Category: ultrapersonal

Kinky Boyfriend

The words were so simple and accurate, I was amazed that I had never managed to string them together myself. They were exactly what I’d been trying to say, and even made connections I hadn’t been able to properly express yet.

“I want a kinky boyfriend.”

I was chatting with a guy online, and we fell into lamentations about the difficulties of meeting guys who were into headier sexual thrills but were still interested in more than the sex. When he said that, I all but smacked my head in disbelief. Eureka! that’s what I’ve been saying in a roundabout way: I want a kinky boyfriend.

I’m not squeamish about other fetishes that go further than just the leather. In fact, I’m open to and enthusiastic about all kinds of kink. What I’m not so interested in is getting into stuff that involves so much trust and skill with guys who I haven’t grown to know. I don’t want to be a modular piece of somebody’s scene, or have some guy just be a piece of mine. I want to know someone, see how he ticks, learn what gets him beyond simple horniness, know the shape of his boundaries, and push them. And have the same done to me.

I’ve had lots of hot, dirty, casual sex and play, and I think it can be a whole lot of fun. It’s fun and cathartic and even educational with the right guy, but I want more. I want more than you can get from a quick roll in the hay or two. I want to get my mind and my emotions involved. I want to make someone dizzy with anticipation and lust. I want to make someone feel secure. I want someone to let down his guard because he knows it’s alright. I want to get past someone’s reservations and get into the whole man inside. I want to open up and feel a more complete version of myself tingle. That’s not casual.

I’ve gotten a handle on the fleeting thrills of casual sex and casual kink. I’ve gotten to know the pleasures of falling in love and the frustrations of not being able to explain what else was missing. After years of getting to know what else turns me on, and how important all that is, I wanna find somebody who can go further with me. I’m willing to be led or I’m willing to take the lead, but mostly I want to make the journey together with a man who sees a similar destination.

Winding Up

A quote I stumbled across that talks about the leap of faith in my desires that I’ve been trying to make lately:

Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity usually evaporates. Guts have to go for the long haul. Curiosity’s like a fun friend you can’t really trust. It turns you on and then it leaves you to make it on your own — with whatever guts you can muster.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami

What I mean by “leap of faith’ is that I’m admitting to myself that I’ve tried a lot before — leather, wrestling, sex clubs, boyfriends, groups, fast and anonymous fucks, casual hook-ups, topping, bottoming — out of curiosity that encouraged me to see what I liked, but I haven’t always had the guts afterward to go after what I really did like if it meant breaking too far out of the character of myself I’d always played. Not that I’d given up on what I liked, but that I’d file things away as a sort of secret life that I kept separate from my day-to-day activity. Well, what the hell’s wrong with going after what you like and being honest about it? You’re sure not going to increase the odds of finding like minds without having the guts to let them find you.

A Dilemma of My Own

This weekend was my turn to go out on a date with a friend of a friend. As with you, it was a guy I’d met a few times before but never really got to know, and who I liked a lot once we got to know each other a little bit. Fun, smart, and good-looking, but I was also feeling a little bit of frustration about getting back into the same old routine of meeting a nice guy and crossing my fingers hoping that if he was even interested in me that he’d also share any of my leather fetish. Nice, attractive guys who really capture my interest are rare enough. Ones that like me back narrow the pack down a little further. The additional factor of finding someone who actually responds to leather like I do is usually the one I’ve had to compromise on. Lately, though, as I’ve thought more and more about wanting to stop shoving parts of who I am away into storage, I get more frustrated about having to give up this thing that’s such a potent part of my sexual make-up.

You and I have been in the same spot for a while, John: it’s really important to us to find guys who appeal to us both sexually and mentally. We’ve always gone the traditional route: hoping to meet nice guys through regular channels, and then just secretly hoping they share some of our more unconventional interests. It’s not a bad approach, but it hasn’t been very successful.

As much as I know I like to play around with different guys who share only a small part of the things that make up who I am, one of the lessons I’ve learned in my years of whoring around and getting to know myself better sexually and emotionally is that at heart I’m the marrying kind. Not a prude, and not fixated on the idea of monogamy just for the sake of it. I just know I like to focus the bulk of my attention on one guy who excites me on many levels.

I’ve always been so self-conscious about owning up to how much the leather thing actually means to me, and the result has been that I’ve always treated it like a dirty secret. I’m trying to approach it differently now: this time I don’t want to just cruise for guys into leather who just want to fuck and run. I’m sure I can continue to have plenty of fun and discovery along the way with those guys, but now I may as well just admit that what I want is to get really involved with someone who’s into leather like I am, who appreciates ideas and life like I do. Maybe I’ve just been looking for the total package — that best friend plus — from the wrong angle.

I’ve been underestimating the leathermen and hoping there’d be another nice guy with a fetish of his own. Now, I think it’s time to look at the leathermen as a pool of candidates who’d be just as likely to have a life beyond their fetish that would rock my world. Yes, me, I’m open to wooing.

Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee

Allison's a square, Wanda. Cry-Baby don't dig squares.

“I’m so tired of being good.”

So laments poor Allison in John Waters‘ Cry-Baby, the story of a repressed good girl who yearns for the fast life in the arms of a hot, hot juvenile delinquent with a sensitive soul. Allison, I have always understood your pain.

I am, without a doubt, the biggest goody-two-shoes you know. Don’t drink, don’t smoke (what do I do?). Smart, polite, reliable, responsible, diligent. And so self-conscious about being seen as anything but such a goody two-shoes, completely exasperated. Being most of these things comes comes pretty easily, but I hate the pressure to live up to the reputation I’ve built for myself. I’ve always hated it so much, in fact, that when I can’t live up to it, I fail in a rather spectacular fashion — always the overachiever. Yes, I have a secret life as a lazy, messy, self-indulgent fuck-up.

The little things never bugged me that much: they add character, make me more human. I’m a little slobby around the house, I’m a little bad with deadlines, I don’t return phone calls right away. No trouble, right? Well, that’s just a little steam being let out of the pressure cooker. I am so much more irresponsible than I let on. I let things fall apart left and right, as long as I can keep up appearances. My credit and my finances are a disaster. I have let people take enormous advantage of me just because I didn’t want to make a fuss. I have been so much sluttier than I have ever let people know, and the truth is that I didn’t really enjoy it as much as I always thougth I would. The fact that there have been massive repercussions from the few times I’ve truly thrown caution to the wind do nothing more than make me feel even greater pressure to hold myself to standards that usually feel impossible.

I’m worry about letting people down, of not living up to expectations, of being faulty. And it goes without saying that I probably perceive all these expectations more than anyone around me actually has them. But still, whenever people express surprise that I haven’t been the reliable goody two-shoes they’ve gotten used to, it just winds me up that much tighter. Even when people actually don’t give a crap, I react as if they do. I’m so uptight you could pop me.

Gratuitous picture of Johnny Depp as Cry-Baby, because he's hot.Not that I haven’t popped already. You’ve been following along lately, right? What I’m trying to do now is find balance, to own up to my own shortcomings, to embrace my inner bad boy and realize that I can let go of the stupid stuff and then maybe stop dropping the ball so often when it really counts. I’m allowed to indulge myself, I’m allowed to slack off, I’m allowed to be weak. I’m human, duh. What a boob I’ve been. It’s time to just relax a little once and for all, more often and less self-consciously. After thirty years of being the best little boy in the world, though, it’ll be interesting to see how well I can integrate a little everyday delinquency.

Metaphor Time Again

Astronomers don’t expect to really see some of the things they look for. Instead, they have to reach conclusions from indirect observation to find things like distant planets or dark matter. They have to observe visible objects like stars and see how their views of these objects change as they are affected by the presence of the things they can’t see directly. Changes in light levels or color, properties that can be seen and recorded and measured, can be caused by the gravitational pull of these other, unseen objects as they pull the light source in one direction or another, or as their gravitational pull focuses the light like a lens, revealing sources of light that were otherwise too dim to notice.

Which is to say, you don’t always have to see something directly to know it’s there. You can see how things change around that thing — how they directly respond to its presence — and the thing itself is revealed by these ripples in its environment. And then there it is, no secret at all.

Hubble's Top Ten Gravitational Lenses

The Bottled-Up City of Candor

It was a big decision for me to be candid here on the site about what’s been happening to me lately. But considering that a lot of my struggles are about being afraid to admit to weakness or vulnerability, I thought it would be a healthy step to let it all hang loose for once and see how things go. Also, my thoughts have been so addled lately that it’s been good for me to record them here during moments of clarity, or at least during the moments when I had the energy to try sorting them out. For friends and family and such, it’s proven to be a useful way to take a barometer reading of how I’m doing. For other people who read but don’t actually know me, I guess it just makes for a curious roller-coaster ride of depression and angst. Whee! Come watch Sparky get his crazy on!

I haven’t really found it detrimental to just own up to my problems here, however. I feel a little exposed, true, but all the venting and the navel-gazing has been pretty cathartic. That counts for something, right?

Rescheduled

This weekend’s special treat was supposed to be a long-awaited visit from Big Daddy Jessie, but it looks like he’s all sick now, so we’ll have to reschedule our big plans for the Doughnut Tour of New York and late night gab sessions back at the Swanktuary (formerly known as the Rumpus Room until its rechristening this past weekend). Damnation!

If anyone in San Francisco catches him out and about enjoying himself this weekend, smack him soundly upside the head and tell him to get back in bed and drink some cranberry juice.

102 Minutes

Almost nine months later, and a detailed story about September 11 will still make me teary and sick to my stomach. “102 Minutes” is an excellent Times feature that tells stories of what went on inside the towers the morning of the attack, pulled together from e-mails and phone calls from people trapped inside, and video footage and eyewitness reports of what went on. It’s brutal to read.

The smarmy memorial pieces and the constant references to the day don’t trouble me one bit. Any time I read any detailed reports of what happened that day, however — any time I’m reminded of the enormity of the disaster and the shock of the whole experience — my stomach does the same flip-flops all over again.