She's Not a Whore.

I just have to say, I fucking love Fort Troff.  Of all the purveyors of kinky gear online, I really think they have the most love for what they do.  They often have the best prices on everything from bondage gear to sex toys, and the MODELS are FUCKING HOT.  The best part are the demo videos they make for just about EVERYTHING (I actually think they love what they do enough that they’d make videos even if they DIDN’T sell anything) that rival the best in porn.  They have a fantastic line of their own products, including a lube (with numbing Jojoba), aptly named TAKE IT BITCH and another “why didn’t anybody think of this before” product called CUM LUBE.  

So I’ve finally started taking my recovery from crystal meth seriously.  I’ve been dipping my toe in the waters of crystal meth anonymous for months now and was really resisting it.  I’d get 30 days or so together of not partying, and then oops, I’d do it again.  The last time was the most extreme…I ended up with six guys at my house for all of MLK weekend and even slammed for the first time.  This is not stuff I need to be doing.

It got me thinking though about what exactly it was that I was GETTING out of doing crystal.  The drug itself scared me.  I had invited all sorts of crazy drug addicts into my home.  I had missed work, and felt crappy for weeks after partying for just a few days.  I had put myself at risk for HIV and scores of other STDs.  So WHY is this drug so damn appealing to me?

I’m a pig.  I love cuddling with a sexy guy, making out and being super lovey-dovey as much as the next homosexual, but sometimes, yes sometimes I just wanna FUCK.  I wanna get pounded, treated like a little bitch, gang-banged, tied up, spit on, pissed on and cum all over.  Every once in awhile I wanna flip and show somebody else who’s boss.  Crystal made that all possible for me.  In fact, it made it easy.

It wasn’t just because guys who were doing crystal were more open to being kinky.  It’s that I WAS MORE OPEN TO BEING KINKY.  Really, it was that crystal helped me let go of the shame that, for me, has always gone with saying that I want anything other than sweet lovemaking in the missionary position through a sheet.  I’m totally comfortable with being gay.  I’m becoming more comfortable admitting I’m a bottom.  But I’ve never fully embraced my inner pig and been able to admit, fully sober, that I want three or four hung tops to use me like their fuck toy.

So this is one of the things I think I need to explore in my new sobriety.  I haven’t used crystal or even had a drink in eleven days.  One day at a time, right?  I’m dating a guy right now, who’s super sweet, incredibly smart and pretty damn sexy.  I definitely get the sense that we’re sexually compatible in a lot of ways.  

Maybe tonight I need to bring out the bondage tape.  

Not that I’ve ever met him, but I really wanna marry Peto Coast someday.  If you’re not familiar with his work in the pornographic movies, it’s definitely not for the amateur porn connoisseur.  His is the stuff of Machofucker and the like…videos where he basically pounds a bottom like he’s trying to hurt them…with an insanely huge cock that looks like it’d hurt even if he was trying to be nice.  You can enjoy some samples of Peto’s work here or the video that initiated my fascination with him here.  

So obviously, the man knows how to give some serious dick.  There’s that.  And then there’s the fact that, while he may not be EVERYONE’s type (although I think most guys would find him pretty damn sexy) he happens to be EXACTLY my type…taller than me, scruffy, muscular (but not too huge), kinky, darker-featured and prone to baseball caps.  He also has a quality that’s SO rare in the tops-who-fuck-bottoms-like-sex-toys genre…he REALLY seems to GENUINELY enjoy watching them struggle.

Now I realize there’s probably a whole section of the DSM-IV dedicated to the reason why I happen to get off on that so much.  Some will say I MUST have been abused as a child (I wasn’t) or have really low self-esteem (I don’t…any worse than the average person).  For some reason though, I get ALL excited when I see a top like Peto who really seems to enjoy the bottom having a tough time taking his huge cock. 

Even more interesting though is that his off-screen persona seems…er…actually kinda adorable.  On his blog as well as numerous Youtube videos (some created by him and others) he comes off as surprisingly sweet and has an INCREDIBLE smile.  Sadly, he lives in Amsterdam so it’s unlikely I’ll meet him anytime soon, but in the meantime I’ll enjoy jerking off thinking about the kind of pounding he might dole out if we ever DID meet…and then snuggling with him after.  Sigh.  I’m such a hopeless romantic.  ;)

I no longer use crystal…at least not for the moment, but my intention is to get rid of it from my life entirely.  I used it for the first time about 2 1/2 years ago, and only used it every few months until February of this year when my use got to be what I consider out of control.  

It was an interesting ride while it lasted, but I definitely got scared about what my life could become as I got more and more entrenched in the tweaker subculture.  It’s incredible how quickly that happened…before I knew it I had a whole list of phone numbers and didn’t even NEED to go online to find guys to party with.  Of course, I also watched some of them become total messes, and watched myself teeter on the edge.  Thankfully, I stopped before anything got too out of hand.

There were a few things I noticed during that time that seem to be common themes among tweaker communities that I think are interesting.  For those of you who’ve never entered this world, I encourage you to keep it that way, but here are some signs to look out for in your friends and neighbors (other than sudden weight loss and disappearing for days on end).

- Yard and garage sales, often for other people.  I once got an email from a couple who often hosted sex parties saying they had a friend who needed to “sell off his inventory of unworn designer clothes from his warehouse downtown for fire-sale prices.”  In other words, he probably stole a bunch of clothes from work and they were helping him unload it.  In their house.

- Guys showing up with backpacks and even suitcases that look like they’re carrying everything they own.  THEY’RE CARRYING EVERYTHING THEY OWN.

- Large quantities of water and Gatorade, but no other groceries.

- Giving stuff away.  One odd thing was that people talk about how tweakers steal, but they also seem to be like Robin Hood.  I had one guy give me…unprovoked…a piece of artwork he’d gotten from a friend.  Another guy offered to sell me a new iPhone for $50…apparently he had 10 of them.  Another guy noticed I hadn’t yet bought living room furniture and offered me a whole room full of stuff he was moving out of his mom’s house.  

Crystal is a weird drug.

On the way into work this morning, I listened to a story on NPR (I listen to NPR because it reminds me that I’m smart.  I do have a masters degree dammit.) about Kate Bolick’s article in next month’s ATLANTIC MAGAZINE, “All the Single Ladies.”  The article explores the state of single women today, from the perspective of Bolick, 39, who is herself single.  With the growth of womens’ strength in the workplace, she finds that women are faced with choosing between deadbeats (guys with little upward mobility whose numbers are growing) and playboys (those seemingly desirable guys whose power grows as there are fewer and fewer of them).  She blames this phenomenon for the decrease in the number of people in Gen X and Gen Y who tie the knot.  She herself remains happily unhitched, although she admits occasional pangs of longing for her last major relationship that ended ten years ago.

I find myself looking around at the gay guys I know.  Granted, I tend to run in a circle of mostly single guys.  We spend our weekend nights out at bars and clubs and several of my best friends are club promoters, so perhaps my world view is a little off…but I think a lot of gay guys in my generation, at least in big cities, undervalue the idea of the “long-term-committed-relationship.”

Don’t get me wrong, Pat Robertson.  The same is true of a lot of heteros I know…even though they CAN get married.  At the same time, we seem to have this real sense of “get over it” when it comes to breakups.  I’ll admit, I’ve allowed myself to wallow in my own sadness at times.  I broke up with my ex a year and a half ago and I still find myself missing him from time to time.  He was the first guy I’ve ever really found myself in LOVE with and it’s been tough to get over.  

“Follow Charlotte’s SEX AND THE CITY RULE:” a friend says.  ”The best way to get over a man is to get under another one.”  My friends very quickly got over my talking about the ex.  If I even mention his name in the presence of one friend today while we’re out in public, I’m told I owe him a drink.  There was awhile where it was all I could talk about, and I can totally understand my friends wanting me to engage in happier conversation.  But I also find there’s a real sense of interchangeability among gay guys in terms of relationships…a sense that these things are expected to last a year or two at most and then we should move on to the next one.

My parents have been married my entire life.  That’s odd in this day and age, when marriages end in divorce more than half the time.  I grew up with the idea that at some point I was going to find someone I wanted to “settle down” with and that I’d be with them for the rest of my life.  That didn’t change when I came out, although the gender did.  

That said, I also find myself feeling as though when I’m NOT in a relationship, there’s something somehow MISSING from my life, and I hear this refrain from a lot of my friends.  As RuPaul says “If you can’t love yourself, how the HELL you gonna love somebody else?”  Bolick points out in her article that the Dutch don’t place any stigma on being single - people either are in a relationship or not.  So why do I worry so much about having a boyfriend?

There are lots of benefits to being single.  I don’t have to worry about someone else’s schedule all the time.  I can have sex with whomever I choose, and the sex (in my experience) tends to be hotter.  I have a lot fewer arguments in general.  But I do miss having somebody to curl up on the couch and snuggle with Netflix and a bottle of wine. I miss daily hugs and kisses from somebody I thought I’d be hugging and kissing for a lot longer than I did.  I miss my mom’s excitement when I talked about the possibility of bringing somebody home for the holidays.  There are definite benefits to being in a relationship too.

I’m finally at a point in my life where I feel like I can think seriously about dating somebody else.  I’m no longer going through that post-break-up comparing-every-guy-to-the-ex thing, or the slutty phase where I felt like I needed to have sex with any guy i could to make up for lost time.  I even made it through the crystal-meth-using-depression…something I’ve never had to go through before…mostly unscathed.  

Maybe I need to spend more time with my friends who are in relationships and less time in bars.  Or maybe I need to stop worrying about finding “the one” and worry more about BEING “the one.”

I’m working on unpacking my apartment this week.  That’s a bit odd, only because I’ve lived here for six months.  Partially because I was unsure if I was going to stay because the place, although dirt cheap, is a bit of a fixer-upper to say the least, and partially because for each of the weekends I set aside to spend unpacking in the last six months I spent the whole time doing crystal and having sex, my place remains mostly in boxes.

I recently realized that if I’m going to work on getting my life back in order, and open myself up to the possibility of having a boyfriend, I’m going to have to unpack my apartment.  Everything is in boxes.  When you walk in the front door, it looks like a tornado has gone through…not exactly the kind of place I’d want to bring anyone who I’m trying to impress.

Of course, I’ve had a ton of guys in my apartment in the last few months…far more than I typically would have had, even in my whoriest days (I just made that word up).  Every time I would greet a guy, I’d launch into my speech:

“I have to apologize in advance for how my place looks.  It’s a total disaster, because I haven’t finished unpacking.”  I always expected some guy to turn and run, but they never did.  These were tweakers, of course, and they typically just wanted to be taken to the bedroom as quickly as possible so we could do some crystal and get down to fucking.  I could have had a dead body in my living room and they probably wouldn’t have noticed.

On the last weekend I really partied for awhile, my apartment was like a revolving door.  I’d decided to have a few guys over, which became a weekend-long sex party.  Sadly, I don’t remember many of the guys who came over…most of them I think but I’m told by one of the guys who was there that there were a good number more than I have count of.  Each time I’d launch into my little speech, and each time the guys were unfazed.  I must have given that speech at least a dozen times that weekend.

It got to the point where I wasn’t even letting people in…I had one of the guys who was there do it for me.  He’d heard me give the speech so many times he had it basically memorized.  I’d hear him from the other room… “My friend wants to apologize in advance for the mess.  He’s still unpacking.”  They’d usually laugh and shortly arrive at my bedroom…the one room that is still set up to this day.

So I’m working on improving things.  I finally got some bookshelves and a few pieces of furniture I need and I’m working to unearth the place.  Maybe if I can clean up the mess that is my apartment it’ll help lay the groundwork for cleaning up the mess that is me.

There’s this teller who works at my bank who’s pretty fucking smoking hot.  He’s maybe 30, black, tattooed and has absolutely gorgeous eyes.  He flirts with me like crazy every time I go in.  I can tell he delays customers ahead of me so that I’ll end up at his window because whenever he’s working I somehow manage to get him as my teller.  It’s always a little bit bizarre because there’s this huge bulletproof glass between us.  It’s not that he says anything inappropriate or anything…it’s HOW he says it.  When I ask for cash back, he’ll ask “How do you want it?” but he’ll give me this dirty look as he asks that lets me know he’s thinking something else.  Or…”Is there anything else I can do for you today?” with this little look that says “I wanna fuck the shit outta you.”  One of these days I’ll probably give him my number, but I sorta love the idea that he’s getting hard back there under the counter but he’s trapped at work while I get to go home and jerk off.  

Truth is, he’s probably married with three kids.  :P

Millionaire Matchmaker Patty Stanger went on hottie Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens, Live the other night and went off about the gays.  She talked about open relationships and the monogamy in gay relationships, saying “In the gay world, it will always be open. …There is no curbing the gay man.” She then turned to Andy and said, “I have tried to curb you people.’” He said, “I am a gay and am down for the monogamy,” but she laughed fired back, “When was the last time you had a boyfriend?”

Blam!  Y’all get a taste of the bitch pudding!  Then she goes on Joy Behar’s show tonight and says, “But the gay men, they whip it out at eye lock. They get involved and they find out later if they want a serious relationship.”  

People are all up in arms about it.  Don’t get me wrong.  Patty’s an idiot, but I don’t think she hates the gays.  In fact, while she’s not doing a very good job of contributing to the ongoing PR campaign that’s required to defuse the religious wrong, she kind of has a point.

Obviously there are plenty of gay men who don’t fuck first and ask questions later.  Guys who save sex for after the civil union and never venture outside their relationship, even for a little rub and tug in the steam room at the gym.  You know, guys like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.  

Like Stanger, I’m playing on stereotypes in hopes of getting a laugh…the difference is mine is self-deprecating while hers is just mildly offensive.  Not all gay men are whores.  In fact, I DO know plenty of guys who don’t have sex before they’ve dated and gotten to know someone, and even a few of those guys in relationships that really do seem to be monogamous.  But I also know a lot more who spend way too damn much time on Grindr and cheat on their boyfriends left and right.

I’m frankly not surprised.  Let’s face it.  Regardless of where we grew up in the US, we learned to date, to have sex and to build relationships in a culture that tells us we’re going to hell just for being who we are.  We generally grow up without any gay role models, and most of us don’t even start LEARNING how to socialize with people we might one day want to couple up with until into adult-hood…and then we do it in a country where a large portion of people are ACTIVELY working to make sure our relationships are minimized as much as possible.

And on top of that, we’re MEN.  50% of straight marriages end in divorce, and the largest contributing factor to that is infidelity…and it’s not as likely to be the ladies doing it.  Guys are dogs…and in order to be in monogamous relationships, we have to fight against that natural urge in order to show love for another person.

Admittedly, I can be a big slut.  I’ve had sex with a lot of guys…dating them or otherwise.  I’m not saying it’s something I’m proud of, but I also don’t beat myself up over it.  I’m also a believer that it’s possible and maybe even HEALTHY to engage in some SLIGHT non-monogamy in any relationship as long as both partners agree to the terms and are comfortable with it.  

That said, I do think Patty’s right.  I watch so many of my friends talk about how badly they want a boyfriend, and then spend all their energy looking for somebody to fuck.  Bathhouses and porn sites are not exactly my idea of gay pride, and yet they’re allowed to have floats in the parade.  I often wonder if we don’t really have a cultural problem in the community of gay and bi men…that maybe if we spent more time actually getting to know the people we have sex with we’d all be a lot happier and a lot more likely to find somebody to settle down and adopt a kid with.

Now I wonder if that hot guy on A4A hit me up yet…

A friend of mine who’s looking for a relationship recently asked me if I knew of any gay matchmakers in Los Angeles.  ”Like, not an online thing,” he said.  ”A real-live person.”  I had actually used one of these services in the past few years and found it to be actually LESS effective than walking into a gay bar, writing my phone number on a napkin and tossing it into the air.  

A caveat.  Reading my posts on this blog over the past week or so one might think, “This guy is looking for a relationship?”  I am, actually.  I was in a real, committed, grown-up relationship for about a year and a half, and it ultimately ended because the OTHER guy was afraid to commit to it.  While I like my sex spicy, I’d ideally like it to be exclusively, or almost exclusively with one other person who I love and who loves me back.  But back to the service.

I was approached by these people at gay pride last summer.  A cute guy walked up to me and asked, “Are you looking for a relationship?”  Of course I followed him to his little tent.  A few weeks later, I was meeting with the lesbian who supposedly does all of their intakes, and found her pleasant and also a very good salesperson.  The service is simple.  They choose guys they think they can match with someone (aka guys who can afford to pay), charge you a fee and then set you up on a set number of introductions with guys who they think will be compatible with you.  Once your paid introductions have run out, they may elect to keep setting you up if they think you would be a good match for one of their paid members.

My first match was a fairly good looking doctor.  While I didn’t particularly enjoy spending time with him, I could admit that he was at least a fairly reasonable match on paper.  Of course, he spent the entire time complaining about how random the matches he’d gotten had been…little did I know how right he was.

Two of the guys I met I felt were decent matches, although one lived 45 minutes away and the other moved to Mexico a few weeks after we’d met.  The rest were guys who I wouldn’t set up on dates with any of my friends.  Hence why I didn’t recommend the service to my friend who was looking for one.

Personally, I feel like I need to take a break from dating for the moment.  I’ve been on a bunch of dates in the year and a half since my ex and I broke up…some from the matchmaking service, some from the web and a few good old fashioned met-a-guy-and-we-went-outs.  So far, no love connection.  So I’m gonna stop looking…for the moment.  Of course, that’s how I met my ex.  :P

I used crystal last night.  I’d been out for some Sunday Funday business with friends, and found myself feeling a little bad about my lack of a boyfriend and the fact that a friend of mine who I had a brief fling with about six months ago that ended in “I’m not ready for a boyfriend right now” from him…now has a boyfriend…who is not me.  

I left there and got online in my car until a guy I’d chatted with a few times hit me up and wanted me to come over.  Very excited that my love addict was in need of feeling wanted.  Ridiculous, I know…but ultimately that’s what went through my mind.  So I’m in my car about to drive to this guy’s place, and he asks me, “Do you party?”

The correct answer would have been, “No.”  Not only am I trying to stop using crystal…having entered an outpatient treatment program and gotten two weeks clean…but it was a damn Sunday night and I had to be at work today.  I can say ultimately that I’m grateful I had the presence of mind to get myself home in bed by 4:30 am so I’d get some modicum of sleep before I had to get up, but it’s just stupid.  I did have a good time, but I often wonder when I’m going to stop doing this stuff to myself.

In any case, I’m feeling ok today and trying not to beat myself up over it.