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.

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

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.

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.

So what do all these gay guys from up North or the four corners of the world who spend a fortune to come here do once they’re here? Stare at their phones, checking out mobile Manhunt or Grinder, not the hottie staring at them; stay stuck like crazy-glue to their buddies, rather than “mingle;” stroll the beach or the bars eyes locked straight ahead and a puss on their faces like they had taken prunes that morning and they hadn’t worked; or pass on a few dangling dicks at their guesthouse’s clothing optional pool as they wait for God.

My bud Bill had a trick over the weekend at one of the guesthouses and after the two of them were done, they wandered down to the secluded fuck-around patio area, complete with gloryholes. (I guess even the guesthouses have realized they have to compete with Slammers.) And there, sitting butt naked in a lounge chair was a real, real good lookin’ thirty something guy, legs slovenly spread, playing with himself. A few guys, including Bill’s brief tryst, tried to, well, help the guy out, but up came the hand. No, he had at least four mouths that would have loved to devour his handsome big cock and take his load, but Pretty Guy chose to continue doing it solo, shot his load, got up and went back to his room.

Thank the fucken Gay God I had my fun when the fun was still to be had.

As I ventured into the crowd of men that Saturday night at Montreal’s Eagle Noir, I was pleasantly surprised to find that a gay art that I had thought had long died – good old fashioned eye-to-eye cruising – was alive and well. One built mother fucker, apparently with no agenda since he was with a bunch of his clones, gestured to me in the crowd and shouted, “You know how hot you are?” Then there was the tall, burly, dark bearded man with the sloppy black T who said nothing but eyed, stroked or groped me each time our bodies rubbed against one another in the crowd. Maybe not drunk enough, or a bit intimated by his stature, I didn’t make the next move.

So who should I rub furry bellies with a half an hour later within the tight hallways of GI Joe’s, my kind of bath house, than my dark handsome stranger who smiled broadly and asked for my room number.

Emile’s English was spotty but we weren’t connecting to discuss American-Canadian relations, and after we had caressed and kissed and played and came, I turned to Emile and asked softly, “c’est bon?” Stroking my beard, he replied with that sexy broad smile of his, “oui, c’est bon.”

At the airport that Monday morning, waiting for my flight to be called, I decided to squeeze in breakfast at the restaurant across from my gate and unload what I could of my remaining Canadian dollars. I placed my order and went to the john and when I returned to my table, my waitress was just strolling over with my cheese omelet and coffee.

“See,” she said all “hope this gets me a nice tip” cheery-like, “timing is everything in life.”

Thinking back to my weekend’s hunting, I nodded. “It sure is.”

Now I didn’t mention that my financial planners back in Lauderdale who love Montreal and suggested it to me as a weekend getaway even have a cute, hung hottie hidden away there who they visit on a semi-regular basis or who visits them down in our Gay Sandbox.

I think the next time I go, hopefully this coming summer, maybe I can get lucky too and line up a traveling fuck buddy to help improve American-Canadian relations on a very personal level.

Tomorrow – Chicago: The Windy City With Some Steam

On a positive note, there was Jacques, a forty-something, long haired computer tech, a Daddy Hunt find, with a typical French Canadian swimmers build, uncut cock, and some fur, who biked over to my place where we enjoyed a hard dicked Friday afternoon liaison; and Eduardo, all of 35, and yes, also intact, who e’d me on Bear 411 at 8:30 on Saturday night, was on my couch by 10, and out with smiles on both our faces by twenty of 11. Efficient.

Daytime I played typical tourist, walking over to Old Montreal which, with its quaint eighteenth century architecture, nicely scrubbed cobble stone streets and overpriced cafes and souvenir shops, resembled a carefully orchestrated Disney theme park; or Mount Royal, a few metro stops from the Village, where I got my aerobic work-out of the weekend, climbing to the top where a former chateau and a panoramic view of the City awaited me.

I was flattered that a bearish young cub on 411 had invited me to an orgy he was hosting at his place Saturday night, but I’d have to take the Metro in a strange town and you never knew whether the set universe of guys at a sex fest would be to your liking or you to theirs. So, instead, I opted for the strip.

After hitting Le Stud, populated with more of my kind of men but mostly paired off on the dance floor, I drifted over the Eagle Noir, hosting an auction to send their guy to IML, to rendezvous with yet another website possibility: Pierre, 43, 5-9, not much fur but honestly handsome, a tight gymnast body and goatee, and a college instructor like me. We connected all right but he kept rattling on in broken English about some ex-lover and even when we mutually groped in a dark corner, pulling up our T’s and reaching into one another’s levis, he insisted he couldn’t go back with me: (a) because he knew my hosts, Rob and Luc (so? were they waiting up for me like some anxious parents to approve whom I had taken home?); and (b) because even though he and his partner no longer had sex, they still lived together and somehow it wouldn’t be right.

I wish I had known how to say “cut the bullshit” in French at that moment. Instead, dripping but not yet ready to head over to GI Joe’s, the bath house where I had encountered my first legion of thick uncut cocks the night before, I smiled a polite au vois and re-entered the sea of new prospects back in the bar – shirtless.

What happened next tomorrow.

All I can say, while I must confess I prefer circed men, I never saw or had so many uncut guys in my life in so short a time in one place.

My financial planners in Lauderdale  – gay, happily partnered to each other and Montreal devotees  – recommended a small, non-descript guesthouse just a few blocks from St. Catherine, the Gay Village’s Main Street. Maison des Jardins’ proprietors, Rob and Luc, cute, hot, in-shape and seasoned, made me the virgin vacationer in their new top floor apartment suite, complete with its own private entrance and deck. The place was so spacious I could have had three orgies going on simultaneously and the guys from one sexfest wouldn’t have run into the guys from the others.

I have to say having everything on an eight block or so stretch of St. Catherine – the bars, clubs, restaurants and enough bath houses for five urban hubs – made cruising and playing extremely convenient. I also felt a great sense of community, more than even in places like NYC’s Chelsea I left back in the early 2000’s. Here, guys held hands, or embraced or kissed on the street (on the cheeks and the lips) very matter of factly, not to show off or draw attention.

But while, yes, that first day, hearing and seeing French made me feel like I had hopped a plane and gone to Europe, by Saturday the gibberish had gotten a little irritating and just a bit elitist like I had felt when surrounded by the real Les McCoy’s on a visit to Paris two winters ago. For a heavily trafficked tourist area in a country that, after all, is officially bilingual, many of the twinks who staffed the shops or restaurants or even the bath house windows knew about as much English as I remembered of my high school French.  About the only person who impressed me with her bi-linguistic expertise was my black shoe polish haired, multi-tatted, nose-ringed waitress at the outdoor café I frequented for dunch who switched from French to English like I would go from chewing a trick’s left tit to his right.

Also apparent, particularly that late Friday afternoon at the very popular beer bust of one of the roof top bars, was the same generational divide between the young, often effeminate guys with their 28 inch waists, and the older seasoned men that I witnessed in most other urban gay ghettos including my own Lauderdale. At least one good thing: they all weren’t umbilically connected to their I-phones or blackberrys checking out Grinders like those cell-obsessed faggots back in sunny Florida.

More of the Land of the Uncut tomorrow.