• Check out my blog, “Confessions of a Str8 Gay Man”
  • Directory to My Short Story Collection, “Basic Butch”
  • Here’s an Excerpt from “For the Love of Samuel”
  • Here’s An Excerpt from My New Novella, “Buy Guys,” A Tale of Redemption
  • Here’s An Excerpt from My Romantic Novella, “Not In It For The Love”
  • Here’s An Excerpt from My Gay Erotic Novel of Deceit, Betrayal and Self-Discovery, “The Czar of Wilton Drive”
  • More On the Making of “For the Love of Samuel”

Monthly Archives: June 2015

Inside The Mind Of a Writer: Real Life Experiences That Shaped My Art

30 Tuesday Jun 2015

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Inside The Mind Of a Writer: Real Life Experiences That Shaped My Art

My One Month Career as a Rentboy

Here I am, a guy who taught Sunday School as a good Lutheran and ended up on the other end of my life, after a successful professional career in the str8 world, a gay fiction writer, hustler and porn star.

Go figure.

Getting out from under the 60 hour work week grind of public relations, I finally was able to do something I had wanted to do for years – write gay fiction. Now in SoFlo, I had the time and wrote two works, one a collection of short stores, the other a novella. And I said “fuck you” to the snooty literary agents of the pre-web era and a dying publishing industry by posting my stuff as e-books on Kindle and Nook.

Rationalizing I needed to do first hand research on male prostitution for my next book, what better way to find out than be one. So, very matter of factly one night I plunked down my fifty bucks of Visa dollars and posted a profile on rentboy.com.

Ah, but there were other, deeper motives for my madness. One was my attempt to fulfill a fantasy suggested by my dearly departed meth head/fuck buddy/clone Mitch, who had already been a guy for hire back in New York, that we play a Rentboy tag team for guys looking for double the trouble.

The other was my overactive ego: would someone actually pay me, an aging faggot, even if time had been kind to me, to have sex with them?

A buddy once said to me that he found it pretty pathetic that somebody had to pay for sex. But I heartedly disagree. Sure, sex can be a wonderful exchange between two people, but why can’t it also be a commodity for those willing to buy what they want, just like the newest tech toy or Abercrombie and Fitch polo? Contrary to the notion that only losers pay for sex, there are plenty of good looking guys out there, busy with high power 24/7 careers or entwined in complicated personal lives, who just choose to take the expedient route. I’ve always been an advocate for making prostitution in this country legal and get over our collective Puritanical hang-ups. Make sure the boys and girls are disease free, and tax ‘em, baby.

“Who’s your daddy?” was my on-screen persona, trying to create a market niche distinct from all the pretty boys, and I openly admitted I was over 40 in my ad (how much over 40 I conveniently left out), but rationalized that tidbit with the tagline, “but you did say you wanted a daddy, didn’t you?”

I low bowed my hourly rate to $150 so I’d have a better chance at scoring, given the stiff competition, and made myself “out only” – their place, not mine. Would-be clients could contact me either via email on the site or my cell phone #, and I used a Tracfone just for that so if or when I had any issue associated with my new career – as in being stalked, like I should have such problems – I could chuck the phone just like a drug dealer.
So what does it take to be a Rentboy, besides, of course, some alluring physical attributes and a lot of moxie?

(a) The ability to do it with just about anyone, and if you’re playing the top like me, you know dicks don’t lie, which I figured wouldn’t be a problem given some of the loser tricks I’ve had over the years. You just put yourself in a fantasy mode, right?

(b) A feeling of super-superiority that you’re so hot (it’s all about self-love, baby) that the guy is willing to pay you – PAY YOU – to feel your tool in his mouth or up his butt. You know what an exhilarating high that is? Better than meth.

(c) The absolute resistance to ask the guy what he looks like. Yes, you need to know what he’s looking for, but those big bills on the night stand are what are supposed to arouse you, not whether he looks like Woody Allen’s older brother.

But when a week went by after posting my ad and I got no takers, I was convinced I had pushed the envelope too far, that I was a jerk for even thinking I could pull this off at my age, with all the twenty something, thirty something porn star quality meat that was vying for that same universe of hungry, lonely men. What was I trying to do? Make the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest male hooker?

Ah, but my feelings of dejection were premature. At the beginning of my second week I got a hit.

Lennie was a 67 year old retired dentist from Palm Springs staying at one of the gay guest houses off Lauderdale Beach. He actually was looking for two guys to fuck him (something my late meth-head Mitch would have loved) so I was not that surprised when I arrived, a smooth, thirty something Latin stud was already there, drilling the guy’s hole, doggie style. He barely paused from his mission to glance my way.

“Randy,” whispered Lennie, who resembled a pursy Episcopal minister, giving me the once over, and gesturing for me to join in. I quickly forsook my nylon running shorts and jockstrap that I had worn, so I thought, for some enhanced foreplay, and, thanking that Canadian online pharmacy for the two thousandth time in my life, went over and gave Latin Stud a breather.

All the way over to the guest house, I had been wondering if I could really do this, but I soon discovered, in this, my baptism by fire, that just the idea that someone wanted you so bad that they would pay for you made my 50 mg. of Viagra superfluous. I also gave a mental finger to all those guys who had rejected me over the years. Would anybody pay you, fuckers?

Actually Latin Stud and I got into something of a fucking competition, seeing who could pound poor Lennie the longest, but in the end I think it was a draw. Two minutes before the hour was up, Lennie shot his load and, lying back in a pool of sweat, gestured to the bureau and two envelopes. “Thanks, men, you were great.” Not that Latin Stud was my type – I liked ‘em hirsute – but my quick flirting wink and cockteasy smirk produced absolutely no response from my co-conspirator. He was apparently all business. I wondered as we both strolled out like two total strangers if his hourly rate had been higher.

My next suitor was actually fun, young, and farmboy cute, a multimillionaire software developer from D.C. I found out later in the brief chitchat that followed us doing the nasty. He was in town on business and had no time to beat the bushes searching for dick. When I had called Josh back – he had left a message for “Coach” on my Tracfone – he told me he had a jock fetish and could I come by in sneaks, a jockstrap, nylon gym shorts and a cap. No problem I replied, and that night at 11 after Josh had schmoozed some potential clients at dinner, I arrived in costume at his plush suite at the ritzy Ritz Carlton right off the beach. I think square footage wise it was larger than my house.

Keeping Josh entertained was like taking candy from a baby. In decent shape and stripped down to his old fashioned white jockey underwear, he lay on his stomach, with me sprawled on his king size bed, legs slovenly spread, my crotch in his face as he felt underneath my shorts, then jockstrap, for the prize. After teasing it from the outside with his tongue, he whipped out my very erect cock and slowly blew me – no reciprocation required. We spent almost half of his hour talking about life – and his very mousey wife.

Ralph, a social anthropologist and university professor in town to judge a doctoral dissertation, was a bearish, hairless, six foot five actually-not-all-that-bad-looking kind of a guy who, like Josh, made very little demands on me except that I keep my cock hard so he could suck me off. The La Quinta he was staying at was only a few minutes from my house and when I got back to my car after our 11 p.m. Sunday night appointment and counted my cash, I realized he had either given me a bonus (he did keep telling me throughout our session how he adored my fur and that I belonged on a magazine cover) or misread my hourly rate on the Rentboy site. But I was not about to return it, that’s for sure, and went on my merry way.

Hands down, my fourth client who revealed himself in an e-mail in my Rentboy dropbox was my most bizarre but one I wish my shitty little two by four life would have allowed me to act on:

“Hello, handsome. Just browsing the web and found your profile so cool and nice sexy pictures. I am an engineer, 42 yrs old, from Great Britain and I will need you on my Business Trip to Eastern Europe on the 30th of June for 8 days. I need someone who will follow my instructions and obey my orders, someone who is very decent, kind, honest, trustworthy and undetectable to protect my image and name. Just need you to come and give me some massages and keep me warm throughout my stay in Prague and Warsaw. I am ready to offer you a good sum of 2000.00 pounds per day for 8 days, which I will pay you upfront even before you leave the country. All necessary documents will be arranged for you, so feel free to get back to me only if you are interested and willing to go with me. M.”

Was this guy for real? Who knows? He sure sounded enticing. But even if he were on the level, I doubted I could keep up the charade that long – an hour or two 15 minutes from my house is one thing, eight days halfway around the world quite another. Though, when it came to both my very legitimate career in public relations and my very illegitimate career as a male hooker, the most valuable courses I ever took in college were my acting classes.

My last proper stranger before I let my ad lapse at the end of its month’s run was also the greatest test to my doing it with anybody. Hearing Rob on the phone, I imagined him to be a fifty something big guy. He was coming in from Gainesville strictly for a play weekend and dug hairy guys (c’est moi) big time.

Then, the morning of the day we were to meet at his hotel just a few minutes from my house, he dropped the bombshell. He was THE Rob, the big guy who had been stalking me on a couple of the hook-up sites for the past year. I was his ultimate fantasy stud muffin and in his e-mails he went on in deliciously decadent detail what he wanted me to do to him. When he called that morning he apologized for the ruse and fully understood if I wanted to back out. Instead, in some weird fucken way, I became even more intrigued by the prospect and adamant in seeing this through.

So loaded up with 100 mg. of Big V, I reported for my scheduled “appointment” at the Marriott just minutes from my house. For all his bulk, Rob had an infectious smile, and kept my dick stirring as he deified me with his mouth and tongue and words. This is when, as he took my load and spurt his own, that I had one of those life defining eureka moments and realized that, had I been younger, I might, just might have become a career whoreman.

So what did I learn from my month as a Rentboy? That physicality and physical attraction defy social class, professional standing, race, and most of all, personal pride; and that while money can’t buy you love, it sure as hell can buy you one of the best fucks of your life.

Thursday: Real Life Experiences that Have Shaped My Art: My Fifteen Minutes of Fame As a Porn Star

Inside The Mind of a Writer: Real Life Experiences That Shaped My Art

25 Thursday Jun 2015

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Inside The Mind of a Writer: Real Life Experiences That Shaped My Art
Genocide

I wasn’t one of those urban gay men that knew legions of buddies who died of a disease that ironically disfigured men so obsessed with their looks and physical being. But I do remember Bobbie Rosenberg who lived on the Upper East Side in an old walk-up, a relic of the turn-of the-last-century days when immigrants crowded what were then considered tenements. It was the tale end of the seventies, ad we had met at Uncle Charlie’s, a local bar, played around one night, then morphed into Saturday night bar hopping buddies. While I watched the clock, and wondered what the traffic would be like in the Lincoln Tunnel since I was still living at home at the time in Jersey, Bobbie, moonfaced, stoop-shouldered Bobbie, knew exactly what to do to get a man to come back with him.

I was fucken jealous and rationalized that the guys were so horny they’d fuck their cat by that point.
Bobbie also had the not-so-coveted knack of contracting the Disease of the Month which didn’t bother him at all; in fact, he’d often brag to me about what exotica he had caught getting fucked. Amoebas were my favorite.
December 31, 1979, Bobbie hosted a New Year’s Eve Party in his tiny apartment and invited George and I. I remember watching Dave Clark who had that gay icon group, “The Village People” on. They sang some song extolling the upcoming new decade and the buzz among us gay guys was that the ‘80’s were to be OUR time. Had we known what was ahead, we would have dumped our poppers down the toilet and joined a seminary. Looking back, though I know it wasn’t true, AIDS seemed like some Biblical retribution for the Sodom and Gomorrah ‘70’s.

I lost touch with Bobbie soon after that, and I often wondered if Bobbie had been swept away in the First Wave of the AIDS genocide that hit soon after.

A few years later on vacation in Houston’s Montrose gay ghetto, I picked up a tall, balding, non-descript looking guy with a hairy swimmers build bod and clipped mustache who was OK with oral sex. Maybe because he knew it would be easier to get. It was the mid 80’s, even ATZ wasn’t on the horizon yet, and after we played, Herb took a dozen eggs out of his frig, and separated the whites from the yolks which he then chucked down with some OJ. He was insistent that this newest craze in self-medication for AIDS was helping him. I never met him again so I’ll never know.

When I went for my first HIV test and had to wait a week for the results, I was convinced, even though I never bottomed, I would be positive and was ready to accept that reality since I was an adult male who knew exactly what he was dealing with, not some poor weepy victim, a role so many guys I’d meet took on who played with fire after 1985 when it was clear you didn’t get it from a toilet seat or a bad bottle of poppers. But each time I’ve been tested, I come up negative, and even my gay doc subscribes to the theory that some guys – maybe a very small number of us – are just immune.

Or maybe just lucky.

And you know what they say about luck.

Tuesday: Real Life Experiences That Shaped My Art – My One Month Career as a Rentboy

Inside The Mind of a Writer: Real Life Experiences That Shaped My Art

23 Tuesday Jun 2015

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Inside The Mind of a Writer: Real Life Experiences That Shaped My Art
NYC’s Leather Scene

Once upon a time, there was a sign stenciled in white on the black wall of the tight, SRO-style john at one of NYC’s sleaziest West Village bars, the Spike. “Don’t Flush for Piss.” That sign said it all.

True, you can still find the S Factor at Fort Lauderdale’s Ramrod leather bar, and echoes of the glory days of the seventies, eighties and nineties at Philly’s Bike Stop, D.C’s Eagle, Chelsea’s Rawhide, and Christopher Street’s Ty’s. But for real authentic sleaze you’d have to take a time machine back to New York City’s West Village Sleaze Alley threesome, the Spike, the Eagle and the Lure.

For anybody in the leather/levi scene of decades past and living in New York, visiting these bars on a Friday and Saturday night was a given. You wouldn’t just visit one of them even if essentially the same guys frequented all three. You’d have your early evening beer at the Rawhide in Chelsea (for those of us who came in from the ‘burbs parking in the West 20’s was saner). But by 11ish you were trotting your levied ass (or bare one if you were wearing chaps under your trench) down to West Street. The streets were dimly lit and kinda scary to be honest, but you didn’t care. You were butch (with no shirt under your leather jacket on a 10 degree NYC January night so your tits were all perky for your grand unveiling in the bar) and about to enter Manhattan’s Butch Zone. The S bars were all within reasonable walking distance of one another, so making the circuit was easy even with the wind blowing in your face.

And when you’re Saturday night horny, four or five blocks in sub-zero weather means nothing.

While the other bars of the triumvirate were a bit kinder when it came to dress code, at the Lure it didn’t matter what you looked like; if you were wearing sneakers or, Jesus, after-shave or cologne, Mr. Bouncer would turn you away.

And once you entered these temples to sleeze, there was no place, I mean NO PLACE, to move except against another sweaty body in bars the size of the men’s section at any Macy’s. The smell of man-drenched arm pits and chests, beer-laden piss, even carcasses (The Lure, in the heart of the now chic Meat Market, was once a meat packing warehouse) was everywhere. While it was nice to socialize with some buddies, cruising was the main reason you were there in this world before 24/7 cybersex. And even if it was more illusion than reality, these holes had the dingy, dreggy look as if they had been there from the early days of NYC’s pre-gay liberation when being queer meant belonging to some truly secret society of men, not a sub-cultural demographic dissected by Congress and wooed by Corporate America.

On Summer Sunday late afternoons from 4 until about 8, the Sleaze torch was handed over to the Dugout at West and Christopher. There, sweaty men, half naked men flooded the corner, searching for the one last fling or two of the weekend before Monday morning reality came crashing down on all our respective little shitty worlds.

If they hadn’t become victims of the real estate boom that transformed this abandoned sector of New York into a new Soho, (though I understand it’s still called the Meat Packing District), NYC’s gay sleaze alley might still be with us. But alas, that was not to be. While City dwellers and tourists can still point to places like the Rawhide and Ty’s or the Ramrod, it just ain’t the same without the West Village threesome, smelly corners of the world that every leather/levi bar today, whether it realizes it or not, is seeking to emulate, replicate, recreate.

Last I visited the Village, killing time between Amtrak trains, where the Lure once ruled is now a sleek physical therapy center, and I understand an art gallery now occupies the space that the Spike called home.

I’m just hoping some gay historian had the smarts to save the “Don’t Flush for Piss” sign in the Spike’s john before they painted the wall over mauve.

Thursday: Real Life Experiences That Shaped My Art – Genocide

Inside The Mind Of a Writer

23 Tuesday Jun 2015

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Inside The Mind of a Writer

Here’s the blow-by-blow saga of me making it as a writer…

The Beginning

I’ve always been a good writer. Got mostly A’s on my papers in high school and that allowed me later in college where I was an English major to skip most of the basic essay writing courses freshmen are obliged to take. Yet ironically, when I took the creative writing class, I got a C+! Maybe the prof had the hots for me and was frustrated – who knows?

Later, when I went for my graduate degree at the University of Southern California in L.A., more to get away from my controlling folks than for its wild gay scene, I enrolled in its school of drama. Maybe because part of me, at 5’6, fantasized about20150109_140534-1 being the next Dustin Hoffman, and part because I was interested in script writing, plays (Tennessee Williams was my favorite playwright), maybe even film.

As a kid, I thought movie stars never grew old, and even today I believe “film,” – in all its variations – is the closest thing we humans have to immortality. (Think about it: our collective fascination with old Hollywood lauded and energized by media outlets like TCM is based largely on people who are long dead.)

I did well in my playwriting course –seems I have a natural talent for dialogue – even had one of my one act plays mounted as a class production. But I realized quickly that writing for actors is a collaborative effort involving many people. And I’m a solo kind of a guy which is why writing fiction was the creative niche I was drawn to.

I wanted to stay in L.A., clinging to the hope I might somehow make it in the movie business, but my rude awakening came when I took the bus to Culver City, home of the fabled MGM, to apply for a “title” writer’s job at the studio. This was 1970 – Culver City was a ghetto, MGM’s glory days had long gone, and its property, like most of the mecca studios, was being sold off. So instead of being interviewed in a spacious Louis B Mayor kind of office, the HR guy met me in a small shack just inside the security gates.

He pondered my resume – remember, I had no experience since I just finished my master’s degree – and reacted positively to what he saw, then pointed to two bulging mailbags behind him. “You look good, but I’ve got a lot more applications to go through before I decide.”

That – and a 6.6 earthquake a few weeks later –put an end to my Hollywood fantasy.

Two months later I was back home living with my folks in suburban North Jersey, and working at my very first professional job as an assistant to the editorial supervisor in the public relations department at Blue Cross of New York on Lexington and 26th. (This was before Blue Cross and Blue Shield emerged.)

In the era before Monster.com and Career Builders, the only way to find a professional position if you didn’t go into teaching was to religiously comb the want ads in Sunday’s New York Times, and hit the pavement and check out the employment agencies in Manhattan. When the rep mentioned the job at Blue Cross in its public relations department, I slyly thought, “What’s public relations? Group sex?”

But, I’m a quick learner and Betty, my boss, taught me everything I needed to know to make PR my life’s career. Reflecting back, the office was a version of “Mad Men,” with Betty the only professional woman on staff, surrounded by chain-smoking, womanizing, liquored-lunch males.

That job was a stepping stone to the assistant to the community relations director at a hospital on Staten Island, the forgotten borough of NYC, where I moved to cut my commute to twenty minutes by car. Unlike many people who go through three or four employers in their work years, I pretty much stayed put, and moved up the ladder to eventually become the marketing and communications VP for had evolved into a multi-facility healthcare network.

The one problem was, after working a hectic sixty hour work week where I was on the computer writing reports, media releases, advertising copy, you name it, fifty percent of the time, the last thing I wanted to do was write in my precious spare time. Not a cop-out – a reality.

That would have to wait until decades later when I semi-retired to sunny, sexy Fort Lauderdale, which not only gave me the time to write but also a hell of a lot of experiences to write about.

My Baptism of Fire in the Writing Game

In 2002, having put my pennies away while I was making the “big” money in New York, I decided to leave The Big Apple and my corporate job, and semi-retired to sunny Fort Lauderdale where I had snowbirded for over a decade and already owned property. I was fortunate to line up a teaching job at a small private boy’s school; then, a year later, I gravitated to adjunct professorships at two local universities where I taught college writing. Compared to my staggering workload back in New York, teaching was a cake walk. Hell, I had all my lesson plans on Power Point, which meant I could walk in drunk and still teach the class.

But now I had run out of excuses on why I couldn’t write for the pleasure of it. And, with the advent of the personal computer and Microsoft Word ( I remember the days in my early career when my office floor was littered with “drafts” off an IBM Selectric typewriter), writing, at least technically, had become easily than ever. Yea, it was “shit or get off the pot” time. Either become a writer or stop wet dreaming about it.

As they say, writers, particularly beginning writers, should write about what they know, and over the next year I labored over a semi-autobio novel about my two opposing worlds back in New York – the one of a corporate executive working for a Catholic healthcare system, juxtaposed against my life as a leather/levi gay man, cruising the underbelly of the City’s West Village on weekends.

I came up with my pen name, RP Andrews, by scrambling my initials, RP, for my first and last name, and Andrews, a play on my middle name.

But in this BTW era – Before The Web – the only way one could navigate the world of publishing was to secure a literary agent, in my case, one who handled gay manuscripts, which narrowed the field of possibilities. So, I trotted over to Barnes and Noble, bought a guide to literary agents, canvassed which were gay-friendly, and started hustling my book which, depending on their specs, meant sending them (often by snail mail) anywhere from a synopsis to some sample chapters to the full manuscript. To protect myself, I took the poor man’s copyrighting approach and mailed the manuscript to myself so I had some evidence from the postmark when I had created it.

Well, the response I got from the twenty or so agents I narrowed my search down to was underwhelming.

Now, it’s one thing if somebody tells you your stuff sucks; it’s another if they never even looked at it, and in my case it was the latter. Their responses, whether terse or verbose, all came down to something like: “We get so many unsolicited manuscripts we can’t possibly look at them all, and yours is one of them. Sorry.” Some came as form letters, some as humiliating postcards with my name spelled wrong.

Okay, I guess my stuff wasn’t any good, but were all these literary agents relying on their established stable of writers who, sooner or later, would stop producing product? Were all their new prospects recommended by peers in the business which is what happened to Margret Mitchell, a former journalist, and her originally voluminous manuscript of “Gone with The Wind” done on one of those small portable typewriters? Originally begun as a project while her leg, injured from a horse riding accident healed, “GWTW,” using tales told to her by a Confederate relatives, was never intended to be seen by another human being. That is, until a friend of a friend at MacMillan came over for a visit and asked to see her creation. BTW, the original name for her protagonist was Patsy.

Publishing folklore says J.K. Rowling’s manuscript of “Harry Potter” was rejected numerous times until the secretary – secretary – of an editor pressed her boss to take a second look. And Nicholas Sparks’ “The Notebook” only saw the light of day when an agent just happened to grab the manuscript from a pile out of boredom.

So if agents – and publishers – who were willing to accept unsolicited manuscripts didn’t look at most of them, how were they ever going to discover the next Hemingway or Steinbeck? To say it was demoralizing would be like comparing the explosion that obliterated the Hindenburg to deflating a balloon.

Meanwhile, I was having a gay old time in sex drenched Lauderdale, and with it came a whole new set of experiences, perfect for molding into prose. So, the next time around, I took a different approach and two years later in 2008, with, “Basic Butch,” my anthology of edgy short stories, a done deal, I canvassed gay publishers and got a bite from the San Francisco-based GLB Press. Yea, he was interested in publishing my work. If I paid him. Eight hundred bucks for two hundred fifty copies (what I realized later was vanity publishing), which he promised to distribute in gay book stores in key markets. For the cover, I got a local photographer who lined up a couple of humpy bartenders for the shoot.

But there were two strikes against me from the beginning, First, my publisher was gravely ill and about to fold if he couldn’t find a buyer, so promotional support was minimal. Secondly, exclusively gay bookstores, an institution for decades, and, for that matter, exclusively gay publishers were beginning to fade away as mainstream publishing houses saw the profit potential including popular “LGBT” titles in their dossiers and carrying the books in their outlets.

The result was my book didn’t go much anywhere, and I was about ready to reactivate my stamp collection as a diversion when a new player came to town.

His name: WWW.

The E-Pub Revolution

In 2010, swept by blogger fever, I launched “Confessions of a Str8 Gay Man,” my trice-a-week commentary on the highs and lows, triumphs and short comings of contemporary American gay life and the mainstream social and political firestorms that impact it.

Guys over the years have asked why I called it what I did; a few even thought it pretentious. But as I said in my inaugural blog, to my intended audience:

“I know you’re out there. Guys like me. Str8 gay guys, guys who are guys who want guys who are guys. Some bullshit at times – can two guys ever avoid it? – but Calvin Klein cologne, never. You’re out there in the urban jungles leading the gay solo life, or married in suburbia, sometimes with kids, checking out the gym sauna or that adult bookstore on the sly. You’re auto mechanics, teachers, lawyers, UPS drivers, corporate execs, clerks, jocks and beer guzzlers. Some of you still have one foot in the closet for whatever professional or personal reasons. Then there are those of you who’ve kicked the door off its hinges and don’t give a fuck what people think because you’re confident in your masculinity and feel that what it is to be a man has a lot more to do with what’s upstairs in your head than what you’ve got between your legs. Some of you like giving it, others like getting it, but while you may use terms like “top” or “bottom” in your conversations or web profiles to cut to the chase, you hate labels. You’re a homosexual – not a fag – because you’re a guy who just happens to want a guy and knows what a guy wants.’

‘Sure, being gay can be adventurous, but because we haven’t got a script like straights, it can also be a challenge. That’s why I think it’s time us guys had something to guide us and talk about what we want and think without all that fag fluff, glitter and gloss that the media and even our own sub-culture peddles. I’ve lived and played in New York City, L.A., and South Florida, hotbeds of gaydom, and traveled throughout most of the U.S., and what I try to do here, is give you guys a heads up on what it is to be gay in America and, most importantly, how best to navigate the invariably rough bumps all of us in this Life will encounter sooner, if not later. A gay fantasy with walks on the beach and hot showers this book ain’t (though there’s an ample amount of sex to keep you, well, happy).’

‘Unlike some gay propagandists that paint a rosy, cum-stained picture to sell their camming hunks, two-for-one drink specials, or stainless steel douches, I have no agenda other than to tell the truth as I’ve seen it. Some of you, when you read my unvarnished, highly biased observations, opinions and advice, sprinkled with a healthy dose of true confessions, will say “right on, bro!” But I’m sure there will also be just as many of you out there who’ll shout, “who the fuck does this arrogant queer think he is?” So be it.”

“Confessions” is now in its seventh year and when I started my personal Facebook page, I automatically had my posts appear there as well. Today, I have close to five thousand FB “Friends.”

My “Confessions” manifesto has been mirrored in much of my fiction, stories about men on the edge.

Doing “Confessions” has also had other benefits. Besides giving me a soapbox for my often unorthodox views, blogging has taught me to write faster. I was always a quick writer in PR where you’re constantly facing marketing and media deadlines, but my avocation as a blogger sped up my thinking process even more, a skill that I easily transferred to my fiction writing.

From a larger perspective, the web ushered a new era for us authors. No longer did we have to kiss the asses of literary agents or sublimate ourselves to publishers. If they didn’t like or want our stuff, hey, we could self-publish! And self-publish for pennies as e-books which, thanks to popularity of Kindle in particular which today dominates 80% of the market, are changing people’s reading habits.

(The publisher of my novel “The Czar of Wilton Drive” admitted that self-publishing is giving small publishers that cater to a niche audience like gay readers a run for their money.)

So using a company in Colorado, Book Nook, that transferred my Microsoft manuscript into an e-book format, as well provide me an artist to create a cover, I self-published a compilation of my blogs under the title, “Confessions of a Str8 Gay Man” as an e-book in 2011 which I uploaded myself onto Amazon and Barnes and Noble. A year later, I came out with a second edition, and soon after self-published my memoirs, “Furry Man’s Journal,” which followed my life as a gay man from the dawn of gay liberation through the AIDS crisis to today’s web-driven lifestyle as told through my experiences with the dozen or so iconic furry men I’ve known in my life.

The main challenge of self-publishing is promotion. It’s the old story: it’s not enough to do something; you’ve got to let world know you’ve done it. I used my blog to promote my stuff and set up an author website, but not totally versed in social media, which frankly was not as expansive as it is today, I also tried more expensive venues. These included ads on the male hook-up sites or flyers distributed through the bars here in Lauderdale in an attempt to reach my demographics. One advantage living here is that Lauderdale is a gay vacation mecca, visited by gay men from across the country and around the world, so that distribution of my propaganda went way beyond the Florida state line.

But again, these cost money and generated mixed results (you know whether they’re doing any good from the sales stats generated weekly by Amazon and B&N).

The other challenge is that the number of gay and gay-friendly niche publishers continue to decline.

That’s why is was both helpful and affirming to have gay publishers agree to publish my last three books: “Not in It for The Love,” picked up by Britain’s Totally Bound Press; “The Czar of Wilton Drive” published by Kokoro Press; and “Buy Guys” released by Wilde City Press. Through them I was “adopted” by editors who not only pick up on typos but know what sells.

Recently, to supplement their limited PR resources, and my own promotion on my blog, author website and FB pages, I hired a publicist, Indigo Marketing and Design which, for a very nominal cost, has expanded my social media penetration through guest blogger opportunities on gay lit sites and reviews through lit outlets like Goodreads.

Now, I admit that not everybody loves my stuff, but since I’m not writing to make money, criticism, while bothersome, won’t kill me.

After all, if I didn’t like writing to begin this – for myself – why do it at all?

Dealing with Editors

If you’re lucky enough to have your manuscript picked up by a publisher, it ain’t over yet. The next hurdle is dealing with one of its editors, a necessary evil.

Necessary since your masterwork needs to follow the publisher’s guidelines (more on that in a second); the “Authors Style Guide,” which one of my publishers shared with me and covers everything from formatting, critical in this era of the e-book, and correct punctuation and grammar, to when to write out numbers; and good old proofreading. No matter how many times l read my final ‘script out loud (the best way to catch errors), I still miss a slew.

Then there’s the evil side of dealing with editors. That’s when they sadistly wreck your precious writer’s ego and “suggest” substantive changes to your stuff. Like one editor who found a scene between my two male protagonists/lovers where, while attempting to out a pizza place in an upstate New York redneck town, one leans over and eats the cheese over his lover’s beard. I thought this was fucken erotic as hell. My editor didn’t agree.

Guess who won. You have to pick your battles.

Now, virtually every gay publisher (and there aren’t a hell of a lot of them left since mainstream publishing houses have followed the money trail) has the same list of no-no’s: no incest, no pedophilia, no forced rape, no violence strictly to titillate, and no bestiality. A manuscript which pivots on this kind of stuff will get an immediate rejection. But if the stuff is only sprinkled here and there, well, that’s where the editor comes in to do the pruning and get you, the author, to bridge any gaps with new PG-13 material.

And since a significant portion of readers of male gay erotic fiction are women, selling romance between your protagonists is an absolute. If it’s there but in an understated way as two real gay guys might express it, you’ll be asked to beef it up till the saccharin comes out of their ears.

And so not offend, kinky shit some gay guys do all the time like fistfucking, rimming, and barebacking (it’s a myth more guys are using condoms – just look at the HIV rates) will need to be excised or toned down. We wouldn’t want that frustrated housewife in Des Moines who doesn’t know how to ask her husband if she can suck his cock throw up. Ditto overt infidelity, i.e., sleeping around. Guess only str8 romance can do that.

As a college prof who taught academic writing, l often used Microsoft Word’s “track changes” feature to note suggested changes or question material right in the margins of the copy on student essays. If you’re not familiar with it, get crackin’. Editors use it almost universally to communicate what they feel you need to change.

If you’re a decent writer or one accustomed to the publishing world or even self-publish, you probably looked at your “final” manuscript half a dozen times. And that’s before you let a trusted friend whose honest, unfiltered criticism you respect read your “Gone with the Wind.” And doesn’t like it and suggests major changes. Like an avid reader of male erotic gay fiction who my publisher put me in touch with who loved my novel, The Czar of Wilton Drive” but who thought my next manuscript l was only beginning to hustle to publishers needed major work. I listened and made just about all the changes he suggested, and l think it made my novella stronger and probably helped get it picked up by a publisher.

But even after all that, you got to be ready for the red ink. If you honestly feel the editor, who is taking orders from your publisher no matter how much the publisher (mostly female) initially loved your stuff, is compromising your message or writing style, you have two options:

Swallow your shitty little writer’s pride since you want the cache of a publisher’s Good Housekeeping seal of approval connected to your book, and make the changes; or

Pull out and either let your manuscript lie in USB drive purgatory, or self-publish.

After all, it’s your make believe name on your make believe story, damn it

Authors and Writing Styles That Influenced Me

To be honest, I’m not an avid reader of novels – magazine articles are more my game. Even in college, I fudged a bit and used Cliff Notes to get through the voluminous reading demands of an English major. And I rarely read someone else’s erotic fiction for fear I might subliminally copy them. Reading or writing fantasy, somewhat of the rage today in both books and film, doesn’t thrill me.

But there have been a handful of writers that have made their mark on me for their realism and their attention to detail. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, Tennessee Williams for his earthy sexuality, Camus, whose novella, “The Stranger” is a masterpiece of profound brevity, ditto with Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” and, of course, Virginia Woolf, who with “To The Lighthouse” crystallized the technique known as stream of consciousness.

But, hands down, the writer who most influenced me was Mark Twain and his “Huckleberry Finn.” Hey, I taught it when I was the one man high school English Department for my 65 member private boy school, the job I took in Florida after leaving New York and my thirty plus year PR career. It’s considered America’s first true novel, but what it taught me was the power of the rite of passage, episodic approach which enriches the plot with stories within the story, and explodes the opportunity for introducing new, fresh characters that help change the dimensions of your protagonist.

In fact, the plot and characters for my novella, “Not In It For The Love,” published last summer by Totally Bound Press, were inspired by Twain and Huck. My protagonist, Josh, begins as a kid of North Florida trailer park trash, a druggie dad and alcoholic mom, runs away (much like Huck) to work as a waiter at his uncle’s motel in Key Largo where he moonlights as a prostitute to spice up married couples’ sex lives. He impresses Bishop, a Wall Street investment broker checking out the motel for possible acquisition by a major hotel chain, who takes Josh back with him to New York to be his trophy boy where Josh continues his bunk hopping in the NY gay scene of the 1990’s. Content up to then with just the sex, Josh falls in love with Hylan, a young, biracial, wheelchair bound musician. But their plans to run away take a strange twist when 9/11 hits the city – and the world.

I adopted the same strategy with “The Czar of Wilton Drive,” my novel published last fall by Kokoro Press. Again my protagonist, Jonathan, is a young drifter, this time living on Staten Island, NYC, going nowhere as a Perkins server until he inherits two of Fort Lauderdale’s most successful gay bars from his late gay uncle who had been ostracized from the family when Jon was just a young boy.

Going down to claim his inheritance, Jon meets his late Uncle Charlie’s dubious leather friends, two of whom he falls in love with, and is swept into Lauderdale’s gay underbelly of drugs and deceit. By the end of the book, he is no longer the “wet-behind-the-ears” kid from Staten Island.

With “Buy Guys,” my latest novella published by Wilde City Press, I’ve once more used the episodic approach to carry my two main characters, Pete and Blaze, again, young, pretty and nowhere, through their new “careers” as Fort Lauderdale hustlers, and right into trouble that threatens them both.

Inside the Mind of a Writer: Real Life Experiences That Shaped My Art

18 Thursday Jun 2015

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Inside the Mind of a Writer: Real Life Experiences That Shaped My Art

Hollyweird

Whenever I see a gray-haired, pony-tailed biker or eighteen year old John Denver-look-alike hippy, complete with backpack and guitar strung over his shoulder, I think back to the heyday both are attempting to relive, the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s. Those were the years when we who were just coming out benefited as the first generation of homosexuals from the new won openness of the gay liberation movement. For me, that very formative, impressible time was spent not in NYC that I could practically see out my Jersey window, but a continent away in L.A. where I went to complete my master’s degree at the University of Southern California, a socially acceptable reason for an X-rated movie. You see, living at home (I went to a commuter college for my B.A.) had become impossible, with two well-meaning but overbearing parents who called out the cops if their boy wasn’t home by 12. L.A. offered me not only freedom, but an unbridled opportunity to play the scene for the first time in my fresh gay life.

When we talk about the L.A. scene today, we think of Silver Lake, by extension Palm Springs, and, of course, West Hollywood. Ah, but before there was glitzy, pretty boy, overpriced West Hollywood, there was Hollywood, not the mythical Hollywood perpetuated even today by entertainment pundits, but a seedier version of the town that by the late ‘60’s was still pretty with its blocks of pastel colored garden apartments, but pretty like a sixty year old whore with a good Max Factor make-up job. I found it ironic that Hollywood as a municipality technically didn’t even exist, and was just a section of the City of Los Angeles. But my studio apartment off Melrose was cheap and, at most, a brisk twenty minute walk from the best of the scene of that day, an important consideration for someone who couldn’t afford a car and relied on L.A.’s joke of a bus service. (These were the pre-subway days.)

Now, in those days, before cell phones and iphones and Manhunt.net’s, you met guys the old fashioned way, mainly in the bars and the baths (the latter of which I didn’t discover until I was back in NYC). One other approach, a path less taken, was the “male-seeking male” personals that only appeared in liberal, quasi-commie, anti-establishment, anti-LBJ pubs like the Los Angeles Free Press. You were assigned an anonymous “mailbox” by the newspaper that forwarded any responses (of course, unopened) to your real address. Heavens, there were no dick or bare ass shots up there for the world to gawk at (you hoped the guy would send you a pic of what he looked like, at least), just four lines and out, thank you ma’am. All by snail mail, which meant it often took weeks to cement a contact, versus the technological miracle of virtually instantaneous e-mail (so why do we go back and forth today with endless e-mails and still end up nowhere? Have things really changed?).

And just like today, guys, well, they lied. Sent pics taken at their Confirmation or descripts that had to be written while the guy was high on grass or LSD. Now I must confess I met some great sex partners, bless you, Free Press, but I also had my clunkers like the guy who told me he was 25 (when I was 22) and who I took two buses to rendezvous with at some gas station only to spot his toup from my seat on the bus. (Yes, I went through with it anyway. Young or old, when you’re horny, a dick is a dick.)

A neighbor in my very gay complex, Tommy, personified the new old Hollywood. A Cincinnati transplant and beautician by trade, he had been a wigmaker for one of the studios but had recently lost his job and was living on unemployment. His hobby? Collecting match covers from whatever club or cheap motel he had been in and covering his bathroom wall with them. He soon became my tour guide to the Hollyweird club scene.

There were plenty of bars to choose from in the Hollywood of the 70’s: levi, leather (mainly in Silver Lake), and nelly (they weren’t called twinks then), all filled with mostly young guys. Just like me. But the two clubs I remember most fondly were Gino’s (named for its owner), a dance bar on Melrose that I reminisce about every time I hear the Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back;” a super hit at the time; and The Farm, a ranch-motif bar with sawdust on its dance floor, where I fell in love with half a dozen handsome, rugged guys, again, young and hot, every time I went.

And after the bars closed, just about everybody ended up at Arthur’s Diner off Hollywood Boulevard which was almost as cruisy as the bars and sported more pretend women than the genuine article most nights.

But for those of you gay men under 30 who romanticize the ‘60’s, not everything was rosy. Remember, it was the height of the Vietnam War, and every one of us dreaded opening our mailboxes to find that love letter from Uncle Sam. I naively thought I would be exempted from the draft because I was continuing my education, but I was dead wrong. The prevailing notion at the time was that admitting you were a fag could mark you for life, career wise. But through a lesbian neighbor I made contact with a physician who got guys off, a libertarian who even resembled Timothy Leary. For a hefty fee, he morphed my nervous stomach syndrome into a full fledged bleeding duodenal ulcer that earned me a 4-F. It’s still the best $800 I ever spent in my life.

So, why, you ask, did I ever leave this wet dream of a lifestyle, after getting my M.A. degree, for cold, bleak New York and my parents’ outstretched tentacles?

I was broke, living on Campbell Soup towards the end. To this day, I’ll never use Bank of America that, in those poverty-stricken days of my youth, charged me a fee every time I withdrew money from my quickly dwindling account.

I also suffered from the chicken or the egg syndrome. Without money, I couldn’t buy a car, and without a car, it was hard to land a decent paying job. Desperate to keep my long Beatles style hair, I even bought a short hair wig at a Hollywood novelty store for interviews. I finally managed to land a part-time gig in the basement of the now defunct Broadway Department Store on Hollywood Boulevard, not far from the still very much alive Roosevelt Hotel, gift-wrapping other people’s stuff. Not exactly a career goal for someone with two degrees.

I did apply for one job connected to the old Hollywood, the position of “title writer,” whatever the hell that meant, at glorious MGM. Taking the bus out to Culver City, however, by then ghettoized and resembling more a dingy warehouse district than the sacred home of the “dream factory,” my idealizations of a glamorous L.A. were abruptly blown, and not getting the job, I realized my own fantasy of living and working here was not to be.

My only real friend, out-of-work neighbor Tommy, left in desperation for his hometown in Ohio, hoping his old beauty shop would take him back.

Finally, Mother Nature reared her ugly head. Living in L.A., you get used to tremors anytime of the day or night. But when the earthquake of ‘71 hit, – my apartment was spared any serious damage but businesses like Broadway suffered broken windows and ruptured pipes, and a hospital in “The Valley” collapsed – I took it as a sign that it was time for this gay boy to head home. The rest, as they say, is history.

But so, too, for me, was L.A.

Tuesday: Real Life Experiences That Shaped My Art – NYC’s Leather Scene

Inside The Mind of a Writer: Real Life Experiences That Shaped My Art

16 Tuesday Jun 2015

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Inside The Mind of a Writer: Real Life Experiences That Have Shaped My Art

As a hairy guy who’s a sucker for hairy guys, I’ve been fortunate over my gay career to get what I want, at least some of the time, and have had my healthy share. But there are just a handful of hirsute men who are caught in my memory, and who have become characters or at the very least an influence in my books.

At the head of the class, the man who hard wired me for hairy men for the rest of my life, was my Dad, my first sex object. Not that good looking with plain Eastern European features, nor very athletic, he was, nonetheless, a short, humpy, hairy beast with a thick cock. I know because I would sneak down in the basement where he showered every night before dinner after working all day in the factory. A walk-in closet butted the bathroom and there was a slight opening between the wallboards with a delicious, decadent view of the shower stall. And him. I often would shoot my load right there – in absolute silence – which is how I learned how to be one of those quiet cummers. Once, I almost got caught when, still naked, dragging his towel behind him, he walked into the closet to look for something. I don’t suspect he thought I was there and fortunately I was wedged in a corner hidden from view. After that close call, I settled for masturbating over him in my fantasies.

I was 21 and freshly out when I met my first hairy guy for real, six foot two Jordan, only two years older than me but already an ex-Vietnam vet. Ex because his two legs had been blown off from the kneecap down when the army hospital outside Saigon he was in for malaria was bombed. We met at some party of mutual college friends. I was working on my master’s degree out at the University of California in L.A., where he was just starting his bachelor’s courtesy of Uncle Sam. I fell in love with him the moment I met him, but to this day I don’t know whether it was motivated by emotional affinity or by pity and empathy; he was constantly on pain meds, determined to walk on his perpetually ill-fitted artificial legs no matter what.

One thing for sure, he was of black Irish background and my cock went instantly stiff the first time I saw him naked, a bit scrawny but with a thick mat of dark fur that covered his chest and thighs, plus a hairy butt, though he had no hair on his back. He was also the first guy I let try to fuck me, I say try because his thick, uncut, 9 inch cock was just too much for my tight virgin hole. We saw one another a few times after that, before he found a bottom boy who would satisfy his emasculated masculinity, and we lost contact. Years later working in Manhattan, I ran into an old college buddy from my L.A. days who told me that Jordan had died a few years after our brief tryst of uremic poisoning, probably from his infected stumps he never gave a chance to heal. He was 29.

Crippled men, determined to overcome their affliction, have always had a special place in my writing and it all began with Jordan.

The closest I came to being adopted by the Mafia (besides living and working on Staten Island, a borough of the Big Apple, and the most Italian American county in the U.S.), was Peter, a short, stocky, swarthy, hairy, Italian gorilla with a shaved head and thick black beard and a build that Tom of Finland would have used as a model. By this time I was back from L.A., working for a hospital on Staten Island and up in the Poconos where we met. He was a New Yorker too, and at 45, had retired from “construction” and was living off his treasury bonds and munis, plus rental properties he owned in five states. We played in a few of the houses he played musical chairs living in, Jersey, the City, and he was the one who introduced me to the kinkier side of man-to-man sex like e-stimulation, definitely an acquired taste. He wanted to keep me – I was just 30 at the time – but I was headstrong about my career and I cherished my independence. Hell, at least he didn’t hire a hit man when I called it a day.

Yes, I was a silly boy; he probably would be dead by now and I would have been set for the rest of my life like some jerk I met on the beach here in Lauderdale decades later who after taking care of his “partner,” 30 years his senior, for 15 years, and not working a day all that time, is now living off a trust fund.

On equal footing with hairy Mediterranean studs in my “best hard-ons in my life” diary are Middle Eastern men, and George, who would become my life partner, a Syrian American from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, fit my criteria to a tee. He was, and still remains a no nonsense guy, a jock with a religious allegiance to the Mets, who shares my conservative politics and views about The Life. When we connected in a West Village bar he was 35, ten years my senior, but had only really started having sex with men a few years before. In fact, he had almost walked down the aisle – with a woman – three times before we met. Average height, square in the shoulders like the actor James Caan and just as hairy, with great legs and a manly ass, he still captures my attention after all these years when I see him naked. Yet sex between us waned early in the game which is why I regretfully over time have become a runaway Sam to satisfy my prurient interests.

So why do we stay together, you ask? Because we both are recluses at heart, content with the stability of a long term relationship, and because I’ve never known a more str8 gay man in my life, nor think I ever will.

Now, one of my on-again, off-again fuck buddies who I met on the web is James, a Chicago transplant who lives down here in Fort Lauderdale. Of English and German stock, James is six feet of perfect man with long wavy hair, a close cropped beard, luxurious, light brown body fur, abs, biceps and legs that are Men’s Fitness cover material, yet all wrapped up in a natural, almost understated masculine body that rarely sees the inside of a gym because it doesn’t need to.

James’ Achilles’ heels? Educated, intelligent, urbane, and musically gifted, he sought no career and at 48 infrequently plays his guitar in local gigs, his main source of income after his SSI check. For behind that hot exterior is a mortal wracked with, and wrecked by AIDS. Once when I was fucking him, which he loves despite sporting a beer can dick, I had to stop because he had an attack of diarrhea right there on the bed. Not sexy.

Then there was Mitch, my clone. Except for the fact he was about an inch or so taller than me at 5 foot eight, and younger, I could have been staring at myself in the mirror. Buzzed cut, balding, scruffy beard, broad hairy shoulders, lightly muscular arms, hairy chest and abs, thick thighs and calves, again all covered in fur, he was the idealization of manhood in my mind. Even though he was Jewish and I was a Lutheran, we were both, I learned later, Slovak/Russian mutts with that hint of Mongolian in the slant of our eyes. We had the kind of bodies my so-called friends would chide me were made to lay down rail road ties until I retorted I made three times the money they did.

Sadly, like James, Mitch led a pattern-less life. Sex, meth, gambling, meth, and more meth were his only priorities, made possible, in part, by his enabling, wealthy West Palm Beach parents. And by selling his body.

Finally came Troy, one of, if not the sexiest man I ever bedded down with. Super handsome, lightly furry, super personable, intelligent, and supposedly financially stable with a good job, he was a crackhead who shot the stuff up like a heroin addict. I must admit the sex I had with him was some of the most intense in my checkered gay career.
Yet, for all the problems and heartache these guys left me with, I count myself lucky. How many guys can say they’ve had a taste of their ideal man even once in their life?

I have.

Next: More Real Life Experiences That Have Shaped My Art

Inside The Mind of a Writer: Real Life Experiences That Shaped My Art

11 Thursday Jun 2015

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Inside The Mind of a Writer: Real Life Experiences That Shaped My Art

Now I’m certainly in no position to criticize other writers of serious erotic male gay fiction, but based on what I know about them, I surmise that much of what they write about comes from their imagination. That’s fine, but as a seasoned gay man, just about all my stuff is based on reality, a reality I’ve personally experienced. Over the coming weeks, I would like to share with you some of those real life experiences – not all of them pretty – that have influenced and shaped my art.

Number One on the list is a trait I was born with. I’m a furry man who likes furry men, so it comes as no surprise that hairy guys play a dominant role in a lot of my stuff.

Yea, everybody’s hardwired for a certain type and I respect that. But sorry, smooth guys, while I certainly wouldn’t kick middle aged Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise, or current hottie Zac Efron out of bed, if I had my choice between a so-so guy with a so-so body who was hairy, and a smooth-as-silk guy with a face and body by God, I’d grab the fur ball any day of the week. Even the hint of chest hair sticking out of the top of a guy’s T-shirt or a pair of furry forearms or – shit! – hairy muscular legs on some jogger – is enough to get my motor running.

Prescribing to some out-of-date fucked up Freudian psychology, I think I’m a str8 gay man today and unloaded any sissy boy tendencies I may have had a long time ago because I had no interest in mimicking my mother but definitely sexually worshipped my father. He was a humpy hairy fuck and, I’m not ashamed to admit, my first sex object. I saw him near naked or naked more than a young boy should see his dad (no, he wasn’t a pedophile – I just got lucky), and jerked off over him before I did any other fantasy man in my life. I also inherited his Slavic hirsute genes. While

I felt awkward in high school when I took my shirt off for gym, a few years later after I started playing the scene and saw how much my fur turned other guys on, I became a certified exhibitionist. Down here in Florida, I don’t frequent a bar unless I can leave my T-shirt in the car.

Bottom line, as best as my self-psychoanalysis goes, I think I’m attracted first and foremost to furry guys either because I was infatuated sexually with my furry father, or because I’m in love with myself and searching for my clone. Take your pick.

So what’s so hot about hair?

In my mind, and I know a lot of you smooth guys or guys into smooth guys will disagree, body hair on a str8 gay guy (nothing will save a furry queen) is the ultimate in masculinity. For me, it separates the men from the boys and certainly the men from the girls. (Except for those poor Sicilian girls I knew on Staten Island, the most Italian American county in the U.S., who buy Nair by the truckload.)

Secondly, there’s nothing quite as sensual for me as running my fingers through a guy’s furry chest hairs or across his fuzzy abs, even if he has a bit of a belly. Hell, I give myself a hard-on just doing it to myself in the morning. Chest, arms, abs, legs, shoulders, back, butt, I want it all. In fact, when it comes to fucking, I have a hard time keeping Mr. Peter stiff unless he and I are feeling a furry butt.

I know and I’ve met hairy guys who only want them smooth – when I hit them up, it’s “thanks but no thanks, buddy” – and smooth guys who go ga-ga over furry men (there’s at least one Asian a week on the web who wants to support me).

Ah, but when two furry guys dig each other, well, shit, its fucken Gay Heaven.

Sure, there are downsides to being hairy as you guys who share my happy dilemma will recognize. Hairs clogging your shower drain, heavy lint in your dryer, and, a real bitch, gray as you grow older not just in your beard or on top of your head but all over your body that’s harder to cover unless you’re taking a body dunk in Just for Men. But I guess that’s a small price to pay for being hot, right? (Just ask me after some hottie has combed his fingers through my chest hairs.)

That’s why, since I’ve been on testosterone therapy, my body fur has gotten thicker and even more luxurious, and you know something – fuck, man, I like it! And while I admit I’ll get my back clipped during those hot sweaty summer months, I have only one thing to say to those guys who buzz their bodies or – God help them – permanently obliterate their fur with a laser because they think that’s sexier:

HUH?

And to that 39 year old smooth guy on Grind’r who said in his profile “seeks younger – hair is not sexy,” why not ask the 27 year old I had last week what he thinks?

Tuesday: Inside The Mind of a Writer: Furry Men I’ve Known and Loved

Inside the Mind of a Writer: Real Life Experiences That Shaped My Art

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

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Inside The Mind of a Writer: Real Life Experiences That Shaped My Art

I’ve always had an existential view on life and that view permeates through much of my writing. I loved Camus’ “The Stranger,” just as I was an addict to the AMC series, “Mad Men,” about as existential as you can get. And this often brutal but honest philosophy came to me early when I was just eight years old.

At the time, my mother worked in a cookie factory, and one of her co-workers offered to pick up her, my younger sister and I for a Saturday romp to Seaside Heights on the Jersey Shore. How I looked forward to that day. So that morning, with sand pails and shovels and blankets and beach chairs in tow, we trotted down to the pre-designated spot where Mom’s friend would swing by and pick us up.

Only she never came.

After an hour of our futilely waiting and me counting cars as they whizzed by, Mom forced us to face reality and turned us right around for home.

What I learned that day I never forgot and has, rightly or wrongly, guided me throughout my life: never put your faith in other people; always rely first and foremost on yourself; and always, always have a Plan B.

That philosophy has never failed me, and is the DNA behind many of my characters, floundering through life, surrounded by users and abusers, with only themselves to depend on.

Next: My Life as a Hirsute Man

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