single phone call.  from a man in his fifties, a professor, who had come out in adulthood after marrying and raising children.  this was to be my mentor?  my mentor?  the mentor of a boy who’d came out in middle school, who lost his virginity to a black man with a huge dick 10 years his senior?  the mentor of a boy who had his first threesome with an electrician and his partner at 17?  that fucked a guy, and he asked me, are you really 18?  and i said, well, i’m at least 16, aren’t I?  and 16 is the age of consent…  he was on his way to temple law. 

where did i put my old notebooks?

I want to write a long post about why I love Chaosmen, why soul means more than ethics, why people want to talk about the ethics of porn and ethical porn and gay-for-pay. 

Why bareback sex is not a thing; there’s only sex and sex with condoms.  We’ve been having gay anal sex for thousands of years.  For, what, 20 years, we’ve been calling it barebacking, but is that enough time for a thing to become a thing? 

In the last queer research study i participated in, I failed to explain to the researcher why I occasionally have bareback sex.  He failed to explain it to me, too.  I’ve failed to explain why I love this site, but I’ll try harder, I hope, at another time.

And this is a mere sidebar, but it’s important.  I’m reading so much in queer studies these days, and so little of it even mentions sex.  Have we forgotten what makes us fags?  That’s sad.  When we forget the image of the cock penentrating the asshole, the gasp, we’re forgetting what makes us who we are.  When we forget that, we forget our humanity.  We forget that we are a people beyond government statistics, beyond academe. 

June 20th, I’m going to have to go to Phantom of the Attic, and I’m pissed.  I don’t want to have to buy this.

I’ve never loved DC comics, save the occasional Batman graphic novel.  I’ve been a lifelong devotee; some of my earliest childhood memories are watching the X-Men on Fox Kids.  When I started buying comics, I bought X-Men comics.  My highschool years would have been sadder had they not included Ultimate Colossuses and his naive love for Will & Grace. 

But then there was the decimation.  I conciouslly resist capitializing “decimation”.  The Decimation, as it occured in the aftermath of House of M, was not just a plot point, but rather a sad, irrevocable, simplifying death-blow to America’s only truly diverse team of supes.  The initial months of the post-apocalypse looked good—Beast traversed nations looking for a cure at the end of issues suffused with true, human emotions.  Then San Francisco and vampires happened.  They’ve never recovered, and they never will, without a much-needed retcon.  My masochistic great-white-hope is that the Disney buy-out will let that happen.  Things need despretately to simplefy.  For a while, I wanted to write Marvel comics.  Right now, I don’t. 

I don’t even want to tell you what’s happened to Northstar in recent years, except to say it wasn’t too long ago he was a murderous zombie. 

My initial reaction?  Was this a response to the recent headline that someone from DC is coming out?  (How long does it take to drum up some cover art?) 

I’m pretty much done with this entry.  I’m breaking off again without trying too hard to make a full, detailed response.  I haven’t once used the word “assimilation”.  It always will be, it always has been, I’ve realized, about selling books.  I feel a little less bad about pirating now.  But I’ll buy this book—for the same reason I look for Alpha Flight #106 (Northstar’s coming out, his lengendary duel with Major Mappleleaf), because any representation is, I suppose, good representation in a media which has denied my existentce for most of its life—until my existence became a a selling point. 

Do any kids read comics anymore?  I don’t think I’d want my child to read this.  A gay marriage means a gay honeymoon, right?  We’ll see.  I’m not holding my breath.  If the bulging bustlines are equivalent to the crotch lines in Marvel Comics, I’m looking forward to a 27” post-marital erection.  God forbid.

(And mind you, I want all of this commentary to exclude the prescence of Doop on the cover.  Any Doop is good Doop.  I am and have always been and will always be pro-Doop.  Go Doop.  Doop 2012.  Yes, Doop.)

Who would I be today if I never had sex?

If I waited for someone I loved?

If I waited for someone I was daiting?

If I lost my virginity to another virgin?

If I waited for seventeen, or sixteen?

If I lost it to someone my own age?

If the first time I was on top?

If I’d tried it with a girl?

If I hadn’t used a condom?

(There should be an entry, forthcoming, about the use of condoms.  I can count the times I didn’t use condoms.  I can’t count the times I’ve had sex.)

If the first time I’d only done oral?

If the first time wasn’t good?

(He was a stranger.)

If it hurt?

(He was big.  One of the biggest I’ve had.  Does it ever hurt the first time?  You hear talk of adrenaline rushes.  I was listening to Californication on repeat those days.)

If I’d never pierced my dick?

(The timeline’s hazy here.  I know I pierced my dick sometime around my sixteenth birthday, which was sometime around the time I first got fucked.  I remember part of the psychological underpinning for piercing my dick was that I’d need a month to recover, that I couldn’t hook-up.  Was I delaying a repeat performance or the initial repose?  It was probably two months after the first, a month after the first time bareback, when I didn’t know how to say “Yes, but…” When I thought everything was either yes or no.)

If I were uncut, and he wasn’t, or if he was uncut?

(The first uncut dick I sucked.  I remember that.  He was small, and German born.  He told me how on Sesame Street there, the opening number had a bunch of naked kids dancing around.  He loved classical music, and he said, “they left you your frenum, and you put a needle through it.” 

A year and a half later, he fucked me again, but it was like lifetimes in the future.  The first tiime, I hadn’t thought of myself as a sex-worker.  When fear, uncertainty are lost, the magic is lost, too.  That last time was a transaction.)

I remember now the first man in Philly who paid me to fuck him.  He was a regular.  I was funny about bottoming that first year.  I don’t remember why, but it probably had a lot to do with the shared bathrooms in the dorm.  There was nowhere comfortable to douche.  He had a parrot and collected firefighter memorablia.  I could show you his building.  He was a regular, but then he wanted me to bottom, and I asked for more money then and never saw him again.  I remember seeing him two years later, which was like lifetimes in the future.  He was sitting on the front stoop with a young guy, petting his hair.  I was tripping balls; he didn’t notice me.  That moment stuck.  I’d never thought of myself as replacable.

Who isn’t replacable?

So what are we waiting for?

(If I’d waitied, or if I’d been born years later, I’d have been given Guardasil, I’d have one less thing to worry about.  I can’t think of any other identifiable difference.)

The preemminent what-if, of course, is what if that first man, the one I haven’t yet mentioned, is What if that man hadn’t taken me to the Motel 6 and paid me to probe my ass with stiff plastic dildos—i.e., what if I hadn’t been offered money for sex?  I’m not ready, right now, to think about that.)

You can’t think about sex without thinking about your first time, but the truth of the matter is I’ve had many first times:

The first time I plaid with myself,

The first time I saw another dick,

The first time I looked at my asshole in a mirror,

The first time I saw a hard dick,

The first time I measured my dick,

The first time I saw porn,

The first time I fingered myself,

The first time I stuck something other than a finger up my ass,

The first time I came,

The first time I took a picture of my dick,

The first time I made an internet hook-up,

The first time I got fucked,

The first time I had bareback sex,

The first time I topped,

The first time I could have had sex but was too afraid to ask for it,

The first time I was paid for sex,

My first toy,

The first time I shaved off all my pubic hair,

The first time I fucked a virgin,

My first boyfriend,

The first time I slept in another guy’s bed,

The first time I had sex while high,

The first time I had sex while drunk,

The first time I had sex while tripping,

The first time I had sex when I didn’t want to,

The first time I had sex without coming,

The first time I engaged in heavy fetish play,

The first time I tried to count how many people I’d had sex with,

The first time I videotaped other people having sex without participating,

The first time I told someone I was sex worker,

And there’s more, but I’m getting bored.  What I’m thinking is that there’s so many firsts that a single what-if interogative is inconceivable. The only one that would fit would be, “What if I were a nonsexual being?”  That’s like asking, “What if I were a panda?”

(I feel like, now, getting bored with writing, and trying to be conclusive, I’m losing the energy I built up in remembering all this.  My drive is to dig out my old notebooks, the records of my behavior, but they won’t satisfy anything.  So I’ll just stop  Now.)

Advert from A4A, a MSM hook-up site, for a sexual health survey.  Fucking aweome marketing penetration.

Do you think Tea Partyers know their tax dollars are funding a government funding the UN Program on HIV/AIDS which is funding this group which is buying ad sites that show up next to advertisements for Real Bear BFs and The Best Shower Enema Solution?

It all makes me smile.

Christ, I should have never looked up my livejournals tonight, but I’m glad theyre there, and I’ve extended their stay.  But I’m truly glad my TeenOpenDiary, or whatever the fuck they were called, are gone forever, for what could I really learny from the ages 10 to 12? Even the emails from those years are gone.  My name onthat site was something like “gaynightraven” some ridiculous vamiire faggot bullshit. I stalked a boy who liked Takin Back Sunday.  I loved Dashboard Confessional.  I posted from the library.

My god, he fucked me so many times.  It was a bad idea to look back on my LiveJournal tonight.  But I really liked him, and the money was good.  So why does it feel bad? 

You can love a client—that’s the thing they never tell you—the ones for or against this thing.

I loved being with him.  I loved the money, his cock, his company.  It always seemed like America’s Next Great Dancer, or whatever it’s called, the one with the British lady, was on while he fucked me.  And the Gun Oil.  He fucked me with lube called Gun Oil, and it was wonderful. 

But it’s been years now, hasn’t it?  And I want to still love him, as I loved the gun oil and cumming on my chest.

Apparently, a few nights ago, while intoxicated, I changed my sexual interests on OKCupid from “gay” to “bisexual”.
I am, admittedly, bicurious, though I’ve had no sexual experience with females save a few pubescent closed-mouth kisses and gropes of breasts on school busses.  Once a girl showed me her nipples on the shore of the Allegheny river.  They were really, really puffy.  Puffy nipples have always grossed me out, whether they are on males or females.
Once, I dated an older, manipulative, sexy douche bag in the military who used to tell me I should try and find us a girl, so he could fuck me while I ate her out.  Once, I posted an ad by myself on Craigslist, looking for a woman or hetero couple to induldge me in my bicuriousity.  I got several spam responses and one from a girl who accused me of being a sexual predator, based solely on my initial, honest post and picture of my abdominals.  I left my bicuriousity at that.  Obviously, I don’t know how to market myself to women.
And then I joined OKCupid.  I found occasionally women were visiting my profile, mostly bi girls.  This surprised me—an unknown quantity—I expected “straight” identified men, which i got visiting me, and messaging me on the DL.  I attempted to message these girls, to no avail.  And now I’ve avowed myself, in a corner of the internet, as a bisexual…
And what has happened?  I’ve received exponentialy more response from “Straight” men on the DL. 
I don’t generally believe in bisexuality as a concept.  A “gay” individual is one who derives primary sexual desire from the same sex, a “straight” individual from the opposite sex.  I think of a bisexual as one who alternates between gay and straight desires.  I read forum posts on the internet by fourteen year olds agonizing about coming out as bisexual, and I wonder, WHY? 
Why complicate your life by admiting to same sex attractions and othering yourself when you’re likely virginal anyway?  Is bisexuality really the new en vogue thing?  It’s just a phase, I think.  You might have to come out as gay later, so wait and do it all at one fell swoop.   Or it could just be adolescent hero worship.  
Unpacking those reactions, I read my definition of bisexuality not as I previously explained, but as “straight, but with gay leanings”.  But now I get this message… From a guy… A straight identified one.  Questioning my identity.  He asks me, do I prefer men, or do I prefer women?  And realizing, in an instant, the hypocrisy of that question the ridiculousness of my definition, my understanding of bisexuality.  
Clearly, this man is on the DL.  I wont unpack my feelings about the DL now—it would take several thousand words I’m not fit to articulate at the moment.  But it suffices to say that I like to call these men out.  They’re not doing either of us any favors by messaging me, as much as I used to like to get plowed by frat boys.  This man wrote he’s curious as to whether my primary interests lie with men or women.  My immediate response, without having to put much thought into it is, “I’m curious as to why that would make any difference.”  But by then he’s logged off.  OKCupid promises it’ll send along the message to him.  It seems to me as a straight identified man he thinks that if he only fucks other men who really only sometimes like men, who doesn’t have to self-identify as anything but straight.
And then I get it.  I turn to Tumblr.  I finally get it.  I understand bisexuality.  Not understand it in the sense that I’ve lived it, and thus understand it, as if anyone can understand anything they haven’t lived.  But having played bisexual for a moment—I understand that it is a thing that can be played, that it is an identity.  If it’s a victim of others’ misunderstanding, alienation, or ignoration as I have misunderstood it and this man has ignored its meaning, I understand that bisexuality is an identity.  A minority identity is identified by its exclusion from the majority.  I’ve excluded bisexuality as this asshole has—and now I get that I’ve done it.  
But that isn’t to say I’m ready to dive into that community, to embrace that understanding.  After all, as much as I love to suck dick, my curiosity towards tits and pussy stands, my lust for cock, its ease of access, is such that I don’t much want to put the effort into exploration.  But for the time being, I think I’ll stay Bi on OKCupid, as little as I visit that site.  I’m keeping my options open.  Isn’t that what Bi folks are doing?

Strangely convincing advert. 

Nothing says maturity like a sincere interest in the company of “Adults”.

This is the most ridiculous CL ad I’ve ever read.