My mother is getting on a plane in the morning from Kansas City to San Francisco and I can't begin to describe how tremendous my excitement is over this fact. I have not seen her in over a year. It occurred to me, maybe about an hour ago, how badly I have missed her; when I began sobbing on my porch for the duration of an unsmoked cigarette, the ash of which resembled a long burnt green bean when it fell. It was one of those cigarettes that you only light for a reason to get up and go outside, one of those cigarettes that once lit hits a play button of memories and for me, this night, those memories were of the past year and a half of my life . It occurred to me how badly I've missed home, and how even though I tell every new friend I make that I hate Kansas and never want to go back, it is my home and one more than one occasion since I have been gone I have needed nothing but its air in my lungs.
I write a lot about all of the fun I've had, about all the sex I've had, love I have lost and gained and then lost again. I write a lot about how much I've grown, but in spite of those personal growths, those sexual encounters in public places, those parades, the unrelenting beauty that engulfs the hills of the west coast, in spite of the unabashed drug experimentation with company God would envy, I have also broke in ways I cannot write or tell. In ways only the trinkets on my desk could tell if you listened to them whisper on a silent night, in ways only the bits of finger nails I have scattered over Chicago sidewalks and the dirty tiles of San Fransisco train stations could recount, or my walls can scream. Those things could tell you. But I cannot.
I can only write what happened, and what happened was I spent the past year and a half wondering streets of alien cities looking for an answer I staunchly believed existed outside of the choke hold Kansas City had around my neck, and what happened was that feeling of being choked never left, of being constricted so tightly you know you should just stop, that like quick sand, if you froze it would stop, but I couldn't stop. What happened was I kept going until its hands stopped the flow of air into my lungs and even when I should have begged for air I did nothing, and even when I should have asked for it, help would have done nothing. And then something inside of me died, it shriveled like a leaf and waited for a breeze to pluck it from my flesh.
I lost my best friend, the closest thing I have ever known to that feeling when a kid finds the missing puzzle piece and slides it's plastic coated cardboard into place, and that all that time spent working on the puzzle all the sudden seemed worth it again. Jen was my puzzle piece for a long time, and I miss her terribly. I can also state with as much veracity as my admitance to how much I miss her, that her decision to separate herself from my puzzle, which is now in a box in a closet and mixed with pieces from other puzzle boxes, entirely my fault. I have been, an awful friend to her, and like the ways in which I have broke, only walls, street lights, and finger nails can tell you just how awful. I can only write about what happened.
When I was a kid I remember very vividly having breakfast with my friend Josh's family, who was made up of himself, his grandfather and grandmother. I would go over there every morning before school and they would see that we got on the buss safely. We had two pieces of sausage with one piece of burnt toast, with no butter, on a Styrofoam plate like clockwork at 6:45 a.m. We would all join hands to thank God and I would often think, "It's just toast and microwave sausage, why be thankful?"
One morning after we thanked the higher power for our radioactive sausage links, I asked Josh's Grandfather if Hell was really that scary, because I though that a lake of fire would be kind of cool to see. He leaned in close to me and with eyes like coils said, "those are just words in a book boy, words can't begin to tell you the horrors of Hell.." I think of that now as I write this, not to compare a place of eternal suffering to my past year of momentary suffering, but to state how little my words are able to convey and that when I cried on my porch an hour ago, and as I cry now, I see what people mean when they say something hurts like Hell.
What it's like to miss something like hell, what it is to be grateful for sausage links on a Styrofoam plate.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Monday, November 26, 2012
The search for God under rocks under the sea.
I remember very vividly playing a video game when I was about 10 and when I couldn't beat it, I went into my room and buried my face into my pillow, letting out the hardest scream I could before ripping apart limb from limb a stuffed teddy bear, which was actually more of a stuffed bunny given to me by an ugly girl at school named Sophia, who in spite of my repeated attempts to convey my revulsion towards her, wanted very much for me to like her.
I got down on my knees and I prayed to God, bartering that if he help me beat my video game I would clean my room. My mother had been begging me to clean my room, almost to the point of tears, for weeks and in an attempt to make both God and my mother content with me, I used it as leverage. After I prayed, my fingers hurt from how hard I was clasping my hands into one another, my forehead was indented with flakes from my bedroom carpet which I had pressed my face firmly into. From birth to age 10 the hardest I had ever prayed was over a video game, so much so that it caused my hands to ache, but not so much so that it impeded my ability to use the controller of which I used to beat the game the very next try and I cleaned my room happily.
Last night I saw a shooting star while waiting for a taxi in Berkley with my friends, and upon it I wished to God for the fortune of happiness. I told no one what I saw, what I wished for because in the fog of the night was a whisper that it fell for me only. A few nights before that I cried out to God in a nightmare so horrifying I could think of no escape other than his name, a name that for me has no meaning in a Christian sense but holds weight in the sense that sometimes, it is faith that is all I am left with. I have never questioned the existence of God, if for no other reason than I have seen enough of the Devil to merit belief in his counter.
It struck me odd, as I made my wish upon the falling bits of alien universe that I wished for happiness, because it is a wish I have always made in the form of material wealth and success. Every birthday candle I have ever blown out was extinguished with the requesting winds of a selfish thirst never to be quenched. I remember one year I wasted a birthday wish on a boyfriend, which I got and quickly wished I hadn't. Every shooting star before last nights shooting star was gazed upon with eyes that sought out desires of flesh and things I could touch.
It struck me odd because it was the first time happiness became something to wish for under the power of God, and because it was not that long ago, in the timeline of my life on the timeline of time, that I strained my fingers into themselves begging God, suffocated by the strain of tears, to help me beat a video game; and to come from that being the prayer that needed to be answered in order for me to continue living, to now being a time when happiness is a prayer so badly in need of answering that all I can do to keep from jumping off the Golden Gate bridge is to have faith that the same something that helped me beat that game when I was 10 or get that boyfriend I thought I wanted but didn't, will guide me to the very answer I need in order to continue breathing now.
I remember watching a documentary on meteors a few years ago, in it it was said that most meteors burn up in the atmosphere and hit the earth or the ocean at the size of a bean or a softball and as I watched the star disperse into the West, I wondered to myself the size of the splash a falling meteor would make in the middle of the ocean, of which my wish was surly bound. I wondered how many of those splashes sailors might see, or cargo ship workers coasting from the coast of Japan across the Pacific to deliver toasters and televisions to department super stores on the coast of California, how many of those splashes are witnessed by people and how many different things are wished upon those sinking stones from space. How many of those sunken meteors rest at the bottom of the sea with mine and how many of them were bestowed the responsibility of happiness, the responsibility of God.
When I was little, my father's friend Yolanda gave me a yellow stone about the size of my palm after I was forced to attend a gruesome baptist sermon and engraved into the stone were the words, "If you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it would move. Nothing would be impossible." And I think it's funny how my faith has grown since then, from the size of a mustard seed to a bean.
And sometimes from a bean to a softball. .
I got down on my knees and I prayed to God, bartering that if he help me beat my video game I would clean my room. My mother had been begging me to clean my room, almost to the point of tears, for weeks and in an attempt to make both God and my mother content with me, I used it as leverage. After I prayed, my fingers hurt from how hard I was clasping my hands into one another, my forehead was indented with flakes from my bedroom carpet which I had pressed my face firmly into. From birth to age 10 the hardest I had ever prayed was over a video game, so much so that it caused my hands to ache, but not so much so that it impeded my ability to use the controller of which I used to beat the game the very next try and I cleaned my room happily.
Last night I saw a shooting star while waiting for a taxi in Berkley with my friends, and upon it I wished to God for the fortune of happiness. I told no one what I saw, what I wished for because in the fog of the night was a whisper that it fell for me only. A few nights before that I cried out to God in a nightmare so horrifying I could think of no escape other than his name, a name that for me has no meaning in a Christian sense but holds weight in the sense that sometimes, it is faith that is all I am left with. I have never questioned the existence of God, if for no other reason than I have seen enough of the Devil to merit belief in his counter.
It struck me odd, as I made my wish upon the falling bits of alien universe that I wished for happiness, because it is a wish I have always made in the form of material wealth and success. Every birthday candle I have ever blown out was extinguished with the requesting winds of a selfish thirst never to be quenched. I remember one year I wasted a birthday wish on a boyfriend, which I got and quickly wished I hadn't. Every shooting star before last nights shooting star was gazed upon with eyes that sought out desires of flesh and things I could touch.
It struck me odd because it was the first time happiness became something to wish for under the power of God, and because it was not that long ago, in the timeline of my life on the timeline of time, that I strained my fingers into themselves begging God, suffocated by the strain of tears, to help me beat a video game; and to come from that being the prayer that needed to be answered in order for me to continue living, to now being a time when happiness is a prayer so badly in need of answering that all I can do to keep from jumping off the Golden Gate bridge is to have faith that the same something that helped me beat that game when I was 10 or get that boyfriend I thought I wanted but didn't, will guide me to the very answer I need in order to continue breathing now.
I remember watching a documentary on meteors a few years ago, in it it was said that most meteors burn up in the atmosphere and hit the earth or the ocean at the size of a bean or a softball and as I watched the star disperse into the West, I wondered to myself the size of the splash a falling meteor would make in the middle of the ocean, of which my wish was surly bound. I wondered how many of those splashes sailors might see, or cargo ship workers coasting from the coast of Japan across the Pacific to deliver toasters and televisions to department super stores on the coast of California, how many of those splashes are witnessed by people and how many different things are wished upon those sinking stones from space. How many of those sunken meteors rest at the bottom of the sea with mine and how many of them were bestowed the responsibility of happiness, the responsibility of God.
When I was little, my father's friend Yolanda gave me a yellow stone about the size of my palm after I was forced to attend a gruesome baptist sermon and engraved into the stone were the words, "If you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it would move. Nothing would be impossible." And I think it's funny how my faith has grown since then, from the size of a mustard seed to a bean.
And sometimes from a bean to a softball. .
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Stella Steele
I don’t know when my inclination to dress in drag was born
but I remember always feeling ashamed of it.
I remember getting home from school as a young boy and putting my mother’s
lingerie gowns on, and as simply as the silk night garments slipped over my
hairless shoulders, I was empowered. As
simply as my soft feet slid into my mother’s heels, I felt like I could walk
anywhere. Like I could walk up to the terrorists
at school and tell them to fuck off, walk up to my parents and tell them to
stop using me as leverage, or click and clack my way onto the platform of a
train, with a mink stole wrapped tight around my young neck and let it take me somewhere
with lights and tall things.
I would stand in front of my mother’s mirror and admire the way my body looked in them, put on her lipstick and blow kisses to myself, I would have imaginary conversations with important people and I would laugh like a movie star, placing my fingers on my chest and throwing my head back with half closed eyes while my brother, waited in the living room watching cartoons, for our mother to get home. Sometimes my mother would get home early and I could hear the garage door opening, and on when that happened, I furiously scrubbed the makeup off my face and put her gowns in her dresser, making sure the laces and folds were exactly how I found them as to avoid suspicion. She would walk in the door and I would be out of breath and full of fear that I had forgotten the cap to her eye liner or that there might still be some blush on my cheeks and that fear lasted for days. I must have been 9 or 10 years old.
I don’t think my mother ever knew, I still haven’t told her, and if she does know then she’s never said anything. My mother knows a lot of things that she doesn’t bring up, our family has many closets and in them are delicately laced boxes containing delicately wrapped secerets. Although she did take the news, when I was 20, that I would be moving to Florida to pursue my dreams of being a stand up drag queen comic pretty well. My drag name was to be Stella Steele, after my mother’s madden name. “Well if that’s what you wanna do honey…” she said changing the subject. I suspect she was relieved when I never made it to Florida.
It wasn’t until I fell in love and moved in with Evan and his apartment above a haunted antique shop in Oswego Illinois, that I recognized my proclivity for drag queens, when I became enchanted by his roommate Daisy . Daisy Star stood six foot six before stilettos and was formally Frank Murphy. I guess Daisy was more of a transsexual, a permanent drag queen who injected hormones into her ass daily to achieve a more feminine shape. She does tranny porn in LA now but at the time she was stripping at a nearby bar called Manuvers and I would watch her rehearse in the living room often. I studied her mannerisms, the elegance of her fingers, the dexterity of which masterfully applied makeup between snorts of cocaine and shots of dry gin. Even the way she shoveled cocaine in her nose, off of the glass table in our living room was a sight for sore eyes. She garnished her drug abuse with a raised manicured pinky; a beautification of the closeness to rock bottom. Daisy represented what I loved about drag and that was in her ability to evoke glamor and poise in filth and in nothingness.
Daisy once indulged in a radical cocaine bender and for four days and four nights she did not sleep. She instead, put on her roller skates and rehearsed her soon to be preformed stripping routine to the song “I’ve Got A Brand New Pair Of Roller Skates,” by Melani Safka. She put the CD containing this song into our DVD player and hit repeat, and I swear to God she did not take off those roller skates, or stop listening to that song for four days. She just rolled around the living room, all seven feet of her, singing “You’ve got a brand new key…” taking breaks only to inhale more powder. I eventually came home on the fourth day to her slumped over the couch, wearing her roller skates and the song still blasting through the speakers of our old TV. She was supposed to perform that night, but I didn’t wake her and she slept through her curtain call.
She seemed to only sleep when her body gave up and once took a nap in the bath tub, only to wake up underwater to the scratches of a heroin cat on her bloated face. In spite of her obvious vices, I had my own (one of which was my addiction to Niquil martinis), I still loved her because she possessed a power I had fantasized about possessing since I was young and played with my mother’s clothing and cosmetics. It is the power of confident femininity, which I think is the closest thing to a super power human beings can hope to have; even closer is when a man masters it.
Daisy first flaunted this power for me in the bread aisle of a grocery store, where we were attempting to buy a week’s worth of groceries for twenty bucks. She was wearing a pin up dress, the patterns of which were checkered red and white like a picnic table cloth and her hair was in braided pig tails. Her dress was low cut and exposed her full back tattoos, the swallows on her chest, the flames crawling up her thighs and arms. Her lip stick was as thick as her confidence and as she stood posing, selecting her bread of choice I heard a woman talking to her daughter a few feet from where Daisy and I stood, “What the hell is that?” she said in a loud whisper.
Later, in the potato chip aisle I asked her, “does that bother you?” She took her sun glasses which were on her head and placed them in front of her eyes, “does what bother me?” she asked. I looked at her until she couldn’t avoid what I was asking and she responded, “Oh that? No. It happens all the time, and to tell you the truth I like it, I’m more beautiful than any woman in this town and even if I’m not I feel like I am, so she can suck my tits.” With the elegance of Ms. Golightly herself, extended her pinkies and put her sun glasses back on her head. She read aloud, the ingredients in the bag of chips she was holding, “Potatoes, canola oil, sea salt.”
Ever since that day in the potato chip aisle of Jewel-Osco I have idolized transsexuals and drag queens, and Daisy is still one of my biggest hero’s. She taught me many things in the year we lived together. She taught me to alternate nostrils when snorting cocaine so you get less nose bleeds. She taught me how to do a champagne enema. She taught me the power of femininity.
And that is the closest thing to a super power I can ever hope to have.
I would stand in front of my mother’s mirror and admire the way my body looked in them, put on her lipstick and blow kisses to myself, I would have imaginary conversations with important people and I would laugh like a movie star, placing my fingers on my chest and throwing my head back with half closed eyes while my brother, waited in the living room watching cartoons, for our mother to get home. Sometimes my mother would get home early and I could hear the garage door opening, and on when that happened, I furiously scrubbed the makeup off my face and put her gowns in her dresser, making sure the laces and folds were exactly how I found them as to avoid suspicion. She would walk in the door and I would be out of breath and full of fear that I had forgotten the cap to her eye liner or that there might still be some blush on my cheeks and that fear lasted for days. I must have been 9 or 10 years old.
I don’t think my mother ever knew, I still haven’t told her, and if she does know then she’s never said anything. My mother knows a lot of things that she doesn’t bring up, our family has many closets and in them are delicately laced boxes containing delicately wrapped secerets. Although she did take the news, when I was 20, that I would be moving to Florida to pursue my dreams of being a stand up drag queen comic pretty well. My drag name was to be Stella Steele, after my mother’s madden name. “Well if that’s what you wanna do honey…” she said changing the subject. I suspect she was relieved when I never made it to Florida.
It wasn’t until I fell in love and moved in with Evan and his apartment above a haunted antique shop in Oswego Illinois, that I recognized my proclivity for drag queens, when I became enchanted by his roommate Daisy . Daisy Star stood six foot six before stilettos and was formally Frank Murphy. I guess Daisy was more of a transsexual, a permanent drag queen who injected hormones into her ass daily to achieve a more feminine shape. She does tranny porn in LA now but at the time she was stripping at a nearby bar called Manuvers and I would watch her rehearse in the living room often. I studied her mannerisms, the elegance of her fingers, the dexterity of which masterfully applied makeup between snorts of cocaine and shots of dry gin. Even the way she shoveled cocaine in her nose, off of the glass table in our living room was a sight for sore eyes. She garnished her drug abuse with a raised manicured pinky; a beautification of the closeness to rock bottom. Daisy represented what I loved about drag and that was in her ability to evoke glamor and poise in filth and in nothingness.
Daisy once indulged in a radical cocaine bender and for four days and four nights she did not sleep. She instead, put on her roller skates and rehearsed her soon to be preformed stripping routine to the song “I’ve Got A Brand New Pair Of Roller Skates,” by Melani Safka. She put the CD containing this song into our DVD player and hit repeat, and I swear to God she did not take off those roller skates, or stop listening to that song for four days. She just rolled around the living room, all seven feet of her, singing “You’ve got a brand new key…” taking breaks only to inhale more powder. I eventually came home on the fourth day to her slumped over the couch, wearing her roller skates and the song still blasting through the speakers of our old TV. She was supposed to perform that night, but I didn’t wake her and she slept through her curtain call.
She seemed to only sleep when her body gave up and once took a nap in the bath tub, only to wake up underwater to the scratches of a heroin cat on her bloated face. In spite of her obvious vices, I had my own (one of which was my addiction to Niquil martinis), I still loved her because she possessed a power I had fantasized about possessing since I was young and played with my mother’s clothing and cosmetics. It is the power of confident femininity, which I think is the closest thing to a super power human beings can hope to have; even closer is when a man masters it.
Daisy first flaunted this power for me in the bread aisle of a grocery store, where we were attempting to buy a week’s worth of groceries for twenty bucks. She was wearing a pin up dress, the patterns of which were checkered red and white like a picnic table cloth and her hair was in braided pig tails. Her dress was low cut and exposed her full back tattoos, the swallows on her chest, the flames crawling up her thighs and arms. Her lip stick was as thick as her confidence and as she stood posing, selecting her bread of choice I heard a woman talking to her daughter a few feet from where Daisy and I stood, “What the hell is that?” she said in a loud whisper.
Later, in the potato chip aisle I asked her, “does that bother you?” She took her sun glasses which were on her head and placed them in front of her eyes, “does what bother me?” she asked. I looked at her until she couldn’t avoid what I was asking and she responded, “Oh that? No. It happens all the time, and to tell you the truth I like it, I’m more beautiful than any woman in this town and even if I’m not I feel like I am, so she can suck my tits.” With the elegance of Ms. Golightly herself, extended her pinkies and put her sun glasses back on her head. She read aloud, the ingredients in the bag of chips she was holding, “Potatoes, canola oil, sea salt.”
Ever since that day in the potato chip aisle of Jewel-Osco I have idolized transsexuals and drag queens, and Daisy is still one of my biggest hero’s. She taught me many things in the year we lived together. She taught me to alternate nostrils when snorting cocaine so you get less nose bleeds. She taught me how to do a champagne enema. She taught me the power of femininity.
And that is the closest thing to a super power I can ever hope to have.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Short #2
I once tried
to love a botanist named Jesse. He lived
in a trailer in Wichita Kansas with a fat video game nerd who was also a queen.
Our long distance romance was upheld by the telephone, the wires of which
transmitted our deepest secrets of regret, failure and hope. He said to me once over the phone that all he
wanted to do, more than anything in the world, was to smash a bunch of glass, “I
just think it would calm me down,” he said.
I only met Jesse in person twice, and I must admit I had high hopes for us, if only for the fact that he loved plants, and I was aware of my own heart’s frailty which at the time was as easily torn as the petal of a rose in the hands of a clumsy child.
I met him the first time in the West Bottoms of Kansas City, where we went to haunted houses in old factories and clung to one another both because we were scared shitless and because we both needed so much to hold on to someone’s arm. Sometimes I get like that. I need to hold onto a man, physically, because if I don’t, I feel like I might float away or fall down. What I found out though, through years of leaving gay bars with handsome strangers, is that I’m not alone. On several occasions I got to these strangers houses or them to mine, I told them I didn’t want to have sex, I just wanted to hold them in the nude. On those occasions those men let out a sigh of release comparable to the air pushed through someone’s lungs when they are told that they do not have cancer, or that their mother will be okay. And I held a lot of beautiful lonely men that way, and they held me. I also slept with a lot of beautiful lonely, angry men that way.
The second and the last time I met Jesse was in Topeka Kansas. I drove him and I to a creek on a road that enveloped the world in its vast grey flatness. The creek was tucked between trees and an old semi truck loading dock, it glittered with boulders and pebbles. I opened my trunk and motioned for Jesse to look, “I have a gift for you.” I said. I had filled my trunk with plates, vases and coffee mugs from every thrift store in Kansas City.
We smashed every single piece of glass.
He was right, it did calm him down.
I only met Jesse in person twice, and I must admit I had high hopes for us, if only for the fact that he loved plants, and I was aware of my own heart’s frailty which at the time was as easily torn as the petal of a rose in the hands of a clumsy child.
I met him the first time in the West Bottoms of Kansas City, where we went to haunted houses in old factories and clung to one another both because we were scared shitless and because we both needed so much to hold on to someone’s arm. Sometimes I get like that. I need to hold onto a man, physically, because if I don’t, I feel like I might float away or fall down. What I found out though, through years of leaving gay bars with handsome strangers, is that I’m not alone. On several occasions I got to these strangers houses or them to mine, I told them I didn’t want to have sex, I just wanted to hold them in the nude. On those occasions those men let out a sigh of release comparable to the air pushed through someone’s lungs when they are told that they do not have cancer, or that their mother will be okay. And I held a lot of beautiful lonely men that way, and they held me. I also slept with a lot of beautiful lonely, angry men that way.
The second and the last time I met Jesse was in Topeka Kansas. I drove him and I to a creek on a road that enveloped the world in its vast grey flatness. The creek was tucked between trees and an old semi truck loading dock, it glittered with boulders and pebbles. I opened my trunk and motioned for Jesse to look, “I have a gift for you.” I said. I had filled my trunk with plates, vases and coffee mugs from every thrift store in Kansas City.
We smashed every single piece of glass.
He was right, it did calm him down.
Short #1
Miles made terrible coffee and would attempt to disguise this
fact by adding a pile of cinnamon to the equal parts of canned coffee
haphazardly slopped into the paper filters of his abused coffee maker. I hated it, it tasted like those burnt things
that stick to bread pans, but I have always possessed an affinity towards men
who make coffee for me and rarely refused his black charred liquid
garbage.
On mornings when he was especially tired and his roommates were awake, he would triple brew his coffee, which consisted of brewing a pot of coffee and then pouring the coffee batch into the water chamber of the coffee maker and brewing it a third time. The result was a muddy water whose body resembled the crema of freshly pulled espresso. “Tripple BREW!” he would scream while running through the frosted apartment handing us all cups of crap. “It’s snowing and there is triple brew!” Miles was always quick to wake up. I tried to teach him how to lay in bed for hours before actually getting up, telling stories that shaped us and making love to the sounds of his Chicago flat thawing and cracking and bowing in the winters morning sun; but 15 minutes of being next to me while conscious seemed to drive him into a state of wide eyed panic. So we usually just fucked and got dressed while the triple brew turned our blood thick.
Miles was fun to have sex with because he was so young. I was not that much older than him, I was 23 and he was 20 when we met, which meant he had three years less of fucking experience than I did, three years less of heart break than I did; and I fell in love with his malleability. I fucked him like a porn star, because he was too young to know how to make love. I don’t think young gay people know how to make love anymore, and I think it’s almost entirely due to the porn industry. From the age of 18 to about 22 I received more money shots than French kisses, had my backdoor opened more times than I had car doors opened for me, cracked open more legs than I did hearts and had foreplay lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes. I didn’t learn until age 23 how to make love and I didn’t learn until age 24, how to make love with a stranger.
But then I actually fell in love with Miles and naturally, dropped a Hiroshima bomb of insecurities onto that very fragile relationship. I sometimes look around me, when I’m sitting by the water and the Pacific winds chill my bones, and I can still see the rubble.
On mornings when he was especially tired and his roommates were awake, he would triple brew his coffee, which consisted of brewing a pot of coffee and then pouring the coffee batch into the water chamber of the coffee maker and brewing it a third time. The result was a muddy water whose body resembled the crema of freshly pulled espresso. “Tripple BREW!” he would scream while running through the frosted apartment handing us all cups of crap. “It’s snowing and there is triple brew!” Miles was always quick to wake up. I tried to teach him how to lay in bed for hours before actually getting up, telling stories that shaped us and making love to the sounds of his Chicago flat thawing and cracking and bowing in the winters morning sun; but 15 minutes of being next to me while conscious seemed to drive him into a state of wide eyed panic. So we usually just fucked and got dressed while the triple brew turned our blood thick.
Miles was fun to have sex with because he was so young. I was not that much older than him, I was 23 and he was 20 when we met, which meant he had three years less of fucking experience than I did, three years less of heart break than I did; and I fell in love with his malleability. I fucked him like a porn star, because he was too young to know how to make love. I don’t think young gay people know how to make love anymore, and I think it’s almost entirely due to the porn industry. From the age of 18 to about 22 I received more money shots than French kisses, had my backdoor opened more times than I had car doors opened for me, cracked open more legs than I did hearts and had foreplay lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes. I didn’t learn until age 23 how to make love and I didn’t learn until age 24, how to make love with a stranger.
But then I actually fell in love with Miles and naturally, dropped a Hiroshima bomb of insecurities onto that very fragile relationship. I sometimes look around me, when I’m sitting by the water and the Pacific winds chill my bones, and I can still see the rubble.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Shameless
The nude beach I visit for quick fix's and sun tans, has not been so kind as of late; to bequeath onto me, a fetching body to explore in the sand. The frigged Pacific fog shrinks the will to venture to a cold beach in order to seduce lonely boys pretending to read sophisticated literature in the nude, and the fog has never been more thick and my suitors have never been more alien. I think I was spoiled the first few times I sprawled out on that sun soaked beach, earlier this summer; as it was never very long before I was pleasing or being pleased by divinely shaped men of a wide variety of color and nationality. In fact, I learned a few things, particularly that people born outside of this country have a profoundly different approach and view of sex and how to have it meaninglessly and passionately. Also, I learned a hand position and motion while preforming oral sex that was taught to me by a crispy brown Tahitian God and involves molding your fingers into what American Sign Language understands to mean, "I love you."
Never in my 24 years of being lonely and horny have I been as lonely and horny as I have been in these past few months. My body is entirely parched and for some reason my place of choice to quench the desert that is my thighs, my neck, my heart; is the secluded section of a nude beach near the Golden Gate Bridge, of which is littered with homosexual men when the tides are low. There is something slightly more romantic about having sex with a complete stranger on a beautiful beach, opposed to the bathroom of a bar or the unfamiliar sheets of unfamiliar men in the darkness of intoxication. There is something less guilty in the parting of ways, when I put my pants on and walk away, satisfied, on sand; rather than slipping my legs through the holes in my pants and slowly creeping out of someones apartment door in the middle of the night. Perhaps there is even some relief in relieving myself with individuals who do not ask my name but instead ask, "are you clean?" or "how do you like it?"
I suppose I am now tailoring, what most unadventurous married people have always described as the sewing of one's oats. But I wonder if those oats are sewn for different reasons for different people. Is the wild college girl that fucks half the frat house any different from me placing my lips upon half of the men who call upon them? Is the root of the urge to sew those oats born from our humanistic nature to breed or is it born from a place of loneliness and need for affection? Is loneliness the bottom totem of human condition? Or am I alone in it? Maybe in our culture we have just learned to not love, but to secretly hope for it every time we undress. I suspect that is just what I have learned.
The weather yesterday was enticing, an optimistic turn, so I ventured to the beach in search of some fun and to possibly find a rock to read against while the ocean spits it's vastness in my direction. The beach was a war zone of sun bathing men and I could not have been more aroused. Thinking about it now I probably look like a kid picking out puppies, just happy to be able to pet so many. The sexual liberation I have experienced in the past year of group sex and tender and furious sex of power and weakness, has allowed me to take charge of and own my sexual energy and to confidently wear it's scent on my neck. My parents disapprove of my sexual conquests. I know this because just last week my father called me a whore and it has not been forgotten of the time my mother told me I had no self respect and that I was a slut. It's weird though that they can say these things to me and I know they come from a place of love; that said I think my parents have both needed to get horse fucked for years and have never truly owned their sexuality. I was taught from a very young age that sex is a beautiful meaningful thing and people who have it with people whom they do not love have low self esteem and are generally pathetic or sad.
I don't feel sad though, when I sink my teeth into the ass cheeks of a beautiful man I do not know, nor do I experience low self esteem when men worship the parts of my body most of the men I have loved never could. A part of me feels a tremendous amount of shame for putting my toes in the gooey waters of sexual freedom, but the other part of me, the bigger part; feels empowered. I am however, scared of the origins of that empowerment and of my oats. One of the things that makes me laugh every time my mother says it, is her Quaker Oats punch line, and in relation to this subject matter I could use it to say, "I've had more dicks in my mouth than Quaker has oats," and it would be true. I've also loved more times than Quaker has oats and been heart broken more times than Quaker has oats. But it's not an oat contest, and I'm not sure who would win anyway.
Yesterday was a good day at the beach as there were more naked men than, dare I say it, Quaker has oats. I was sitting in a wide crevasse between boulders watching a man please himself while watching me watch him, he must have been the demented type that gets off on abuse and looks of disgust, because I could not have looked more like I smelled dog shit. He was gross and sad but I ignored him and eventually he walked back to the beach tugging his cock while he walked. It's always a funny thing to witness, a man walking naked tugging at an erection. The walk itself resembles the way a kitten might walk if it stepped on a piece of tape that clung to it's paw.
Not long after he left, a tall, thin, well endowed young man approached my personal space. When he saw me he apologetically excused himself. His full beard and hairy body tickled my fancy so I called to him, "Do you wanna share this space with me?" I offered him my discarded shirt to sit his ocean soaked ass on and he was quick to accept the invitation. It's times like these that I am reminded of how assertive I am when I'm on the prowl. I mean business, I know what I want and I know who I want it from and I'm not beating around any bush's; if I want you to sit, you better fucking sit. And he did.
Turns out this guys name is Drew, he's 26. An hour an a half and 4 cigarettes later it was revealed to me that he was starting a leather accessory business of which he designs for, he likes sunglasses shoes and bags, he doesn't like his step brother because he outed him when he was 14, the same age he "discovered the taint," he lives in Austin Texas and was visiting for a wedding in Napa, he doesn't think the marriage will last but he loved the reception etc... I learned a lot about him and he learned a lot about me; I also quickly learned what his beard felt like between my thighs. I've never liked beards, I've never understood why someone would. They hide the jaw line and there is nothing more sexy to me than watching the jaw of a man slide while he chews. However, after getting my taint devoured by an experienced beard I can pretty confidently say that not only will I strictly date men with facial hair from now on, but that they should also have an insatiable appetite for taint.
After we finished we hiked the mountain to the Golden Gate Shuttle where we parted ways with a hug. As I walked away he yelled, "don't forget about the taint," and I shouted back, "I taint never going to forget that!" As I rode my bike down the mountains I thought about how good it I felt and forgot the shame. I have spent a baffling amount of my life feeling ashamed of my existance and I'm proud to say I've reached a point of piece with myself. I am a man of humility, empathy, sex and love; not shame. When I first began exploring social sex, not that long ago, I wrote in my journal about how I couldn't write, instead I wrote about things I could write about and shame was one of those things:
"...I could write about the nude beach I visited just two days ago, about how I indulged in the delicacy of flesh for several hours with several beautifully sculpted men. I could write about the shame I fight off when I lay my head down at night for enjoying the type of sex that I do. For exploring the cold wet floors of orgies or the degrading warm sand of a nude beach. I could write about these things, but how do I even begin to explain how I have devalued sex, something I used to hold sacred, and how I cannot handle real intimacy without trembling. Finding the words to express the roots and fallacies that burn within me feels like I have been told that somewhere in the ocean is a grain of salt, and that I must find it before it deludes. Sometimes I see the grain of salt in the ocean of my heart that possesses the words but before I can pick it up and dry it off, it deludes into the canyons of my wet finger tips and it is gone..."
I wish I could go back in time as myself and touch my face, look into my own eyes and tell myself that I am not sick. I am not disgusting. I am young and have tasted the forbidden fruit of freedom and the reason I feel shame is not because I devalued sex but because most people are not free. Most people make free people feel ashamed for finding an elevated sense of existence that sometimes appears to be low. Self indulgence is not low, it is dangerous but never low. I wish I could tell myself those things almost as much as I wish I could tell the 14 year old me to cry more. Almost as much as I wish I could tell the 18 year old me to run further, or the 22 year old me to love a little less; but all I have is the me I'm stuck with now and the me that is now is a me that whispers to the past much to often.
A little over a year ago, before I moved to Chicago and then to California, I was invited by a handsome middle aged gentleman whom I knew through work, to a sex party in Kansas City. For months he would invite me in our passing conversation and I would decline, but when my curiosity cracked, I asked him for directions to the next party. I had always wandered what it might feel like to have half a dozen sets of hands placed upon me, and I decided I would find out. I was in the midst of letting Justin go and was under the notion that letting him go would be easier if I fell in love with someone else; but love is in short supply for gay men in Kansas City and the closest thing I could think of to replace the intimacy of love was in the touch of anybody.
I remember the night of the sex party well. I stood in my living room pacing on the uneven planks of wood that made my floor. "Am I really going to go to this thing?" I repeated to myself over and over and over again while trying to keep the piece of paper with directions on it, from shaking out of my finger tips. I called Jen for some advice and she had this to say, "Ryan, you've been wanting to do this for I don't know how many years, just go!" and with that, I was in my car on my way to the sex party. I considered getting black out drunk to help ease myself into the idea of what I was on my way to do but decided it would be best if I kept my wits about me. I was quick however, to find myself wanting a drink when I parked my car in a dark alley way in the arts district of Kansas City. The directions to the party lead me behind an old bank, to an unmarked rusted steel door, and I sat smoking cigarettes for half an hour debating approaching the back entrance of the bank. There was no signs of life.
It was the 4th of July and I listened to the fireworks bang in the distance from Lincoln Memorial, occasionally the garbage cans would illuminate purple with a particularly large explosion. I was about to turn my key and leave, seeing no signs of a gay sex party when from within the alley came an explosion that shook my car and rang my ears. Someone had just lit an M-80, which is a quarter stick of dynamite. I don't know if it's a Midwestern thing or not, but most my memories of 4th of July involve more dynamite than sparklers or smoke bombs. I once blew up a horse watering hole on my uncle's farm with an M-80, and he drug me through mud and rocks as my punishment.
Even with all of my run in's with dynamite on the 4th of July, I never fail to be horrified by the sound, and after the explosion in the alley I got out of my car to catch my panicked breath and suddenly the lifeless alley was alive with car alarms and shouting. I stood now, in that alley smoking a cigarette when over the car alarms I heard the rusty steel door creak open and watched crawl out of it 3 burly men wearing nothing but leather jock straps and chains. One of the men saw me and asked, "What the hell was that?"
"I don't know," I lied. There was silence and they turned to go back inside.
"Wait!" I yelled. "Is this?" I asked pointing to the door. The largest of the men walked towards me with his arm extended and said, "Yes it is." He winked at me and I followed him inside. It's funny now that I think about it, that the M-80 went off when it did and if it hadn't, I would not have this story to tell.
Once we got inside I found myself in a small room leading to a basement, or as they called it, "The Dungeon." There was a small podium before the basement with stipulations typed on paper that I needed to sign before entering The Dungeon, among them were these: "I will not write about my experience here" and "I am responsible for my own level of safety..." After I signed the papers and handed them to a hairy middle aged naked man wearing nothing but tall leather boots I asked for my friend, the one who invited me, and the naked man fetched him for me. I suppose for the sake of this story I should give him a name, as I'm sure he would not appreciate me exposing his identity in such a way; I'll call him Danny. As I waited for Danny to climb the stairs from The Dungeon I watched a well toned hunk grab a beer from a refrigerator at the top of the staircase. He was wrapped in leather and let his gigantic throbbing cock swing about as he bobbled back down the stairs.
"Oh My God Danny!" I shouted when I saw him reach me, I was happy to see him if for no other reason than the fact that I was in unfamiliar territory and his face was not. "Well what do you think?" he asked me. "I don't know yet, I think I'm just going to check it out and leave, I'm just curious to see what it's all about." I said laxly. "Well then lets go," he said while ushering me to the stairs. Standing at the top of the stairs I couldn't see much, it was so dark down there and it smelled like men. With each step I took down that stair way I smelled more men, heard moans of pleasure and of pain. With each step I became more excited.
When we reached the bottom I was handed a plastic bag by the door man who yielded a sharpie and nothing else. "Put your clothes in here and pick a number" he said. I looked at Danny and asked him if I could leave my underwear on. "Sure but then your going to have to carry it with you." I chose to leave them on anyway because I wasn't sure if I would be taking them off at all and I also chose the number 29. The naked man with the sharpie wrote the number 29 in large characters on my left bicep and then wrote the number again on the white trash bag containing my clothes. As I reached to take my shoes off Danny stopped me and said, "leave those on, you don't want to slip."
My bag of clothes were thrown into a mountain of about 60 other bags and Danny began the tour of The Dungeon. "This is our porn room" he said while using his elegant hands to Vanna White the entrance. I stepped inside and there was a projector flinging raunchy porn onto the wall and about twenty lawn chairs spread out for viewers. Only half of the chairs were occupied by men furiously pleasing themselves and each other. It was around this time that I began to wonder what the fuck I was doing in the basement of a bank nearly naked, getting a tour of a gay sex Dungeon in Kansas City, but the tour was not even close to being over and I had a lot more to see.
Next, Danny walked me to the "social room" taking much delight in my looks of horror and intrigue. Upon walking into the social room I first noticed a muscular tattooed man lounging in an antique shoe shinning throne getting a blow job from a skinny young twink, it was at the sight of this that blood began to leave my brain and fill my lower half. There were twenty or so men lying on couches fucking, or standing next to someone feeling around to create a spark. "Over here we have our spanking station, the paddles hanging on that hook over there if you wanna try it out," said Danny. I imagined what the sting of that paddle might have felt like on my thighs or face or back. Danny motioned for me to keep moving while he showed me more, but my eyes stayed on that spanking station until my body found itself in a third room.
In the third room, there were three sex swings hanging from the cob webbed rafters above, one of which was occupied by a young college student I recognized from behind the cash register at my favorite jewelry store in Westport. He was getting jack hammered by a line of men waiting their turn. It was in this room that I looked up at the faces of the men around me. Some were young, attractive specimens and others were undesirable even to a mirror but it is strange how similar people look when they are naked. The expression on their faces were that of dogs at an animal shelter, their eyes widened and their noses inhaled at the sight of a meal, of which was soon to be slipped under their cage in a dirty chipped bowl. I imagine I might have looked the same.
Danny introduced me to a body builder who's name I did not catch, but who had the nicest chest I've ever seen, upon which was a tribal tattoo. I hate tribal tattoos but I am a sucker for a nice chest and it was not long before I grabbed him by the cock, using it as a leash to guide him back to the social room where we retired to an old couch. It was the type of old couch you might see in a psychiatrists office, with no back or arm rests. I lay on top of him while he explored my body, my hands touching his face gently as I kissed him, and he devoured me. He stopped me soon into this and said, "Stop kissing me like that, it makes me feel like we're on a date." It was then that I realized something very important about myself, and that is this: I don't know how to kiss a man without passion and I'm not sure I ever want to learn.
But I stopped kissing him, and he flipped me over and began pleasing me while a group of young men and old men crowded around us. We were now the show, and I loved every second of it. I sent out invitations to my mouth quickly, and rejected those who did not ask. Among the rejected was Danny, and a man who tasted like garbage. Somewhere between putting my clothes in a trash bag and the man with the garbage cock, I had become intoxicated in a way that drugs or alcohol could never alter me and my judgement was gone. The room began to spin, I was in extacy but could still hear the voice of me screaming from a million light years away in the galaxy of my mind, "stop Ryan, stop!" Louder than the voice of me was the screams of climax from around me, from the sex swing room, from the spanking station, from the porn room. Louder than me was my climax, the few seconds of which was an out of body experience; it was when the voice of me was discarded completely and I as I knew me was pushed out of my physical self so that my body could feel what it needed to feel. This, was the first time my body won. This is why I love group sex: because my body always wins.
I spent many years fighting with my body. Not able to get erections around gorgeous men with flawless bodies because my mind would win. My mind wanted to be loved unconditionally, to be stimulated by conversation, to be appreciated and it always had a way of shutting my body down when it knew the stranger inside of me did not know what love was. My mind had control over my sexuality, and I could not preform unless I was in love, fulfilling both physical and emotional needs. I could not have one without the other and it was in the sexual liberation of group sex that I learned how to separate the two. I learned to quiet my mind enough to just let my body do what it does and to focus not on the need to be loved but the need to feel physical sensation. I have learned that I am an extremely sexual person and in order to be happy in a relationship and out of one, I have to let go of the shame so many of us have been taught to feel for being sexual.
That said, to this day, I still get twinges of shame that come and go as quick and with as much power as a lightning bolt, of the night I spent playing the part of a rag doll in the basement of a bank in Kansas City. I remember after I climaxed, I sat up and took a whore bath with hand sanitizer, which was available on a table in gallon sized jugs. The room slowed and I looked around me for the first time since entering The Dungeon, not with lust but with an indescribable horror. I ran to the pile of trash bags and began to dig through them for the one that had my number on it. Number 29. The naked door man found it before I could and I put my clothes on, my toes getting caught on every fold of my jeans. I said goodbye to Danny and bolted out of The Dungeon and into my car, where over the coarse of four cigarettes I decided what events of the evening I would forever omit from friends and from myself.
Those lightning bolts of shame I sometimes get, are those omissions.
And I have omitted more truths from my life than Quaker has oats.
Never in my 24 years of being lonely and horny have I been as lonely and horny as I have been in these past few months. My body is entirely parched and for some reason my place of choice to quench the desert that is my thighs, my neck, my heart; is the secluded section of a nude beach near the Golden Gate Bridge, of which is littered with homosexual men when the tides are low. There is something slightly more romantic about having sex with a complete stranger on a beautiful beach, opposed to the bathroom of a bar or the unfamiliar sheets of unfamiliar men in the darkness of intoxication. There is something less guilty in the parting of ways, when I put my pants on and walk away, satisfied, on sand; rather than slipping my legs through the holes in my pants and slowly creeping out of someones apartment door in the middle of the night. Perhaps there is even some relief in relieving myself with individuals who do not ask my name but instead ask, "are you clean?" or "how do you like it?"
I suppose I am now tailoring, what most unadventurous married people have always described as the sewing of one's oats. But I wonder if those oats are sewn for different reasons for different people. Is the wild college girl that fucks half the frat house any different from me placing my lips upon half of the men who call upon them? Is the root of the urge to sew those oats born from our humanistic nature to breed or is it born from a place of loneliness and need for affection? Is loneliness the bottom totem of human condition? Or am I alone in it? Maybe in our culture we have just learned to not love, but to secretly hope for it every time we undress. I suspect that is just what I have learned.
The weather yesterday was enticing, an optimistic turn, so I ventured to the beach in search of some fun and to possibly find a rock to read against while the ocean spits it's vastness in my direction. The beach was a war zone of sun bathing men and I could not have been more aroused. Thinking about it now I probably look like a kid picking out puppies, just happy to be able to pet so many. The sexual liberation I have experienced in the past year of group sex and tender and furious sex of power and weakness, has allowed me to take charge of and own my sexual energy and to confidently wear it's scent on my neck. My parents disapprove of my sexual conquests. I know this because just last week my father called me a whore and it has not been forgotten of the time my mother told me I had no self respect and that I was a slut. It's weird though that they can say these things to me and I know they come from a place of love; that said I think my parents have both needed to get horse fucked for years and have never truly owned their sexuality. I was taught from a very young age that sex is a beautiful meaningful thing and people who have it with people whom they do not love have low self esteem and are generally pathetic or sad.
I don't feel sad though, when I sink my teeth into the ass cheeks of a beautiful man I do not know, nor do I experience low self esteem when men worship the parts of my body most of the men I have loved never could. A part of me feels a tremendous amount of shame for putting my toes in the gooey waters of sexual freedom, but the other part of me, the bigger part; feels empowered. I am however, scared of the origins of that empowerment and of my oats. One of the things that makes me laugh every time my mother says it, is her Quaker Oats punch line, and in relation to this subject matter I could use it to say, "I've had more dicks in my mouth than Quaker has oats," and it would be true. I've also loved more times than Quaker has oats and been heart broken more times than Quaker has oats. But it's not an oat contest, and I'm not sure who would win anyway.
Yesterday was a good day at the beach as there were more naked men than, dare I say it, Quaker has oats. I was sitting in a wide crevasse between boulders watching a man please himself while watching me watch him, he must have been the demented type that gets off on abuse and looks of disgust, because I could not have looked more like I smelled dog shit. He was gross and sad but I ignored him and eventually he walked back to the beach tugging his cock while he walked. It's always a funny thing to witness, a man walking naked tugging at an erection. The walk itself resembles the way a kitten might walk if it stepped on a piece of tape that clung to it's paw.
Not long after he left, a tall, thin, well endowed young man approached my personal space. When he saw me he apologetically excused himself. His full beard and hairy body tickled my fancy so I called to him, "Do you wanna share this space with me?" I offered him my discarded shirt to sit his ocean soaked ass on and he was quick to accept the invitation. It's times like these that I am reminded of how assertive I am when I'm on the prowl. I mean business, I know what I want and I know who I want it from and I'm not beating around any bush's; if I want you to sit, you better fucking sit. And he did.
Turns out this guys name is Drew, he's 26. An hour an a half and 4 cigarettes later it was revealed to me that he was starting a leather accessory business of which he designs for, he likes sunglasses shoes and bags, he doesn't like his step brother because he outed him when he was 14, the same age he "discovered the taint," he lives in Austin Texas and was visiting for a wedding in Napa, he doesn't think the marriage will last but he loved the reception etc... I learned a lot about him and he learned a lot about me; I also quickly learned what his beard felt like between my thighs. I've never liked beards, I've never understood why someone would. They hide the jaw line and there is nothing more sexy to me than watching the jaw of a man slide while he chews. However, after getting my taint devoured by an experienced beard I can pretty confidently say that not only will I strictly date men with facial hair from now on, but that they should also have an insatiable appetite for taint.
After we finished we hiked the mountain to the Golden Gate Shuttle where we parted ways with a hug. As I walked away he yelled, "don't forget about the taint," and I shouted back, "I taint never going to forget that!" As I rode my bike down the mountains I thought about how good it I felt and forgot the shame. I have spent a baffling amount of my life feeling ashamed of my existance and I'm proud to say I've reached a point of piece with myself. I am a man of humility, empathy, sex and love; not shame. When I first began exploring social sex, not that long ago, I wrote in my journal about how I couldn't write, instead I wrote about things I could write about and shame was one of those things:
"...I could write about the nude beach I visited just two days ago, about how I indulged in the delicacy of flesh for several hours with several beautifully sculpted men. I could write about the shame I fight off when I lay my head down at night for enjoying the type of sex that I do. For exploring the cold wet floors of orgies or the degrading warm sand of a nude beach. I could write about these things, but how do I even begin to explain how I have devalued sex, something I used to hold sacred, and how I cannot handle real intimacy without trembling. Finding the words to express the roots and fallacies that burn within me feels like I have been told that somewhere in the ocean is a grain of salt, and that I must find it before it deludes. Sometimes I see the grain of salt in the ocean of my heart that possesses the words but before I can pick it up and dry it off, it deludes into the canyons of my wet finger tips and it is gone..."
I wish I could go back in time as myself and touch my face, look into my own eyes and tell myself that I am not sick. I am not disgusting. I am young and have tasted the forbidden fruit of freedom and the reason I feel shame is not because I devalued sex but because most people are not free. Most people make free people feel ashamed for finding an elevated sense of existence that sometimes appears to be low. Self indulgence is not low, it is dangerous but never low. I wish I could tell myself those things almost as much as I wish I could tell the 14 year old me to cry more. Almost as much as I wish I could tell the 18 year old me to run further, or the 22 year old me to love a little less; but all I have is the me I'm stuck with now and the me that is now is a me that whispers to the past much to often.
A little over a year ago, before I moved to Chicago and then to California, I was invited by a handsome middle aged gentleman whom I knew through work, to a sex party in Kansas City. For months he would invite me in our passing conversation and I would decline, but when my curiosity cracked, I asked him for directions to the next party. I had always wandered what it might feel like to have half a dozen sets of hands placed upon me, and I decided I would find out. I was in the midst of letting Justin go and was under the notion that letting him go would be easier if I fell in love with someone else; but love is in short supply for gay men in Kansas City and the closest thing I could think of to replace the intimacy of love was in the touch of anybody.
I remember the night of the sex party well. I stood in my living room pacing on the uneven planks of wood that made my floor. "Am I really going to go to this thing?" I repeated to myself over and over and over again while trying to keep the piece of paper with directions on it, from shaking out of my finger tips. I called Jen for some advice and she had this to say, "Ryan, you've been wanting to do this for I don't know how many years, just go!" and with that, I was in my car on my way to the sex party. I considered getting black out drunk to help ease myself into the idea of what I was on my way to do but decided it would be best if I kept my wits about me. I was quick however, to find myself wanting a drink when I parked my car in a dark alley way in the arts district of Kansas City. The directions to the party lead me behind an old bank, to an unmarked rusted steel door, and I sat smoking cigarettes for half an hour debating approaching the back entrance of the bank. There was no signs of life.
It was the 4th of July and I listened to the fireworks bang in the distance from Lincoln Memorial, occasionally the garbage cans would illuminate purple with a particularly large explosion. I was about to turn my key and leave, seeing no signs of a gay sex party when from within the alley came an explosion that shook my car and rang my ears. Someone had just lit an M-80, which is a quarter stick of dynamite. I don't know if it's a Midwestern thing or not, but most my memories of 4th of July involve more dynamite than sparklers or smoke bombs. I once blew up a horse watering hole on my uncle's farm with an M-80, and he drug me through mud and rocks as my punishment.
Even with all of my run in's with dynamite on the 4th of July, I never fail to be horrified by the sound, and after the explosion in the alley I got out of my car to catch my panicked breath and suddenly the lifeless alley was alive with car alarms and shouting. I stood now, in that alley smoking a cigarette when over the car alarms I heard the rusty steel door creak open and watched crawl out of it 3 burly men wearing nothing but leather jock straps and chains. One of the men saw me and asked, "What the hell was that?"
"I don't know," I lied. There was silence and they turned to go back inside.
"Wait!" I yelled. "Is this?" I asked pointing to the door. The largest of the men walked towards me with his arm extended and said, "Yes it is." He winked at me and I followed him inside. It's funny now that I think about it, that the M-80 went off when it did and if it hadn't, I would not have this story to tell.
Once we got inside I found myself in a small room leading to a basement, or as they called it, "The Dungeon." There was a small podium before the basement with stipulations typed on paper that I needed to sign before entering The Dungeon, among them were these: "I will not write about my experience here" and "I am responsible for my own level of safety..." After I signed the papers and handed them to a hairy middle aged naked man wearing nothing but tall leather boots I asked for my friend, the one who invited me, and the naked man fetched him for me. I suppose for the sake of this story I should give him a name, as I'm sure he would not appreciate me exposing his identity in such a way; I'll call him Danny. As I waited for Danny to climb the stairs from The Dungeon I watched a well toned hunk grab a beer from a refrigerator at the top of the staircase. He was wrapped in leather and let his gigantic throbbing cock swing about as he bobbled back down the stairs.
"Oh My God Danny!" I shouted when I saw him reach me, I was happy to see him if for no other reason than the fact that I was in unfamiliar territory and his face was not. "Well what do you think?" he asked me. "I don't know yet, I think I'm just going to check it out and leave, I'm just curious to see what it's all about." I said laxly. "Well then lets go," he said while ushering me to the stairs. Standing at the top of the stairs I couldn't see much, it was so dark down there and it smelled like men. With each step I took down that stair way I smelled more men, heard moans of pleasure and of pain. With each step I became more excited.
When we reached the bottom I was handed a plastic bag by the door man who yielded a sharpie and nothing else. "Put your clothes in here and pick a number" he said. I looked at Danny and asked him if I could leave my underwear on. "Sure but then your going to have to carry it with you." I chose to leave them on anyway because I wasn't sure if I would be taking them off at all and I also chose the number 29. The naked man with the sharpie wrote the number 29 in large characters on my left bicep and then wrote the number again on the white trash bag containing my clothes. As I reached to take my shoes off Danny stopped me and said, "leave those on, you don't want to slip."
My bag of clothes were thrown into a mountain of about 60 other bags and Danny began the tour of The Dungeon. "This is our porn room" he said while using his elegant hands to Vanna White the entrance. I stepped inside and there was a projector flinging raunchy porn onto the wall and about twenty lawn chairs spread out for viewers. Only half of the chairs were occupied by men furiously pleasing themselves and each other. It was around this time that I began to wonder what the fuck I was doing in the basement of a bank nearly naked, getting a tour of a gay sex Dungeon in Kansas City, but the tour was not even close to being over and I had a lot more to see.
Next, Danny walked me to the "social room" taking much delight in my looks of horror and intrigue. Upon walking into the social room I first noticed a muscular tattooed man lounging in an antique shoe shinning throne getting a blow job from a skinny young twink, it was at the sight of this that blood began to leave my brain and fill my lower half. There were twenty or so men lying on couches fucking, or standing next to someone feeling around to create a spark. "Over here we have our spanking station, the paddles hanging on that hook over there if you wanna try it out," said Danny. I imagined what the sting of that paddle might have felt like on my thighs or face or back. Danny motioned for me to keep moving while he showed me more, but my eyes stayed on that spanking station until my body found itself in a third room.
In the third room, there were three sex swings hanging from the cob webbed rafters above, one of which was occupied by a young college student I recognized from behind the cash register at my favorite jewelry store in Westport. He was getting jack hammered by a line of men waiting their turn. It was in this room that I looked up at the faces of the men around me. Some were young, attractive specimens and others were undesirable even to a mirror but it is strange how similar people look when they are naked. The expression on their faces were that of dogs at an animal shelter, their eyes widened and their noses inhaled at the sight of a meal, of which was soon to be slipped under their cage in a dirty chipped bowl. I imagine I might have looked the same.
Danny introduced me to a body builder who's name I did not catch, but who had the nicest chest I've ever seen, upon which was a tribal tattoo. I hate tribal tattoos but I am a sucker for a nice chest and it was not long before I grabbed him by the cock, using it as a leash to guide him back to the social room where we retired to an old couch. It was the type of old couch you might see in a psychiatrists office, with no back or arm rests. I lay on top of him while he explored my body, my hands touching his face gently as I kissed him, and he devoured me. He stopped me soon into this and said, "Stop kissing me like that, it makes me feel like we're on a date." It was then that I realized something very important about myself, and that is this: I don't know how to kiss a man without passion and I'm not sure I ever want to learn.
But I stopped kissing him, and he flipped me over and began pleasing me while a group of young men and old men crowded around us. We were now the show, and I loved every second of it. I sent out invitations to my mouth quickly, and rejected those who did not ask. Among the rejected was Danny, and a man who tasted like garbage. Somewhere between putting my clothes in a trash bag and the man with the garbage cock, I had become intoxicated in a way that drugs or alcohol could never alter me and my judgement was gone. The room began to spin, I was in extacy but could still hear the voice of me screaming from a million light years away in the galaxy of my mind, "stop Ryan, stop!" Louder than the voice of me was the screams of climax from around me, from the sex swing room, from the spanking station, from the porn room. Louder than me was my climax, the few seconds of which was an out of body experience; it was when the voice of me was discarded completely and I as I knew me was pushed out of my physical self so that my body could feel what it needed to feel. This, was the first time my body won. This is why I love group sex: because my body always wins.
I spent many years fighting with my body. Not able to get erections around gorgeous men with flawless bodies because my mind would win. My mind wanted to be loved unconditionally, to be stimulated by conversation, to be appreciated and it always had a way of shutting my body down when it knew the stranger inside of me did not know what love was. My mind had control over my sexuality, and I could not preform unless I was in love, fulfilling both physical and emotional needs. I could not have one without the other and it was in the sexual liberation of group sex that I learned how to separate the two. I learned to quiet my mind enough to just let my body do what it does and to focus not on the need to be loved but the need to feel physical sensation. I have learned that I am an extremely sexual person and in order to be happy in a relationship and out of one, I have to let go of the shame so many of us have been taught to feel for being sexual.
That said, to this day, I still get twinges of shame that come and go as quick and with as much power as a lightning bolt, of the night I spent playing the part of a rag doll in the basement of a bank in Kansas City. I remember after I climaxed, I sat up and took a whore bath with hand sanitizer, which was available on a table in gallon sized jugs. The room slowed and I looked around me for the first time since entering The Dungeon, not with lust but with an indescribable horror. I ran to the pile of trash bags and began to dig through them for the one that had my number on it. Number 29. The naked door man found it before I could and I put my clothes on, my toes getting caught on every fold of my jeans. I said goodbye to Danny and bolted out of The Dungeon and into my car, where over the coarse of four cigarettes I decided what events of the evening I would forever omit from friends and from myself.
Those lightning bolts of shame I sometimes get, are those omissions.
And I have omitted more truths from my life than Quaker has oats.
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