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.

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