Monday, October 31, 2011

Gay sex is no walk in the park.



Last night I went for a long, romantic stroll with my new man, along the riverfront in the pink and purple glow of twilight. In a tiny park next to the highway, out of sight of the evening joggers and dog walkers, he grabbed me and kissed me with a sly little laugh and a twinkle of mischief in his eye.

When we got back to my place we had dinner, then lay on the couch and watched a movie, wrapped in each other's bodies. When the movie was over we kissed and he warned me that it was 10pm and he had to go home for an early start in the morning. I persuaded him to lie down with me for a while on the bed so that we could talk. We talked and kissed and caressed each other. We decided that he would leave at 10.30pm. We kissed some more, harder. We became entangeld in each other. 10.30pm came and went. He sighed and muttered "Oh fuck it", and had torn my clothes off within seconds.

At 11pm we were both exhausted and naked with our heads hanging over the foot of the bed.

We talked for a little while longer... and it possibly wasn't our best conversation. You see - and this will no doubt raise a chorus of "OMG ARE YOU INSANE!?" - he'd asked in the final moments of sex if he could come inside me, and I'd said yes. Once he'd blown his load and we'd both collapsed gasping back onto the bed, I became aware of the alarm bells going off inside my head.

Normally I'm scrupulous about safe sex, on the limited occasions that I actually get to practice sex at all. But my relationship with this guy has developed so fast, and with such a unique level of feeling, that I've let my guard down. Up to this point, in the four times we've had sex, he hasn't worn a condom but he's pulled out before coming. By the cold light of day that sounds like a completely inadequate gesture at "safe sex", but as we all know in the heat of the moment it's impossible to think straight.

I spent the next ten minutes grilling him about the results of his last STD test and his sexual history since then, hating the awkwardness of having to discuss it at all. His last test was two months ago (and clean, apparently), and his only sexual activity since then has been once with a stranger (non-penetrative) and once with his ex (with whom he wore a condom).

That's lightens the weight on my mind, but I'm going to have to insist on safe sex from now on. And get myself tested, of course, which will be a milestone I'd have prefered to avoid. Profound feelings of attraction don't prevent HIV. And given that I haven't taken a dump since then, I'm horribly aware that his cum is still inside me, allowing plenty of time for infection to transfer from him to me.

This cold dose of reality has also made me look at him a little more critically. I got his surname from him to create a proper contact entry on my phone, and despite the fact that both his first name and his surname are unusual I can't find any trace of him on the internet. No facebook, no professional associations, nothing. There's one person with the same name in Geneva, and another one in Houston who is actually a woman. I tried his brother, who has an equally unusual first name, and there was nothing there either.

In itself this is nothing - I'm not with facebook either and apart from my work nothing comes up about me in a google search. However in light of my epiphany about safe sex and bearing in mind what I learned about BN2, it freaks me out a little bit. When I see him tonight I'm going to make sure I see a credit card, or a license, or something that shows his name. Just to reassure myself.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

The Singularity.



Last night was my second date with the man I met on Wednesday. He needs a nom de blog, like KCG or the Human Dynamo, but I'm terrified of what to call him. He's already a profound episode in my gay life, but I have no idea what he will eventually be. All I know is that we're already connected in a way I haven't been with any other man.

I'll call him Mr Singular, because that's what he is.

We spent yesterday trading increasingly flirtatious texts. Some of them so charged with anticipation that when I read them I had to lean back in my chair and take a few deep breaths. We were meeting at my house to go out to dinner... but it was becoming obvious that we'd be doing a lot more than that.

He arrived. I brought him into my house. We kissed, as we'd been wanting to do since the bar two nights earlier, and he was confident and erotic. We had a pre-dinner drink and kissed again.

On the way to the restaurant he held my hand in the car, and as we sat, ordered, ate and got to know each other a little better, we were both clearly aware that this was just a necessary part of the evening, not something over which we wanted to linger. We were back at my place barely 90 minutes later.

We sat on opposite ends of the couch and had a cocktail. We talked some more, and drank our drinks. When I'd finished mine I put it down on the end table, got up, sat down close to him and kissed him, long and deep.

What followed next he later described as "a trail of sexual devastation". Couch cushions strewn across the room, my fine linen jacket crumpled up on the floor, shoes and other bits of clothing lost under armchairs. We stumbled to the bedroom, stripped off our remaining clothes, and spent the next four hours fucking as if our lives depended on it.

He's a masterful kisser, soft and then plunging. When he drifted down to suck my cock, he was a gentle as a butterfly, using just the tip of his tongue in a way that charged me like an electric shock. When he discovered that I was too tight - it's been months since I had penetrative sex - he took his time (almost an hour) with his fingers, his tongue and his cock to gently tease me open. Then once I was ready, he grabbed me tight and pounded me like a hurricane. He was even better than The Virtuoso - it felt so fucking good. He wasn't very vocal but I moaned and gasped and let him know, without a shadow of a doubt, just how incredible he was.

Around midnight, after our third round of bed-devastating sex, he asked if he should go, and I told him I wanted him to stay. I didn't sleep very much - this is only the second time in my life that I have spent the whole night with a man - but we spent the night wrapped up tightly in each others' arms. If he let go of my hand to scratch his nose in his sleep, he found it again and entwined our fingers.

When we woke at dawn, we whispered to each other how strange it was that we felt so comfortable together after having barely met. There was more kissing, more amazing sex. We eventually got up, got dressed, and went out to breakfast at my favourite cafe. When we came back, we went back to bed and did the same things fully clothed that we'd earlier done naked. If it hadn't been for another friend picking me up at 10.15am to go out, I've no doubt we would have shed our clothes and plunged back into it. Our first date was two and a half hours. Our second date was sixteen. Our third date will be tomorrow night, and who knows what will happen.

I'm dead tired from lack of sleep. My legs are sore from being slung over his shoulders or wrapped around his waist. My ass is sore from four rounds of hardcore sex. Nothing seems as important as seeing him again. I'm trying not to think too much, to overanalyse or project. But I like him so damn much. He's broad and strong, with a thickly haired chest and a sweet smile. He's intelligent and handsome. He's rough and passionate, and very, very sexy. Clearly I am falling for him, and hard.


Thursday, October 27, 2011

Riding the World's Worst Rollercoaster.



Following the events mentioned in my previous post, last week was mostly bad for me: a rollercoaster that spent a lot of time in the pits of despair with occasional lifts up into basic normalcy.

But I'd mostly recovered by Sunday, thanks to a couple of occurances. On Friday evening I had dinner with KCG at the same smart restaurant I took him to for his birthday last year... only this time he was paying. I didn't mention that he'd been the trigger for my depression, but I shared that I'd been low and from his attitude and body language I realised that my distress on Saturday night wasn't as well founded as I'd thought: perhaps we really have bonded and grown closer over the last few months. He was caring and attentive, and when we went our separate ways around 11pm he gave me a long, lingering hug that made me feel better than I had for several days.

Then on Sunday I went for a pleasant evening walk with a guy I went out with a few months ago. He's from one of those passionate, impulsive middle eastern cultures, and although it's clear that we're not going anywhere romantically the first thing he did when he saw me was to grab me and kiss me intensely. We went for our walk, came back, had a drink and kissed again. When it came time to leave, as he walked out the door he grabbed my hand with both of his and tenderly kissed the back of it, in a gesture so sweet and courtly that it melted even my cold heart. We're not compatible, and we both know it, but hey, it's nice to be wanted.

The biggest mood lift came early this week, however. On Monday evening I started chatting with a guy on Manhunt, which moved on to texting, then on to a phone call. He was young, good-looking, intelligent and unusually interesting. So we arranged to go on a date on Wednesday night to a cool neighbourhood bar. In real life he was chunkier than in his pictures, but in an attractive, bearish way. He was wearing one of those T-shirts with a buttoned opening between the midpoint of his chest and his throat, and whether intentionally or not he'd left them all undone. The glimpse of his hairy chest through the gap was the sexiest thing I'd seen in a long time. The conversation was a little stilted at first but we kept at it, and it got better, especially after a couple of drinks. It started to rain, and we had to move from our big balcony table to a couple of chairs in a tight space under the awning. The space was so cramped that our legs were nearly entwined, and it was then that I started getting The Vibe from him.

We agreed to see each other again on Friday, and when we left a little while later (I had a previous engagement I had to get to), I gave him a little peck on the lips and a hug as I got into my car. Even as I did it, it felt a bit lame. As he lumbered off to his own car, I sent him this text:

I hate the awkwardness of the first date goodnight kiss.

Glad we did though.


Then I drove away. Down the street. Onto the main road. Through the shopping precinct. Left into another road. Up onto the freeway. Through the city centre. Over the bridge leading to the southern suburbs. All the while glancing at my phone sitting silent and dead on the passenger seat.

Oh crap. I thought. I've screwed it up yet again. Scared off yet another guy with my gaucherie and cluelessness. When will I fucking learn?

Then my phone trilled and lit up. Despite the fact that I was driving in the rain at 100kph, I tapped the message open. Yeah me too. Really wanted to pash you at the bar though...

To call what I felt relief would have been like calling a tsunami a gentle ripple.

That would have just made that ugly bartender jealous... I tapped back, once I'd reached my destination and could do it safely.

Him: Ah who cares, let him be jealous. I would have felt better. Trying to think what we should do on Friday...

Me: Frankly I like your pashing idea, but I suppose we need a more formal anchor event :-)

Him: I like my pashing idea too; even more now that I know you like it.

Wow. Note to self: do NOT fuck this up.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Nothing hurts like discovering that you're not happy, you're just a fool.‏



Yesterday KCG and I went hiking in the hills outside the city. It was a gruelling 9 hour, 28km trek but the scenery was spectacular and we both had a sense of achievement in completing it.

On the way back to the city around 9 - 10pm, I observed that KCG was brighter and chirpier than he usually is, singing along with the radio and hilariously shouting over-the-top abuse at the road workers who kept us sitting at a set of lights for several minutes. This is great, I thought. We've had a fun day, just the two of us for nearly 12 hours. We've bonded. We're becoming better friends. This is cool. Maybe you don't need to have a boyfriend to be successful in this world after all. I'm fun in my own right and people have fun when they're with me. I make people's lives better, just as they improve mine!

But no. It turns out that the truth was the complete and utter opposite.

I discovered later, quite by accident, that while we were hiking KCG had arranged by text to hook up with his new boyfriend late that evening, but hadn't told me. He wasn't in a bright and happy mood because we were at the end of a good day together, but because he was on the cusp of a great night with his lover. He wasn't pretending to be upset at the road workers holding us up - he was frustrated that every minute on the road was one he wasn't spending with his guy. And I hadn't made his day better - I was an obligation to finish up ASAP before the best part of his day could begin.

The worst part was the way that I found out. KCG didn't mention his plans - I assumed that like me he was going home to simply shower off the sweat and grime and rest his aching muscles. But after he dropped me off, I discovered that on our hike we had both acquired a bunch of ticks. I carefully tweezered off the ones of my legs and thighs, but there was one right in the centre of my back that I couldn't possibly reach. I couldn't leave it there until the morning, and it was nearly 11pm so most of my friends were out or asleep. But I knew that KCG would still be up, so I rang him, explained the situation and asked if I could drive over to his place (a 20 minute trip) and get him to tweezer it off. I vaguely noticed that he seemed put out on the phone, but I assumed it had something to do with the late hour.

Of course when I eventually got to his house I saw the strange car in the driveway, and I put two and two together quickly. He let me in and introduced me to his new man. The awkwardness hung in the air. It was clear that they'd been planning to get their boyfriend thing on and I was holding up proceedings. KCG got the tick off my back, and I left, being there all of two minutes.

So here was I; the weird, awkward loser friend who drives halfway across the city late at night to get a tick removed, and there was them; cool, good-looking young gay men in the most intoxicating stage of their relationship, about to do the sorts of things that normal, horny adults do, interrupted and having to patiently deal with the weirdo. KCG didn't have to go anywhere to get any unreachable ticks removed - he had a hot new boyfriend who had come around to do it... and a lot more besides.

Far from me not needing a boyfriend to be successful in this world, KCG's example was a harsh reminder than you really are nobody until somebody loves you. You can't even elegantly deal with a tick without someone special in your life.

Of course KCG did nothing wrong. He did everything that a good friend should do. I just misinterpreted his happiness as something that I'd contributed to, and when I found out the awful, opposite truth, I felt my sense of self worth get crushed like an empty aluminium can rolling along the freeway.

Friday, October 14, 2011

A vital difference between gay men and straight women



I was reading an interesting article by Michael Kirby, former supreme court judge and gay marriage advocate, and I came across an anecdote that actually, if unintentionally, supports my anti gay marriage stance.

The meat of the anecdote was that in the late 1960s Kirby was dating Johan van Vloten, the man who would become his life partner. A few weeks into the relationship, Kirby's first love, a gorgeous European boy named Demo, phoned him in Sydney to say that he was going to be back in Australia and in Melbourne for the weekend, and would Kirby like to come down and hook up? Kirby said yes, and duly went down to Melbourne for his dirty weekend, although he mentioned that Johan van Vloten was hurt by the abandonment.

Here's the thing: one of the pro gay marriage arguments is that there's no real difference between a love between a man and a woman and a love between a man and a man. It's all just love, right? Well, no. Change the genders and this whole scenario changes. If Kirby was straight, and he told a woman he'd been dating for some weeks that he was popping down to Melbourne for the weekend to bang his ex... well, it's pretty certain she wouldn't be waiting for him when he got back. As a general rule, women need to know that they are at the top of any potential mate's priority list. With gay men, the expections of fidelity, and the line between partner and buddy, are blurred.

This is just one example of how the core criteria by which a relationship is judged to be a success or a failure are different between straights and gays. So how then can the formal expression of both those relationships be defined as "marriage" without stripping marriage down to its crudest base?

When men and women partner up, it's more than just their genitals that fit together like a plug and socket. It's also their psyches, their psychologies. They are different but complementary, and it's those complementary differences that lock them together.

Marriage is a thing that a man and a woman do to create a dual entity as ancient as human civilisation. Gay marriage, on the other hand, is just a hissy fit by power-crazed gay ideologues.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Pride cometh (sorry, cummeth) before the fall.



Last Saturday afternoon I went to the local Pride Fair.

It was KCG's idea to go, and he sold it as having "stalls and entertainment and handbag dogs", and being set in a pretty park on a lovely spring day. In my mind's eye I envisaged it as your standard sort of street fair, with booths selling handicrafts and delicious little gourmet foodstuffs - two things gay men would do rather well - and crowds washing through as the mood took them, all within a carnival atmosphere. So I agreed.

The first bad sign was when I arrived at the park to find it fenced in, with a single entry point on the eastern side. There would be no anonymous wash of people for a closet case like me to lose himself in. They may as well have hung a sign over the gate reading "HOMOSEXUALS AND THEIR ENABLERS ONLY".

The second bad sign was the fact that it cost $15, each, to enter.

The third bad sign crept up on me as we wandered into the avenues of stalls. There was a stall promoting gay marriage, then one promoting safe sex, then one promoting STD checks, then one about the local Bears club, then an AIDS hospice, then another promoting safe sex, then one offering frendliness between Anglicans and gays, then another asking for yet more signatures on yet another gay marriage petition...

"Do any of these stalls sell anything cool?" I asked KCG with a narrowed glare.

"There's a donut truck over in the corner," he offered, obliviously.

Over on the main stage a choir of lesbians started singing renditions of camp classics - including 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow', naturally - and while we listened I scanned the people around me. The crowd consisted of friends and families of gay people wandering around with rainbow stickers and wide-eyed, "I'm helping!" expressions on their faces, and gay men with their heads down cruising Grindr on their iPhones. There wasn't even a lot of talent on display: just a lot of skinny, femme-y twinks in tacky outfits, a couple of leather daddies, a terrifying obese drag queen, KCG and me. The only eye candy was two hot shirtless 20-something PR bois handing out leaflets for some Pride festival activities... because apparently you can't advertise to gay men except through their groins.

After running into a couple of KCG's friends we fell to doing the only thing there was to do there: we sat down on the grass and drank. Nearby some lesbians, slaves to their sexuality, started playing football. We gay men, slaves to our sexuality, just sat around swilling pinot and looking fabulous.

I realised, as I sat on the lawn watching the lesbians run and lunge for the only ball they were likely to run and lunge for, that the Pride Fair was a holdover from an outmoded gay paradigm. Sure, it created a safe place for gays and lesbians to hang out and meet up... but there are dozens of safe places for gays and lesbians to hang out and meet up, and they're either cheaper or they offer better entertainment for the money. And you're probably less likely to meet someone new than if you just logged onto Grindr, Manhunt or Gaydar and did it from the comfort of your home. In 2011, with openly gay cabinet ministers, sporting heroes, movie stars and prime time TV characters, what's the point of creating a fenced off enclosure for gays? It's like we're here, we're queer, and we're not used to it.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Pot. Kettle. Black. Idiot.



From among the ranks of the fine young men of Manhunt:



Hypocrisy thy name is... Luke, apparently.

If you pride yourself in scorning both femme queens and Asians, then perhaps you shouldn't display a photo of you peering coyly out from behind a stuffed toy with a loveheart, like some cross between Justin Bieber and a giggling Japanese schoolgirl?