Confessions of a Str8 Gay Man

Of course I don’t condone shooting anybody, even my worse enemy, but again, as in previous incidents, the shooter in yesterday’s high school melee was a bullied kid who had had it with his tormentors. I can empathize with him because I was there once too.

In another galaxy, I was bullied in high school, not because my cohorts thought I was queer but because I was short, unathletic and nerdy (read smart). I suffered in silence, suicidal thoughts often on my mind, at a time when high school guidance counselors were useless, but I rechanneled my frustrations into doing well in my studies which eventually led to professional success and, yes, confidence in myself as a gay man.

Yet the psychological scars remain with me half a lifetime later.

When are teachers, parents and the world gonna wake up that the victims in these horrendous tragedies are not just the kids who die or are maimed for life but the kid with the gun?

The kid who everyone treated like shit.

Labor Day is the time for the party men among us to converge on New Orleans for another round of Southern Decadence, which, post-Katrina, is back badder than ever. How do I know? Last September, a bunch of my friends, minus me, went and came back very happy sailors, thanks to the thousands of hunks who joined them on Bourbon Street, a few dozen of whom (my friends are modest bastards) they reportedly had.

O.K., O.K., but I gotta tell you, the run-of-the-mill, nothing-special weekend I recently spent in the Big Easy sure as hell wasn’t deliciously decadent at all – just depressingly dreggy.

It was just after Mardi Gras, and most of the out-of-town gays who came for that other homoerotic event were gone. But I never liked crowds and, believe it or not, it was cheaper to fly to New Orleans from Lauderdale, spend a weekend there, and rent a car to visit family in Pensacola, than fly from Lauderdale to Pensacola direct, or drive the 700 miles one way.

I had tried to line up some guaranteed, scheduled sex with a few local men on the web but, at the last minute, all my would-be dates fell through. Either their goldfish had just died and they had to bury it, or they had suddenly changed jobs and had to work. So, in the end, after wasting hours combing dozen of pages of profiles and reaching out to twenty or so guys, I was left to sow my oats in N.O.’s Gay French Quarter all by my little old self.

Dreggy in the wrong sense is the best word I can use to describe the bars I checked out. Dirty, dingy and small by Lauderdale standards, all of them had what passed as bars in front or downstairs, but which were merely Hollywood sets for the main event: their backrooms. There, guys of various types loitered in the dark around a now defunct pool table, or near an abandoned handicapped john where people would play. Only, God help me, most of them were more like out of a bad remake of “The Night of the Living Dead.” Get out the Lysol! I did manage to get some gropes, tit pulls, and even a few semi-blow jobs, but, shall we say, my experiences were not on the top of my all time sex hit parade.

Walking those dark, deserted streets at one in the morning (the drunks and cops only congregated around tacky Bourbon Street) was no fun, and the local bathhouse was almost not worth the walk.  Twelve and half guys were in the place on a Saturday night prime time (yep, one was a dwarf) and most were so, well, unsexy,  I was ready to politely, without malice, ask one of them, just out of curiosity, “Did you actually pay for plastic surgery to look that ugly?” I was able to hook up with the two winners there that night and get my twenty dollars worth, but just barely. (BTW, how do these places stay in business? Are they really fronts for laundering money, or tax write-offs for big conglomerates that make their profits selling chocolates to Bible Belt Sunday schools? I don’t get it.)

One of the guys I scored with was cute not just for his looks but by what he said. He had a tight swimmers build, some faint fuzz, and curly dark hair, and we cruised one another in the hall. I walked up to him and, eyeing his sneakers, asked, “So, are you a runner?” “No,” he replied, “they’re just for looks.” Then he retorted, “And you, you look like a hot total top, or are tops just part of gay mythology?” He found out otherwise when we went back to his room.

So, while I certainly enjoyed the walking tours I took during the day of the French Quarter and Garden District, all I could think of as I scanned the men in those dingy backrooms, and thought of all the web gays who hadn’t responded to my come hithers was:

You guys passed me up for this??

Tomorrow: London/Paris Diary

Some Key West Kodak moments worth retelling:

Me getting my first underwater blow job with my dick submerged in the sauna from a cute, former Long Island friend of Bill’s coincidentally down for the weekend, who certainly had a strong pair of lungs to go with his magic mouth.

Bill getting blown by two guys on the pool table Jodie Foster style at Saloon 1, with the bartender ready to join in, a sharp contrast to Lauderdale where any backroom action is squashed. All while I was taking a tour of Hemingway’s retreat and hearing about his string of wives (who Ernest exploited to get ahead in the book publishing world) and his fucking six toed cats.

The hard cock contest at Saloon 1 on Friday night with guys dangling their tools out of some glory hole in full view of a very appreciative audience. Again, compare that to Lauderdale Ramrod’s Wednesday night best butt contest usually populated by drunken tourists where the MC has to hide the guy’s ass crack with a cum rag if he isn’t wearing underwear so the place isn’t closed down.

And the weekend’s comeuppance moment for me?

There was this hairy, seemingly muscular guy in from Oklahoma City who hit me up on the web, said he was staying at the Island House, and in the messages that followed led me to believe we would connect there.  Since, unlike me, he didn’t have a face shot, I kept searching for my mystery man based on his height and build. Finally he revealed himself outside the gym only when Bill called out to me by name; but after all the back and forth bullshit on the web, he made no overtures he wanted my dick and shied away from me whenever we would brush by in the day that followed. Frankly, his bod pic had to be ten years old and if he were 44 like he said in his profile, I was 13 and jailbait.

Well, Saturday night, I walked into one of the rooms of the IH whoring arcade to find Rick lying on a platform getting plowed from behind. His plower apparently done with him, Rick continued to lie there, ass up, snorting his poppers in anticipation of his next dick. Only the room was populated by a few losers who kept pulling at their soft button dicks while I stroked my raging hard-on to peak perfection and in full view of Rick’s hesitant gaze. I got up to leave but made sure to brush dangerously close to my would-be suitor who, desperate for another deep fucking, fell for the bait and reached out to touch my cock. Ah, life’s cherished moments! I pushed his hand briskly aside and, strolling out, blurted loud enough for the three other losers to hear: “Fuck you.”

We kept running into Lauderdale folk throughout the weekend (I even blew one of them) and late in the trip, a Latin couple Bill knew told us about the New Orleans House. Right on Duval, it was a mini-Island House without the heavy $$ freight. It had an indoor bar, dance club, patio bar next to a clothing optional pool and sauna, a gym, and even an outdoor “backroom” hut perfect for evening play.

Most important, it sported a strong, reliable internet signal.

So, if and when we revisit KW, the New Orleans House will be our most likely destination. After all, have lap, will fuck.

Tomorrow – New Orleans: Decadent, Yes. But Not in The Way You Think.

My Bud Bill and I had switched our website locales on Manhunt and Adam4Adam to Key West the night before we left and were already getting hits. But just as in Lauderdale, the mindfuckers/gameplayers converged on us new KW meat in full force. Only now, with our laps just feet away on our beds, we could ID these fuckers almost instantly. The same humpy guy would hit Bill up first, then me a half hour later, or vice versa, with the same come-on line, a phone number linked to perpetja-voicemail, and no follow-through. (We later responded with a “gotcha!” reply just to let them know we were up to their BS.)

But, hell, we were seasoned web masters, and we weren’t going to let these losers get in the way of our fun. Like aggressive day traders, we plowed the websites every chance we got: after our continental breakfast, before we went for our IH gym work-out, after the afternoon at the pool, or before dinner or after dinner, or before showering to go out. Once, Bill, negotiating a time and place with some hottie, brought his lap into the john while he was taking a shit.

Even when the internet signal from the office kept dropping out in our room, we persevered, trotted over with one of our laps to the porch just outside the office where the signal was strongest and continued our business, not giving one fuck what the pursy lipped tourists in from Iowa passing by thought of all the dicks and asses popping up on the pc screen.

Armed with our laptops, Bill’s and my perseverance and pure New York style pushiness paid off and we each managed to score a few winners to complement the assorted blowjobs and fucks we made at the Island House. Our collective dance cards by the weekend had about twenty names scribbled on them, a few more for Bill than me considering he’s still in the total whore stage of his budding gay career.  Not bad for two aging fags who just breezed into town for the weekend.

Funny, when I asked my humpy, hairy, former Wall Streeter trick now living part-time in Key West if the web was as fucked up in NYC as it was here in south Florida where guys acted like you were negotiating a pre-nup, his reply was simple but all-telling: “In New York, lining up a trick on the web is like ordering pizza.”

Some more Key West Kodak moments tomorrow.

The scene in Key West has definitely contracted, and if it weren’t for the sun, the palm trees and Hemingway’s house, you’d swear you were in some medium size town like Columbus, Ohio. The gay guest houses, armed fortresses behind pretty white fences and security access gates, were all concentrated on one block, Fleming, and the bars, which you can count on one hand, twinked for the most part except for biker bar Saloon 1,  were clustered together on the 800 block of Duval.

As my main bud Bill and I were to see during the course of the weekend, though, an anything goes attitude prevailed once you were safe inside these gay cloisters.

Setback #1: Don’t fall for the colorful promos of bodies by God that Island House hustles. Most of the guys we saw those three days were partnered, kept, nerdy, ironing boards, over-the-hill twinks, old, and/or glued to their laps, I-pods, Blackberrys, or latest gay porn trash paperback. Here we were, along with a handful of other guys who had their shit together, lounging butt naked at the pool, pumped and fresh from our gym work-out, and not one fucker even passed us a dirty look. NO eye contact whatsoever.

One fat fuck who looked like Budda was lying in his room pulling his pud in full view of every passerby all weekend that we thought maybe he was stuffed.

I began to ponder why these guys spent all this money to do nothing to try to get laid when I realized that, unlike Bill and I who live in Gay Whorehouse, U.S.A., many of these guys come from towns where homosexuality is banned from the local dictionary, and apparently are content with just being here.

Setback #2: Lack of not just quality but quantity. Isn’t it always the same shit? You go to some celebrated, overpriced gay ghetto, find things, well, quiet, and are told you just missed some big blow-out weekend or one was coming up after you were leaving. That’s exactly the line we got: there had been a bear nude-fest with 200 men the weekend before, and the weekend we were here was the lull before the Christmas gang bang when hordes of guys would be fucking in the streets. Somehow, though, we just didn’t buy that bill of goods when, in the heart of a recession, even bars and guest houses in more centrally located Lauderdale were suffering.

The result: although Bill and I had some action in the Island House back rooms and sweat rooms, quality meat was far and few between. In fact, we found Saturday afternoon and night at both IH and the Duval bars comparatively empty with less guys than we encountered Thursday night on our arrival.

No wonder one of my tricks, a cop who lived here full time, confessed I was the first sex he had had in SIX months.

More KW adventures tomorrow

I already knew that Key West’s reputation as a premier gay mecca had come and gone, and that the torch had been long passed, first to South Beach, then Lauderdale. Hell, I even heard the cruise ships had asked the town’s fathers to de-fag the place so not to offend its straight-laced clientele, and drunken straights were ridiculing gays on Duval, a street we gays had once owned. Even fifteen years ago, before I began snow-birding to Lauderdale, I had booked a hotel in Key West that advertised in a gay rag in NYC only to find myself the only token homo in the place, surrounded by Euro-yuppies.

But when my main bud Bill and I thought about doing another long weekend, Key West, a locale just four hours away from Lauderdale that my friend was entranced by, seemed the perfect fit.  Now on past trips of my own, I had had little luck lining guys up off the web in advance. So this time I decided to test Bill’s theory, take our laptops with us, and hit up the “I want it now” boys while we were actually there.

We booked a small, straight bed and breakfast hotel with internet access (as far as we were concerned more important than a shower and toilet) just a few blocks from the fabled, legendary Island House at half the price. After all, for twenty-five bucks you could get a day pass at IH good till 8 a.m. the next morning and enjoy all of its decadent amenities in clothing optional bliss: the pool, surrounded by an outdoor bar and 24 hour café/ restaurant, the sauna, steam rooms, two hot tubs, and the “culture” room with its nooks and crannies and porn video.  Hell, the place was just one high end whorehouse – or so we first surmised after that quick Cook’s tour we got that initial afternoon of our arrival in town by a sixties-style queen.

The weather may have been picture perfect, but our obsession was on the indoor sports. Because we weren’t into threesomes with one another, we agreed that if one of us had a trick lined up for the room, the other would hide out at the IH till it was all clear. Armed with the internet and our cell phones, and with Island House as our back-up, we were almost guaranteed to score.

Or would we? The answer tomorrow.

OK, so what do I like about Chicago then?

The Chicago Diner on Halsted, funky, NYC West-Villagy, retro-hippy.

Sidetrack, a huge, mod stand-up bar with a good mix of ages and plenty of eye candy.

Good old pub nostalgia at Roscoe’s or Little Jim’s.

But, of all my favorite tourist spots in Old Chicago, nothing surpasses that Temple to Dick, Steamworks, arguably the best fuckin’ bath house in the nation. Floor upon floor of rooms, booths, orgy lounges, and glory holes with men from all over the country and the world. (Chicago isn’t the crossroads of America for nothing.) The place is even sophisticated enough to post on busy weekend nights when your room is available on monitors throughout the place.

In fact, you know something? I think the next time I go, I might just camp out there the whole weekend. Fuck the guest house, Sidetrack, the river cruise of Chicago’s eclectic architectural wonders, and, especially, the former Sears Tower. After all, who needs to climb a phallic symbol when you can get the real deal lying down?

Tomorrow -  Key West: Have Lap, Will Fuck

.. and picked up my promo piece on my “Confessions of a Str8 Gay Man” and my gay fiction work at either the Alibi or the Ramrod, the complete version of “Hooked,” the story I excerpted from in my promo can be found in its entirety in my  posting of October 29 on my other blog, gay-erotic-fiction.com. Check the archives.

Remember that childhood fable of the Emperor who walked around in his undies, but none of his subjects would say a word for fear he’d cut off their heads?

Well, what’s with the ultra-conservative, right wing Republicans and Tea Party followers and Santorum? They exalt him as if they were the German populaces of the 1930’s and he was Hitler, following the Conservative company script hook, line and sinker.

Do they really believe independents like me who will make the next election, as we have in the past, even consider him? Hell, the fucken guy scares the shit out of me!  The Pubs’ other candidates, including Romney, may say they’re for family values and traditional marriage, yada, yada, yada, but this guy, Santorum, is a Zealot, stuck in some 1956 time warp, totally out of touch with Today’s America.

Fuck his views on gay marriage. They’re vanilla, no sprinkles, compared to his earlier treatises before he started campaigning, where he likened homosexuality to bestiality. He says if he became President he would restore “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” so, I guess, the military could start losing some its most valued and highly trained personnel all over again.  And as for abortion and women’s rights …

BTW, why did Santorum lose the 2006 Senatorial race in Pennsylvania?

Quoting an article that appeared recently in Bloomburg Business Week: “Santorum’s loss was the largest defeat by a Republican United States senator seeking election or re-election in modern Pennsylvania history … Santorum was putting an emphasis on the cultural issues (i.e. gay rights), which didn’t sit well with independent, suburban swing voters in this state. … Santorum’s 2006 loss came after he was accused by Democrats of being hypocritical for moving his family to suburban Virginia, yet still claiming a property tax deduction and tuition reimbursement in Pennsylvania.”

I guess that makes him a defender of family values after all, huh?

The stupidest, stupidest thing the Pubs could do – or the smartest if you’re a Dem – would be to make Santorum their candidate.

I know February is not exactly the month to be talking about visiting Chicago but soon it will be spring and the Windy City is definitely worth exploring.

Chicagoans I’ve recently met or fucked with down here in sunny Lauderdale tell me most of the gay action has shifted north to Andersonville from Halsted, which I habitually stay in because its bohemian character reminds of NYC’s West Village of old. So I’m the first to admit this assessment of Chicago may not be a fair one.

Let me start out with what I don’t like about the Windy City (besides its winters):

The cost of hotels in The Halsted.

Sure, you might get a Travelocity special for some swanky hotel on the Miracle Mile, but that’s way downtown. What do you want to do, be surrounded by snooty straights and hike over to the Scene every night, when you can stay within walking distance of everything? The problem is a hotel on Belmont, one of Halsted’s main drags, called City Suites that used to be cheap was absorbed by some luxury chain and now is super-priced. There’s a quaint little gay bed and breakfast hideaway right in the heart of it all, and where I usually stay, but it, too, is on the pricey side for a basement cell where you couldn’t tell whether it was day or night. A Days Inn within reasonable proximity of the scene is perpetually booked every time I’ve checked out dates.

The bear and leather clubs.

Granted, I’ve never been there for IML so what I’m telling you here applies on a typical, non-descript weekend. (Like I said, I’ve avoided IML since I feel my chances of getting laid during festival celebrations like IML go down as the hunk factor rises).

Touche’s is a $20 cab ride from The Halsted and, frankly, on the Saturday night I went, it was not worth the fare. The Cell Block, walking distance from that gay bed and breakfast and ironically a stone’s throw from that bastion of jockness, Wrigley Field, had once been one of the few leather bars left in the U.S. that enforced a dress code in its back bar. Ah, but no more. On my last trip, I found the whole place rather empty for a weekend night with barely a harness in sight. It has morphed into a sad little neighborhood bar.

Tomorrow: What I do like.