Saturday Night's Alright for Dancin'

Saturday started with a bang - in the form of a gun-toting hairy Mexican straight boy in a pink lace thong. The gun - a .357 Magnum - was hidden under his mattress. The thong hidden in a rolled up sock. Carlos was a dear - a good kisser who demonstrated other outstanding oral abilities. Straight boys, in my experience, often demonstrate such talents - and tend very often to throw their legs in the air.

I passed a lovely afternoon with panties, inter-racial porn, and a Smith & Wesson. And then, as things tend to go with me, hilarity ensued. The phone rang a few times while Carlos and I were engaging in some slap and tickle, and he appropriately ignored it. Of course, when he did answer, it was his best friend - a friend, mind you, whose pregnant girlfriend he is screwing. The guy was outside, in the driveway, and this posed the usual obvious problems, not the least of which was that Carlos had to get me out of the house without being seen.

That whole straight boy thing.

After a few ideas to distract the friend in the driveway failed, the back-up plan involved a window. And a wall. I dropped out of the bathroom window and scaled a small wall in order to bypass the driveway and circle the block to get to my car.

Carlos sent me on my way with a passionate kiss ... and a boost to the window.


Saturday night - fresh from the ego boost that I can comfortably fit through a bathroom window - and into my skinny jeans - I met the City Coucilman for a drink. It was crowded at Pegasus - not unusual for a Saturday night, but running into Mount Gay colored the evening.

I think it was magenta. Or possibly chartreuse. He was there with his new boyfriend, a young Hispanic - one of the Frenemy's many conquests. And seemingly my polar opposite. I would love to say that hte conversation - when I downed a martini and approached him - was witty, urbane ... the stuff of which Hepburn and Cary Grant were made.

But there were no bon mots, and while I did have a lit cigarette, there was by no means a spark or any fire(works); Mount Gay was cool, dismissive, and I wished him a good night ... and a Happy FIESTA.

And then I met someone. He sidled up to the bar ... or was it a drunken meandering? We struck up a conversation too many drinks prevents me from recalling, and then he stuck his hand down my pants. Somewhere between learning his name and recording his number in my phone, he informed me he was a bottom - and set about showing me.

The resulting hard-on somehow found its way out of my pants but was safely in his surprisingly strong, warm hand.

I wandered off - possibly out of fear the rest of my clothes would come off, and partially because I was quite tipsy.

I am optimistic that a drunken hand-job could lead to wedding bells ... or at least drunken sex. He is terribly cute and seems to be smart ... and then there is something intriguing about a man less than five feet tall. He could be my pocket gay.

Mark

Country Music and Castigation

I had a dream involving my mother. I have no idea what it was about ... as it came and went as spirits tend to do. Whether I was comforted or disturbed, I cannot say either; it was a whisper in the midst of noise.

Life is noisy of late - a clamor of depression, frustration, and uploading country music to my computer. In the absence of blues LPs, country fills a void - a boozing, lonely, wife-beating, deer hunting, coon hound having void.

I have been remiss in my reading of late - choosing drunken sex and time with the guy I was THEN seeing over gay murder mysteries. I feel their call. A Habit for Death - about a nun serial killer in a Catholic boys' school suddenly seems more powerful than a dirty martini.

I've got a killer to catch ... Sister Clarissa Darling must be avenged ...

A dream ... again

I fell asleep watching National Geographic; consequently - coupled with drugs, alcohol, and something akin to sexual exhaustion - I had the strangest dream.

It began at an anniversary party - my own. I think it was our 60th, and it was futuristic, in that way that the not-so-distant future is often portrayed, something like "Minority Report" or the flash(ing) forward at the end of the final episode of "Six Feet Under." I was silver and distinguished - slimmer than I expected - in a very expensive suit.

I was married to Apollo Ono, and it was somewhere around that time I realized that that the flash-backs began.

Evan Lycasek figures in somehow - I think as my nemesis, and as a competitor for Ono's affections.

We were well-traveled - Apollo and I; there were scenes in jungles, sweating and running from tribes - with torches. I distinctly recall a ritual - our wedding(?) - wherein heated rods were pushed through our abdomens. If the poker missed your vital organs, and you survive the pain, and the risks of infection, you were bonded for life [politics-schmolitics; that's (gay) marriage]. Someone may have wound up paralyzed ... that part escapes me.

There was abundant ass play, a blood-letting (blessing) in honor of our marriage, and I think robots got involved somehow.

Making out on a mountain-top, at dawn ... felt like being the first men (note: Adam and Steve jokes), and the first to discover love (or, more aptly, LOVE). It was a waking dream, where I saw things happening and could gently shift the course. I mostly shifted the course of things into Apollo's pants ... and once, out of the path of a lion.

I think I also hooked Lycasek up with Johnny Weir ... or Clay Aiken.

I don't recall how the dream ended, save that I rolled over to check the time and fell back into some cute, absurd moment.

I was happy.

It was 6:30AM - and Rough Trade called ... wistful, apologetic, and set some things atwitter ...

Mark

Technology is NOT my friend ...

I am beginning to doubt that technology is here for me. I am this close to believing that technology is not my friend. My beloved Apple laptop - the basic black PowerBook a la Carrie Bradshaw - is no longer working. My netbook is infected with some sort of Trojan Horse, one which seems to particularly dislike Google Chrome.

My cheap but attractive Sprint cell phone occasionally misplaces the who, and even the what, of my text messages, and neither adam4adam nor gay.com seem willing or able to deliver eligible men to my eager inbox.

And while I am an avid devotee of texting and email, even those handy forms of expression occasionally betray me. Mount Gay - when he grew a pair and decided to assert himself, against me and out of our relationship - did so via a text. It was not as succinct as the Post-It note break-up on "Sex & the City," but it got the job done.

So, yesterday, having applied for food stamps and keeping the Frenemy company, I came home with a new crop of library books and turned on my netbook. My email client loaded, and I felt the same anticipation one feels as a child receiving his first pieces of mail.

My optimism is alive and well; every day I look at my email - expecting a job offer, new messages via facebook, or something cheery from one of the law schools or graduate programs to which I applied. So, yesterday, when I saw something from the University of North Dakota (UND), I was halfway to giddy before I started reading. It was a no, for the record.

My fear that if the first letter was a rejection, the rest might be as well is silly, but a fear or concern echoed by pretty much anyone embroiled in the application process. I don't know what the other letters will say, or when they might come. It is true, though, that UND was the only school I could actually afford to attend - so, whatever the answer, I will probably not be a lawyer anytime soon.

Maybe the world has too many lawyers.

Back-up plans include accounting and renting myself out as a gay man with taste (a.k.a. a hair-dresser). Part of me wants to play it safe - continue along the course of academia and stable jobs. The other part wants to have a Bravo reality show - to operate within a series of cliches ... fabulous fag with shears, bedazzled jeans, and an amazing ability to sound deep about shallow things.

Mark

Gay Pimp Daddy

While it is so often said that some things never change ... and while many of us are exceedingly glad that that is not the case ... it is true that some people, by sheer happenstance of living longer than expected, approach life in a whole new way over 80. My father is among those very interesting souls, and at 85, he's adapted to a life of crime.

I would say that it was my bad influence, having been a drug dealer and gone to jail a time or two (before the photo-shoot), but I have had family in jail or prison for generations. Given the number of unregistered guns, the rounds of ammo in the antique trunk, and the small flask of Seagram's "cold medicine" in the cereal cabinet in the kitchen, I somehow doubt that anything I could contribute would even raise an eyebrow.

the Old Black Man's been around the block ...

And I say this because I just took delivery of an HVAC unit - new, in a box, with no serial number. While the average household HVAC unit costs somewhere around $3,000, my father paid $800. A black man with no last name - using someone else's (broken) Cricket phone, in a late-model Suburban, pulled into the driveway, rolled it into the den, and told me to call him back when we were ready to install the unit. He has a friend who "can make somethin' happen ..."

I was this close to asking him if he happened to have some groceries that also happened to fall off the back of a truck. The black man with no last name showed up 8 hours late to deliver the unit, and - owing to there being no food in the house - I was hungry and otherwise not having the best day. We exchanged no more than 5 words. Then again, these sorts of deals do not typically involve a lot of small talk.

I have fond memories, or memories at least, of a time when I was not hungry, was not lonely (or alone), and when I was engaged in my own shady dealings, not facilitating my father's. I am reminded as well of high school, when the Old Black Man had four girlfriends, and I was sitting home alone on any given night - answering the phone and making excuses. It is not good for one's ego when your septuagenarian father is getting WAY more play than you ... and then again, he still is.

Perhaps that makes him a pimp - the big man with the money and the name for whom I am attache; I thought this as I was cutting his hair last night, and trimming the strands in his ears. This, mind you was shortly after Project Monday - wherein I planted the entire front yard, installed a door, and moved a dining room table.

It is a colossal let-down that I own so very much polyester and yet cannot make it past the lackey stage.

Mark

On the DL in the DMZ

As it happens, boredom and great heaping lots of time on my hands, coupled with the Internet(s) and the inability to leave the house, inspired some virtual globe-trotting. This started as a simple social experiment; as I cannot seem to either get laid, or even engage in conversation, in local chat rooms, I started visiting the rooms of the two places I hope to live while attending law school - Grand Forks, ND and South Royalton, VT.

Each has its own unique charm, its own, different sort of hellacious winter, and a gay population smaller than my blog readership. Frequent forays into the actual city chat room yield only four chatters at a given time, and upon expanding my net to include the entire state of North Dakota (or Vermont), the figures leaped to 17 or so. I have never seen more than 22 people at any given time chatting in either state. This contrasts slightly with 500+ chatting (or cruising) presently in San Antonio.

Not to be deterred from my mission to meet and greet, I messaged the 34 (total) gay men available across two states, and four of them responded. One warned me that there are no gay bars ("...but there is a 'gay-friendly' bar in town ... I even kissed a guy I was on a date with once ..."); note, there are no gay bars in the entire state of North Dakota. The nearest is in the perhaps very aptly named Moorehead, MN., 90 miles away. And Winnipeg, Manitoba is just around the corner.

The gay student alliance at UND (the "Ten Percent Society") hosts a gay dance once-monthly, which incorporates a drag show and a DJ - or so I was told by another gay man from ND. Vermont has thus far declined comment, which leads me to believe that either everyone in South Royalton is absurdly busy with law school, or there are simply no gays in that cold, bedroom community of only 2,300 souls. That they are still thawing under layers of snow and maple syrup hardened into an impenetrable crust is simply too grievous (and funny) to consider.

But, as I am wont to do, I digress ... exploring Vermont and North Dakota, which I did in the course of four emails and a day of passing time got me, as we say in the South, "to thinkin' " about all the cities and towns and continents I have yet to visit. And so I visited - via the Internet(s) - Greece, Paris, Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, the UAE, Afghanistan, Iraq, and both Koreas.

That I found black men there - and that they appeared to be doing well, getting laid, and could speak without using "nigga ..." or "holla" in sentences intrigued me no end. That there were gays there at all, and a room full of them with whom I could interact surprised me still more (at least in the case of Iraq and the two Koreas). It is not so much that I did not appreciate that my race extends all over the world, or that black men (especially in other parts of the world) do not all labor under some pre-established cultural or even aesthetic bias.

the Frenemy suggests it is merely about the look ... and the smell of black men that makes them ... us ... uh, me ... undesirable. I argue that a bias established by cultural perception, among other things a result of 250 - 400 years of slavery has a great deal to do with it. I argue that there is a reason why the charming black man I met in Dubai, raised in Italy, is accomplished, educated, and has neither social qualms nor an affinity for the ghetto, and yet every man in the Jackson, MS room has gold teeth and Fubu.

The effects of Apartheid on young black men in South Africa might serve to aid my argument(s), but I find that country - if only in the digital environment of adam4adam.com to be creepy, and its men - of various sizes, shapes, and races, to be something 'other' and off-putting. It's like "Children of the Corn," if Spike Lee directed.

And, as I said, the bigger shock, bigger than that a chunky black man not much different than me told me he was dating five men at present - two of whom were doctors (this was in Paris) - was the very open cruising among soldiers of various stripe in Afghanistan and Iraq. There were more gay men looking in Baghdad than there are in North Dakota and Vermont combined.

Is it the 'other' interpretation of Enduring Freedom, or just that - after 22 months in a war-zone no one cares who sucks whom so long as there is a smile and an occasional friendly embrace? The number of men whose web cams capture a tent and a helmet and a shirt-less comrade in the background is either funny or very sad.

the Frenemy is banging two or three men, if not more, who used to do me for free drugs. One of them said as much just last night, that the only reason he ever did anything with me was for the coke - something which, though suspected ... or understood ... still hurts to hear aloud. the Frenemy seemed only too happy to pass along that information just this morning.

I suppose as I am processing that particular kernel of truth, I think about the experience I gained just from a little late-night, Internet(s) globe-trotting. I am alone in San Antonio - apparently too black to merit a simple 'hello' in response to my message, too invisible to even get a thank you when I buy a round of drinks at a bar ... but I imagine there is still light in my eyes, that there is a still anticipation and hope and something stirring that believes the adage, "This too shall pass ..."

I have been saying that for a long, long time ... and it still ain't passing, which makes me think that either somebody lied, or I am meant to be a REAL late bloomer. I am channeling my mother as I type this, thinking about the light in her eyes.

I messaged a few guys in Kandahar, sent a simple 'hello' to a pale, white, blue-eyed American boy named "Al-Asad." He didn't respond, but I imagine that at that point - perhaps much like mine, for different reasons, he just needs someone to be nearby, and he needs to know he's not alone.

Mark

Pulling It Off ...

It is a beautiful day - one of the most beautiful I've seen in ages. We are comfortably in Spring. The sun is shining, birds are chirping, and something that sounds strangely like an owl is hooting or cooing near my open front door. I am not near my open front door, mind you ... I am not wireless here at home, so I am tethered to an Ethernet cable in a room with no windows, and a small antique bed. That there is a TV, a stack of library books, and the sounds of these lovely, natural scenes ... well, it is enough for me for now. It feels as though I haven't left the house in days.

Come to think of it, I haven't.

Knob Bob picked me up Friday, for what was to be if not a romantic weekend, certainly a horny one. I met Bob at a Valentine's Day threesome - an event in which I engaged, against my better judgment, in order to forget about being dumped 6 days earlier - via text message. The apartment smelled of gym socks, sex, and the Warm Vanilla Sugar lotion the host - the naked Negro - was using as lube, but I digress ...

So, Knob Bob came to collect me Friday afternoon - and there was a half-smile on his face, and a certain gleam in his eye. I gave him the tour of my family home, and off we went in his American car, for sex and something.

The something was the kicker.

Now, Knob Bob is the affable and diminutive fellow (5'2," 130 lbs.) who happens to doze off at inopportune moments. It isn't just that he nearly burns me with lit cigarettes every time he starts to drift and I am in the room. It is not the fear of dying in a burning bed. And, given how lacking my sex life, I can even deal with him referring to sex as "pokey-pokey" ... If anything, I can even deal with him dozing off during during blow-jobs - although deep-throat and snoring should never mix. It would be hard to explain that to the paramedics.

And speaking of things difficult to explain to medical professionals, we got back to Bob's and promptly had to leave again, to buy ice. Although I was having a margarita, the ice was not for my drink but rather his crotch. Apparently, in getting off the couch to come pick me up, Bob pulled something ... He was in tremendous pain, and I spent the rest of Friday, most of the night, and Saturday morning icing down my fuck buddy's privates. Needless to say, a good time was not had by all ... or any.

I wish that I could say I spent the rest of Saturday and at least part of Sunday in a drunken stupor ... the better by which to pass the interminable hours. But I was sober. Hiding in my room, reading, and exploring my chances of getting laid in Iraq.

Mark