TheBreeder

I've done all those except the last. I've seen many douchebaggy profiles that are unspeakably rude—if the guy attempts to hit me up, I'll simply be polite and/or non-responsive. I don't like hanging out with negative people. But I haven't blocked one of those until they're personally rude to me.

It's fun. You should give it a try!

To see Breeder's original blog post click here Earlier this week I wrote one of those hippie-dippy, new-agey posts that occasionally come bursting out of me. I absolutely stand by what I said; I totally meant every word. But opening oneself up like that is essentially a way of making oneself vulnerable. In a way, it’s like slapping a big KICK ME sign on one’s back and hoping that the universe doesn’t take notice. It does. And that’s why I’m following up that last post with one that’s totally crabby-pants. Namely, I’m going to list: The Top 5 Latest Reasons I’m Likely To Ignore A Guy. The issue came up because I had a couple of people totally incensed that I would take the extreme and (in their minds) anti-social step to block them this week—one on an instant messenger, another on an online site. Both immediately logged into other accounts and proceeded to protest how very dare I do such a thing! But the truth is, If someone is bugging me, and I’m in a tetchy mood, or if they push me just an inch to far, I’m never going to deal with that person ever again, if I can help it. Instant messenger sites, and online cruising sites, mostly offer the option to block or ignore people so that I no longer show up as visible or contactable on their lists, nor they on mine. When it comes to irritating people, my trigger finger is awfully itchy when it comes to that ignore or block function. And my reasons are: 1. Because we’ve had this conversation more than once. Him: wassup?? Me: Hello. Him: can you cam? Me: No. Him: why not?? Me: I’m not in a position to cam at the moment. Him: why not??? Does it really matter why? Do you really want to know that I have my entire extended family playing bridge in the next room, or that I’m in a public library, or that I just got out of bed and look like Hugh Laurie had a very very rough night drinking and brawling? Or are you just going to take whatever I say and ask, oh come on just for a minute? Basically, unless you’re a close friend, the whys of my life aren’t your business, son. 2. Because we’ve never met and you’re asking me if my ‘top buddies’ can join in. I’ve been over this one several times before. That one line, faster than anything else a man can do, signals me that the guy isn’t very serious about meeting; he just wants the fantasy that a bunch of alpha males find him desirable. If you want your ego bolstered, show up and have sex with me. I’ll tell you how beautiful you are (if you are), or how good you make me feel (if you make me feel it). The only other time I want to see the words top and buddy is if your sentence is Don’t you want to come over and top my buddy’s ass? 3. Because you chew me out for no good reason. Only online sites, I’m always casting a disparaging eye over the profiles that rant against winks, nudges, pokes, and other low-investment forms of communication. Sure, I like an actual email better than anything, but a lot of these sites limit the number of actual messages a non-paying member can send; a wink is a quick and dirty way of letting someone know you’re interested, and allowing them the leeway to get back to you if they care to. And the ‘if they care to’ is the operative point, there. I’m usually polite to the men who wink at me, but I tend simply not to reply to men who either have no photo or information in their profile, who have extremely little information and a murky photo of the top quarter of their dick, or to men I find deeply and unredeemably unattractive. It happens. One of the guys who chewed me out this week irritated me by winking at me every four or five minutes over the course of a half-hour. I looked at his profile the first time and saw a creepy guy with a photo that looked as if he’d had it taken as a mug shot following incarceration over a sexual offense. Really, it was bad enough to make me shudder and click off immediately. I trashed the following winks without opening them, and then finally blocked the asshole when he wouldn’t stop winking. Whereupon he logged into a second account with an even creepier photograph and chewed me out for blocking him because he was ugly and just because I was hot didn’t give me the right to have such a god-damned attitude. Of course, he was right. Not just about me being hot, but about the reason why I didn’t respond to him. But it’s awfully presumptuous to rant at me about it, since I didn’t say a word. So I blocked his second profile, too. Online cruising can be rough. I get rejected too. I don’t yell at guys about it. (I just whinge in my blog. So basically I guess I’m suggesting that you get a blog and complain in it, too?) 4. Because your appetite is not what you claim it is. I’m a dirty whore, said the guy online. He was semi-local, and seemed eager to hook up. I’ll take any cock you want. Already we were perilously close to him asking about my top buddies, but I decided to play along. Any cock? I asked. Yes, ANY COCK. Because I’m a dirty whore. How about cock from a four-legged animal? I typed. Fuck no! he said. That’s sick, man. I have a top buddy who’s sixty-three, I wrote. I think he’d like to join in. I like older than me but they gotta be under forty, he replied, apparently ignoring the fact that I’m well over that age myself. Okay, I could bring my black buddies with me then. I don’t do black guys, he wrote. A minute later, he added, Or porto-ricans [sic] or chinks. How about my poz buddies? I pecked out. NO, he wrote. Then added, They gotta be CLEAN. I’m pretty sure the poz guys I know shower regularly, but whatever. So basically when you say you’ll do ANY cock, you mean HIV-negative middle-class white humans over 28 and under 40. Yeah, you know any of those? Click! Ignore. 5. Because I don’t want to buy what you’re selling. Ask my father, or my brother, or my loved ones, and they’ll tell you that the surest way not to get me to do what you want is to push hard at me to do it. I am one of the stubbornest mules around. I get a lot of people, because of my blog, who want me to do things for them. They want me to read their porn stories, or they want me to swap blog links with them, or they want me to promote their fledgling blog in my pages. Some people want me to promote their products here. I’m not averse to any of those things in principle, certainly, and I don’t mind people asking. But what I do mind is when someone asks, and asks, and asks, and badgers me repeatedly to get what he wants. Sending me multiple emails asking for a link exchange or a product mention, then sending me follow-ups asking if I got the emails about the link exchange or product mention, is just going to make me dig in my heels and growl in your general direction. Throw in an admonitory email expressing your exasperation that I’m not leaping at the chance to promote you? Oh, that is when I put your email address in my block filter, my friend. No, I don’t respond well to the hard sale. (Fawning and flattery will get me, though. Every damned time.) Your turn. What are your top reasons for blocking other guys? More...

Sometimes asking the right question is the first step in finding the right answer. You're right, Hotload. Maybe he'll find equilibrium yet.

To see Breeder's original blog post click here So I thought that we were having a good time. I thought it was really working out. He’d been available when he said he would, and he showed up to my place right on time. (Ten minutes early, even.) We’d checked each other out and liked what we’d saw. We’d rolled around on the bed and made out like fiends. We’d stripped in a hurry and explored each other’s bodies. He’d brought his laptop loaded with some porn he thought I’d like, and it was playing on one side of the bed while we’d grappled with each other on the other. He’d gone down on my dick—all the way down—while I buckled and groaned. I’d rimmed his hole and stretched it wide with my dick. I’d watched his eyes roll into the back of his head as he huffed and hummed with pleasure during the fuck, and then at his request I’d stayed inside while he played with himself furiously after. His ass muscles clamped down on my tool like a vise, as he shot on his belly. It was a small load. Maybe four or five dime-sized drops. Then, as I watched, his entire personality changed. From soft and pliable, he hardened. It happened over his face first. His eyes focused, the lids droops. His smile faded into something drawn and tight. The handsome planes of his cheeks and mouth became angular, angry, twisted. “Fuck,” he muttered to himself. His eyes went to the porn playing on his laptop, where some big-dicked guy was battering away at a helpless hole. “Fuck,” he repeated, shaking his head. “Something wrong?” I asked him. I was still in that post-coital haze, glowing from that open and confident feeling I get when I’ve done everything right, and the sex has been good, and it’s been with a good guy. When I’m in that mood, I’ll talk about anything, answer any question. I’m game for any adventure, when I feel like that. But the endorphin buzz was so high that I was confused by his herky-jerky response, the way he cooled from sex demon out of hell to roughly the same temperature as that iceberg the Titanic didn’t see. Before he slammed his laptop shut, he’d dabbed away the seed he’d shot from his hairy belly. As his other hand slammed shut the laptop, mid-movie, he thrust the Kleenex at me. “This,” he said. “I think about all the shit I do for this,” and he waved the wadded-up tissue like it was toxic, “and it makes me sick to my stomach. I mean, shit. Is this really worth it?” I admit, I was a little stunned. I’m used to guys having those thoughts of regret, after they shoot. I used to have them myself, when I was young. I’d get that release and then think to myself, I’ll never fantasize about dick again, I swear, next time it’ll be about girls. Or, I won’t whack off any more! I promise! I recognize that regret, that let-down, what the French call tristesse. But when I had it, I was ten or eleven. This guy was four times that age. The man who was nothing but heat and fervor when he’d walked in the door jerked on his clothing, grunted his goodbye, and then stomped out. The thing of it is that I know how long those little post-orgasm depressions last, and I’m judging he was horny again even before he got home through rush-hour traffic. I know how men’s dicks work. But you know, his question has rung in my ears all through the weekend. Is this really worth it? I think about it from his perspective. The hours spent online, downloading porn he likes when he’s hard and horny. Hours spent on chat sites and hookup joints trying to find someone who’s not only available, but who’s into him, who’s into the same things he is, whom he finds equally attractive, who’s willing to meet. All the time spent juggling schedules, of driving, of finding his way through strange neighborhoods, of parking. Yeah, of course he’s going to be all worked up and horny to go when he’s waded through all that mess—and if the feeling he has after of guilt and shame is so overwhelming, so negative, that it lasts for more than a moment’s tristesse, then yeah. I’d look at those four little drops and ask, Is this really worth it?, too. Then there’s me. I get the old blues too, where every once in a while I ask if all the effort I put into sex is really commensurate with the outcome. And except for a few times when I’m really blue, I think it is. I remember all the amazing people I’ve met, during sex—of the men I met and fucked who became real, actual friends. I think about the fuckbuddies I’ll see from time to time who bring a grin to my face every time I think about them, and about the crazy personalities that I’d never have encountered if I hadn’t taken the chance to take off my clothes and connect. I remember men whose names I never learned, with whom I never exchanged a spoken word, who let me in to their private worlds when we both unzipped and allowed the other to see our animal drives. I think about the wild intimacies, the whispered passion unleashed in dark barrooms and bedrooms and baths. I think about the men who allowed their vulnerable sides to shows, who asked me to give them what they couldn’t get from anyone else. I think about the men who told me their stories, both funny and sad, who shared with me their triumphs and failures and the tales they didn’t feel they could tell even their nearest and dearest. I think about the sweetness I’ve received, and how many lifetimes of love I’ve experienced, by opening myself up to person after person during sex. I think too, about the heartbreak I’ve had, and the disappointments, and how even now, knowing how things turn out, I wouldn’t trade a single one. Being ready to have sex on an afternoon when you’re horny and bored is one thing. Being open to sex as one of life’s many great adventures is another. It’s saying yes! to the universe and putting oneself, trustingly, into its hands. It’s being open to chance, and coincidence, and to humanity’s most delicate and mysterious rituals. It’s casting oneself into the waves, and letting their warm and foamy caress wash one to places unknown. I’m talking about it as if it’s religion. Maybe it is. All I know is that a tiny little squirt (or not to brag, a few larger jets) are the least of what I get out of sex. And every day I am grateful for all the people, all the experiences, and all the memories it brings me. Is all this really worth it? Yes. Yes. A million times yes. More...

Thank you, pig!

Amen to that one!

To see Breeder's original blog post click here After Friday's entry—the one about the blow job in the hotel bar restroom—I got a flurry of personal email from you guys (thank you! It's always welcome!) commenting on how I was 'such a stud' for scoring like that and how I had 'an unusually high success rate' in achieving random hookups that way. I've gotten those remarks before. I've had them from people who email or comment to say that wow! I reel 'em in every time!, and I get them from guys who snidely remark that it seems aw-fully sus-pi-cious that I always score when I go after someone in public. But it's like I said to someone just yesterday, about a comment on the blog: it just looks like I have a hundred percent success rate in cruising someone and getting in one of their holes quickly, because I only write about the successes. The failures (unless they're unusually tragic or funny) aren't worth writing about. No one wants to read a blog entry about (true story) how I rode on the train back from Manhattan the other night and made desperate fluttery-eyelashes bedroom eyes at the floppy-haired young businessman playing Angry Birds on his iPad opposite me. The entire entry would read: I was riding home on the train back from Manhattan the other night and made desperate fluttery-eyelashes bedroom eyes at the floppy-haired young businessman playing Angry Birds on his iPad opposite me all the way. And he was fucking oblivious. Nobody wants to read that. Nobody wants to read about the fellow who kept leaning in, and leaning in, closer and closer, over the tables at Cosi when I was eating lunch, who turned out only to want to know what kind of case I had for my iPhone. Nobody wants to hear about the guy I thought was following me on my walk around the local park, who turned out to be looking for his wife and preschool daughter after he'd dropped them off and parked his car. I don't write about the failures because they're mundane and pointless, and because there are so many of them. But here's the thing: I wouldn't have a single success story to write about if I didn't get out there and give it a shot. Without anything ventured, there wouldn't be sex to gain. For those of you who write me and bemoan the fact that nothing sexy ever happens to you, I ask a simple question: are you doing anything to make it happen? Because the more chances you take—and I understand that it can be scary—the more fun you'll end up having. Wait for something to drop into your lap, and you'll pass a lifetime in waiting. It's a simple lesson that applies to all areas of our lives, no? Now let's get to some questions from formspring.me. Do you think it's easier to find sex in a small town or big city? Big city. No question. However, in some cities an oversupply of men wanting to have sex leads to their postponing a decision about with whom to have it, because the chances are good that something better might come along. So while there may be a lot of men hunting for sex in a big city, it can be frustrating to get passed over proportionately many times more. your last response to the hiv testing and publishing comment, appalled me that some asshole would even ask such a question. so my question to you...doesn't it scare you to know morons are out there? I was just telling someone yesterday that they would be amazed at the amount of sheer rudeness that I receive on a daily basis. Even though as a percentage, the amount of emails, questions, and comments I receive that's rude and negative is fairly small, it adds up fairly quickly when you consider that I get a lot—a lot!—of readers interacting with me. But here's the thing. Some people are rude because they want to get a rise out of me. Some people are rude because they have the freedom of internet anonymity keeping their faces hidden. And some people are rude merely because they're ignorant. They might be rude because they simply don't know any fucking better. They don't even know that they're crossing the boundary and overstepping it. The people who do it deliberately are assholes. The latter just need to be pitied. the smile we see of your pic on twitter, is that a reflection of the man behind it? meaning, are you more apt to have a smile rather than a serious look? I have moments of both. I prefer to go through life smiling; I prefer an optimistic outlook. However, there are times in my life when the smile is social or artificial, whether because I'm buckling down on a serious project, or because I'm not as happy as I'd like to be. On the whole, though, I think I'm a fairly positive person. I've been told enough times I have a great smile that I tend to bring it out when I'm trying to seduce or entice someone. Work with your strengths, that's my motto. If you were faced with the choice of only oral sex or only anal sex for the rest of your life -- which would you choose? Anal. No question about it. Do you wish your parents had been aware of your sexcapes when you were younger is your father aware now of your teenage life Do I wish they'd been aware that I was slutting around? Good god, what teenager wants to be grounded the entire time between middle school graduation and the senior prom?! My parents wouldn't have reacted badly about the fact that I was looking to have sex, and finding it. They were wise enough to realize that happens. What they would've been concerned about would have been that the time I spent getting fucked was time that could've been better used in filling out my pre-college resumé of extracurriculars. *Serious question-If I bottom for the 1st time for anal sex, will it be painful to use the bathroom the next day? Only the top does it right. Serious answer. Have you had anymore interactions with "the Landscaper" since you last wrote of him? I know those stories have hit a nerve with some readers; given that, at the moment what are your thoughts on sharing these encounters with your readers in the future? I have had interactions, yes. I haven't written about them in my blog. I suppose it's kind of a cop-out, but there it is. It seems strange to me that of all the crap I write about, that's the one that gets a couple of nervous nelly commenters going. But frankly, I'm not all that found of the negativity the posts generate that way. More...

Exactly. I'm going to appear to have a hundred-percent success rate, because the dozens of times I get rejected or where I'm imagining something that doesn't exist, or where I'm just plain wrong or barking up the wrong tree, are too mundane and boring to write about.

To be fair, I only write about the successful ones. :-)

To see Breeder's original blog post click here I don’t know how I got invited to this thing. I think it was because of an off-handed comment I made to someone in jest, right before the last performance of the high school drama club’s production of The Secret Garden. I barely even remember it. All I know is that I was standing backstage, arms crossed, watching the proceedings and looking like one of the proud stage dads or something, trying not to get trampled as the fifty (!) high-school kids of the chorus came rushing by me in their Victoriana, smelling like sweaty horses, in a stampede to get off the stage so the two juniors playing ten-year-olds could have their duet. One of the mothers asked if I was sticking around for the party after. And I remember saying plainly, in my smart-assed way, Oh, anywhere there’s a prospect of free food, there’ll you find me. Well, the mother had something to do with this shebang—it’s the soft opening of a lounge bar attached to an upscale hotel in town, and the drinks are flowing freely. Wait staff circulate among us bearing cocktail glasses filled with potent concoctions that look more like the colorful results of chemistry lab experiments than they do potables; I’m not much of a drinker, so I nurse the strawberry-red vodka creation that’s coating the back of my throat like a sickly-sweet cough syrup. There’s food, thankfully. That’s why I was invited, right? I can’t disappoint my host. I take a roasted mushroom cap from a tray and pitch it down the bottomless pit that is my stomach, where it settles in with the multiple olives, the beef carpaccio on a rye cracker, and the crab cream puffs that have been circulating through the crowded room. I don’t know anyone there. I know hardly anyone in this town, even after a year. I’m approachable, though. So far I’ve made light conversation with some kind of kitchen remodeler (who’s given me his card, despite the fact I don’t own my home and aren’t planning to have my kitchen redone), a vaguely creepy guy older than me with a comb-over who complained that there weren’t enough ‘young hotties’ around, and a hilarious older woman who’s clued me in that she brought her own whiskey sours to the party and has been drinking them in the women’s room—“when she can get past those other bitches with no bladder control to get to it.” Then there’s this kid. He keeps looking at me from one of the oversized, uncomfortable-looking armchairs in a trendy fabric, on the other side of the bar. He’s Latin. Of course he’s Latin. All the boys who stare at me in this town are Latin. I’d guess him to be twenty-four, twenty-five. His eyebrows are perfect commas, his broad pink lips like nestled parentheses. He’s not even bothering to conceal that he’s staring at me, but it’s almost as if he’s abstracted. Lost in thought. My stare back, over a crowd of passing thirty-somethings trying some variation of a Cosmopolitan, startles him. He blinks as he realizes our eyes have met. He blinks rapidly, clearing whatever haze of fantasy has been before his eyes. I watch him laugh to himself a little, look away, and then glance back at me. I’m still looking. It's been a while since I've been cruised this blatantly in public, but I know the signs. He’s young enough that he doesn’t do a very good job of concealing his self-awareness. He wants to seem cool, but he’s over thinking every movement—the way he crosses his legs, the way he sips his drink, the way he looks around the room when what he really wants is to be looking in my direction. He wants to see if I’m still observing him. And I am. I observe enough to know he’s alone. If he’s waiting on a girlfriend—or boyfriend—he’s been ditched for the long term. No one comes to speak to him. He doesn’t make a move to socialize. So I stand there by the bar, taking the occasional canapé, until the chair next to his clears. Then I stride over and sit down. “Enjoying yourself?” I ask him. He’s taken his focus away from me long enough that to find me in the seat opposite genuinely startles him. He almost chokes on his drink. “I’m sorry,” he says. His voice isn’t feminine, but there’s a certain softness to it. I find it appealing. He has an accent as well. “Know someone here?” I ask. He stutters, and spits, and eventually manages to stammer out that he did some of the graphic work on the promotional materials the lounge has been sending out. I take it in, and nod. “So no one would notice if you disappeared for a few minutes?” His response is to flush. It’s a very visible flush. He has nothing to say in response. I know there’s a men’s room at the back of the bar. There’s also one in the lobby of the chi-chi hotel; I’d passed it coming in. I leave behind my sweet drink and smile at the kid, as I adjust my sports coat and leave the bar. The men’s room is quiet, deserted, and best of all, about ten degrees cooler than the lounge had been. It’s only about thirty seconds before the kid joins me. He’s not a tall guy—he comes up to maybe my shoulders. His hair is dark and long, and in the florescent glow of the bulbs I can see a trace of beard on his chin, a touch of mustache above his lips. They’re pretty, those lips. I want them. He stands next to me at the other urinal. Goes through the pretense of unzipping and making believe he’s going to pee. I’ve already got my dick out—but I’m not crowding the porcelain as if to unleash a stream of hot piss. I’m stroking, and pulling back for him to look. I know he’s going to. And he does. I don’t even pretend that I’m going to let him put up resistance. I’m steering him and his open fly to the handicapped stall at the end. My mouth is on his. His eyes are closed as we make out, furiously pressing our mouths against each other. His hands grapple for his belt, his button; they fly apart as he thrusts them down. I push him by the shoulders to the toilet, so that he’s sitting. Then for the first time I show him the full length of my cock. “Papi,” he breathes, staring at it. He doesn’t waste time, this one. He’s on my dick like a starved dog, wolfing it down to the root between those extended, grasping lips. His hands clutch at mine. Our fingers intertwine. I feel him holding onto them for dear life as, eyes still closed, he takes as much of my dick into his throat as he can. He gags slightly, backs off, and then finally looks up to me as my spit-slick dick slides in and out of his gullet. There’s worship in those eyes. He needs this. He was dreaming of this. Nothing turns me on more. There’s noise from outside as some revelers leave the event, but they don’t invade our privacy. My hands in his, I continue to fuck his face. His own uncut dick jerks and drips and begs for release, but like a good boy, he doesn’t touch himself. I fuck his face like I fuck pussy, stretching the hole, driving in, pulling out, letting him feel every inch. At some point I pry my fingers from his and grasp his head like a melon, my fingers nearly encircling all the way around. I skull-fuck him. I treat his head like so much fuckmeat, angling it for my pleasure and plunging in as I see fit. His cock is leaving trails of precum all over the front of his neatly-pressed dress shirt. He’s got rivulets of drool running down his chin; his mouth is so wet and sloppy that he’s gagging on his own saliva, and I can’t tell the fucking difference between his mouth and an ass after several loads. The juice he’s producing is driving me crazy. I add my own precum to the mix as I piston in harder and faster. He’s whimpering and pushed past the point of endurance, but still he services on. This is what he wanted. What he needed. When I release my load into his mouth, he grunts in surprise, and shock, and then redoubles his efforts. My dick disappears deep into his mouth as he sucks down every drop. Then he holds it there in his throat, nursing out the last traces. For a long, long time we remain coupled like this, dick to mouth, man to man, stranger to stranger. Then he starts to gag, and I pull out. The air chills where his spit covers me. I back off, and pull up my pants. His hands fly to his cock. “Good boy,” I whisper. “Papi,” he whispers again, looking at me through slitted lids. He comes, spraying his load up and over the edge of the toilet seat and onto the floor. “Very good boy,” I repeat, giving his chin a stroke. Then I let myself out. I see my stage mom friend shortly before I leave a few minutes later. Or she sees me, rather; I don’t think I would’ve recognized her if she hadn’t come up to me. “I’m so glad you came!” she enthuses, as she’s probably said to everyone else here. “It’s awesome that you came out for this!” “Great place,” I tell her. “One of the best soft openings ever.” But I’m not talking about the restaurant. More...

I never actually leave Grindr running for more than a couple of minutes at a time—the battery issue is pretty much the reason. I seem to be in a minority, because guys get very upset when I don't respond IMMEDIATELY and they don't seem to understand I'm not on Grindr 24/7, staring at the window.

The internet has turned cruising into a spectator sport, where men sit back and click like rats in a Skinner box, hoping for reward without moving. That said, sometimes the rest areas are still a better place to cruise.

Thanks, grep!

After the encounter with this guy, HungLatin, I posted a notice on my profile that I won't respond to profiles without self photos. I'm done with the picless wonders.

A lot of it has to do with local, Ryan. I've found it useless in a lot of places, and a hot hookup resource in others. That said, I got the Runt, one of my best current fucks, off of Grindr. So it can't be all bad.

It's like I told another reader, I don't mind having conversations about different choices—like, I wouldn't have minded talking about non-monogamy versus traditional monogamy, in this case. But the guy had already clearly made up his mind about the issue, and didn't want to hear anything that was going to make him have to concede any ground.

Oh, he clearly thought he was being funny, Hotload...and hell, I don't mind. A reputation like that doesn't hurt!

I haven't really had an issue!

To see Breeder's original blog post click here I had a new bed delivered, last week. Not very exciting news in itself. But my old bed, a queen-sized mattress on a rolling metal frame, was something like fifteen years old, and its time had come. It had over the years suffered the indignities of a bed ruffle foisted upon me by an in-law around its box springs, and a headboard bought at one of those unfinished wood furniture places that, despite many go-rounds with a sander, remained splintery and treacherous enough that visitors wouldn’t even have to get near it—they’d just walk by the bedroom door and the headboard would somehow rip and snag their clothing from ten feet away. The bed ruffle ‘mysteriously’ disappeared—swear to god, I don’t know what happened to it after I threw it in the trash—during the year I was on my own and selling the house, and when we made the move I ditched the headboard. The bed was really showing its age, though. There were definite sags where we sleep, and the bed frame itself was making creaky protests every time anyone so much as flicked a finger while lying on it. Turning over in the middle of the night made enough noise to wake the neighbors across the street. Flipping from one side to another made noises of distressed metal I hadn’t heard since I originally saw the post-iceberg scenes in Titanic. So a couple of weeks ago, we went to a cabinetry company and bought one of those queen-sized platforms, and picked up a memory foam mattress to go with it. The former was delivered last Thursday—the company had called me the night before with the helpful news that the deliverymen would arrive sometime between seven in the morning and five in the afternoon, which I (correctly) interpreted to mean we will ring your bell at either 4:55 or when you pull down your pants in the bathroom when you need to take a quick dump, whichever comes first. So since I had to wait around all day and could be interrupted at any moment and obviously couldn’t do any work, I got to spent Thursday watching daytime television and playing Diablo 3. Simultaneously. I’d gotten my pants back up and had rushed out of the bathroom to let the delivery guys in, and was standing around the bedroom letting them figure out how best to get the old mattress out of the bedroom. They finally managed to navigate it out the door and down the narrow, narrow hallway, and then did the same with the heavier, less-flexible box springs. The truck supervisor picked up the frame from the floor and looked at it. “Oh cheezus,” he said. He was one of those stocky Latin men with gray at the temples, but still some of the darkest hair and thickest eyebrows around. He wore a colorful tank top, a pair of ratty jeans, and some construction boots with two-inch soles that made him look a little taller than he really would have been. He was examining the frame when my spouse entered the room, followed by his cohorts bearing the bottommost portion of the new platform. “You must of been gettin’ a lot of noise with this thing, right?” he asked. I nodded and indicated that it had, indeed, been noisy. “Well sure, it’s ‘cause these nuts here are almost kinda shared off,” he said, pointing to a couple of fixtures on the left side, where I tend to sleep. “See that? Must’ve been a lot of. . . .” In the back of his throat, he made a fist and pumped it back and forth while he made a pair of noises that were intended to sound like rusty bedsprings—“Eek-rr! Eek-rr!”—and then followed it up with a click-click noise in his cheek and a little waggle of his eyebrows. “Excuse me,” gravely intoned my other half, wearing a red face and slipping from the room. The supervisor gave me a look of respect. I grinned. While the men wrestled in the new and out with the old, I thought about all the sex that old bed had seen. I thought about Spencer, and how we fucked so hard on that bed one night that it wheeled across the floor under our thrustings until it nudged into the bookshelves opposite. I thought about the many nights he’d slept with me in it, and the pillow fortresses he’d build around himself on the other side. I thought about the men (and women) I’d slipped inside, on that mattress. I thought about the virginities I’d taken on it. I thought about the arguments it had seen, and the deep, long talks. About the words of love spoken upon it, truer than most upon any lesser altar. That mattress had been baptized with semen, seen every sex act, every position, been the crime scene for many a broken sex law. How many faces had been planted in it while I spread their legs. How many poundings it had taken. For a moment, I felt quite sentimental about parting with the old thing. But the new, silent, comfortable bed was soon installed, and I was willing to let go of the old, once and for all. The supervisor was the last to leave after they’d unloaded everything. “Thank you very much for buying from us,” he said, as I handed back his clipboard with a signature on it. “I hope you enjoy that there new bed, all right? And you have a good night.” I thanked him. Then, once again he made the fist and drew it back and forth while he said in a confidential tone, “Eek-rr! Eek-rr!” I let him give me a man-to-man high-five on the way out. More...

To see Breeder's original blog post click here I've been noting for the past year that whenever I'm in my home area and fire up Grindr, I might as well be seeing who's up for some sex on the continent of Antarctica. The closest people using the service are typically two miles from me, and no one ever says a damned thing. If I head into Manhattan, where the closest people are typically thirty feet from me (or once, at the Harlem stop on the Metro North line, zero feet away—I turned and looked at the guy next to me just as he looked up from his phone and saw me and smiled), I'll get a lot of messages. When I head down to Virginia, I get messages. If I head to New Haven for the day, I'll get battered. Hell, I got sex from Grindr out in the middle of Nowhere, New Jersey a few weeks ago. But where I live is apparently the Bermuda Triangle of Grindr, where profiles and messages alike mysterious vanish, never to surface again. Apparently the phenomenon causes profile photos to vanish, too, because whenever I do get a message from someone local, it's from a profile showing the default blank dark gray screen. Or maybe a photo of a nice lake. In other cities around the country, I hear they show, you know, their actual faces. It's a fad that hasn't made it here yet. So I was driving home the other day when one of these faceless profiles started to message me. He had as his photo the Da Vinci Vitruvian Man illustration. No stats or age or anything to go on, of course. He said hello. I said hello. He asked how it was going. I said I was fine. He asked how big my dick was. I told him eight inches. He then informed me okay, but he didn't do hookups. I thought to myself, Whatever, freak. Then he asked me if that was a ring in my photograph. My profile, I should point out, has a nice photograph of all of me. I replied that it symbolized that I wasn't looking for another long-term relationship, since I was already in one. Then the guy started coming at me in his messages with statements like, how could I cheat on my significant other like that? Was it really worth risking my relationship to be a common tramp? He had been in a relationship for four years and his partner's cheating had ruined it, and didn't I know how much pain and hurt I was causing? Nine, ten, a dozen messages, all like that. When he was done, I wrote back the following. 1. When you use words like cheat and hurt , you're making assumptions about my marriage that might not correlate to its reality. 2. All relationships are different. Do not assume that everyone demands the same thing as you in a relationship. 3. My relationship is not your relationship. Your experiences are not my experiences. We're different people. Well excuuuuse him, he wrote back, for not being hip enough to be trendy like me. I was pretty angry by this point (and not driving any more, in case you were worried), and wrote back that I had never disparaged his point of view, so I'd appreciate it if he didn't take an excellent relationship of nearly twenty-five years and be so reductive as to call it hip and trendy. Well, he messaged back. He wasn't getting anything out of this conversation, and I was being rude, so he would be on his way. Then he flounced off, virtually. I blocked him. But you know, here's the thing. I was painfully polite to him, actually. I was honest about myself from the get-go. I didn't posit myself as superior, or wiser. I didn't tell him that I could understand why his partner cheated on him, since if he was going to be shrill and unpleasant to someone he didn't even know, I could just imagine how grating he could be when he was with someone he felt he could really let go with. I wouldn't really have minded a dialogue with him, even with the limitations of Grindr, if he hadn't projected all his fears and anger on me and started using judgmental language, like hurt and cheat and hip and trendy. Fuck, who has a relationship because it's trendy? Besides the Kardashians? He, on the other hand, wasn't even honest enough to put up a photo. I sincerely doubt he looks like the Vitruvian Man. I'm not even sure he'd appear vaguely simian. He certainly didn't behave half-human. Now that I've got that off my chest, let's get to recapping some of the questions asked me at formspring.com. With fewer newspapers publishing book reviews and the number of physical bookstores in decline, what's the future of connecting writers and readers? I'm not convinced that book reviews—at least in major publications like newspapers or magazines—really attract readers to new authors. I can't think of the last time I read a review in a newspaper or in The New Yorker or another magazine that made me say, "Hey, I should go out and pick up that book." I've always relied on exploration and word of mouth to find new authors and good books. Exploration, as in poring over the shelves in a bookstore. Word of mouth, either from librarians (when I was much younger), friends, or family. I still rely on both those things for new books—and I'm willing to listen to my librarian friends and I love to explore bookstores. But these days I also do so electronically. I see what my friends are reading and liking on sites such as Goodreads, that keep track of their libraries as they overturn, and in which they can write their own reviews. I have a couple of friends—librarians, even—who maintain blogs in which they recommend titles, and I've picked up several that way. I explore Amazon and its recommendations, and I also look at my local library's website to see what's come in lately. The last five new books I've read, though? I picked them off the new books section in my local library, just by browsing and thinking they looked interesting. The old fashioned way. If you had to compile a compulsory reading list, for anyone young/old, male/female/, gay/straight that they may not have been exposed to during their formative or college years, what would be on it? This is a dangerous question. It's dangerous because when someone is given the power to make something compulsory—even in their fantasies—it implies that it's okay for any one person to make thought-choices for a bunch of other people. And I don't think it is. There's such a lot of good stuff to read out there that I think it's more important to cultivate people who keep reading for life. When I was growing up, my parents never really told me I had to read anything. They made suggestions of books they liked, but they knew that if they mandated titles, I'd hate them out of stubbornness. As I did with a lot of the books I had to read in middle and high school. (I still have no idea what happened in Rudyard Kipling's "Kim" or in "The Red Badge of Courage," because I was made to read them, and I hated them with a passion.) But my parents did help me learn to love good stories, and they did insist that on my library trips, I had to check out a certain percentage of non-fiction books to the fiction I borrowed. I think that was a good habit—and not overly onerous—that made me an inquisitive reader. To this day, I am usually juggling about five books at a time, and for every three novels, there's a biography and a non-fiction work about history or art or religion in the stack. This is what I'd like to make compulsory: programs that help kids explore the vast array of books out there, help them find the ones they enjoy, and that help encourage them to keep reading on their own, as a lifelong habit. No matter what titles they read in a case like that, they're sure to be exposed to a lot of good stuff. you + coconut =? Kid Creole? What is your favorite plant or flower? Is scent important? You seem to know plants better than at least some, and your sense of smell seems keen (and important to your sensory world). I know plants to a certain extent because my mother was a gardener, and I was her reluctant assistant. When we moved into the house where my dad still lives, it was in a time and region in which gardening was not merely a hobby, but a cultural mania; the neighborhood gardening association had its own building for meetings, and was less than half a mile away. All the best people people belonged. (My mother didn't. She never believed in the 'best people' crap.) But she did garden. She grew roses, and loved summer flowers. (I liked bulbs because you planted them once and didn't have to worry about ever doing it again, basically.) She cultivated an apple tree and a fig tree, and landscaped the areas around the house in an attractive manner. In the spring and summers we'd grow vegetables and herbs. I learned a lot about gardening as her unpaid assistant, and still retain some of it. It's just never been a favorite pursuit of mine. In Michigan I had a house in which the previous owners had carved out a huge, huge garden. It was always the bane of my existence, because I felt an obligation to keep it up, but no real desire to do so. I used to watch see real estate shows on television in which young couples were put off by houses for sale with concrete back yards, and I envied them. Before I moved to the east coast, on the day I closed with the young couple who bought the house from us, I showed up with a list of gardening tasks for them that was three legal sheets long. I felt a little sorry for them when they saw how much work it would be. A small garden would suit me nicely in the future. Like, the size of a bathtub. If I could choose to grow anything, I'd probably grow nothing but herbs—basil, coriander, thyme, dill, and parsley. do you have regular hiv and other std tests would you share results with your readers if you were to be infected,have you ever encountered bug chasers and hiv gifters do you believe as a top you are at minimilist risk or So you think that because I—a private citizen—write a blog, that you—someone anonymous whom I don't know—have a right to my medical records? That's ridiculous and solipsistic on your part, and it's never going to happen. You are not entitled to anything here. What I choose to give is what appears here. I am under no more obligation to share my HIV status than I am my stress test results, my opthamologist exams, my grocery lists, my credit card numbers, or a chronicle of my ingrown toenail. Would you please share the chronicle of your ingrown toenail? I think we'd find it highly riveting. If I wrote it with enough sex, it probably would be. My father used to have ingrown toenails, and his doctor managed to talk him into using dental floss daily beneath the corners of the nails on his big toes. Grossest use for dental floss ever. how would you react if one of your kids had the same relationship with an older man that you had had with earl,would you try and end it or would you let it run it's course My relationship with Earl—or indeed, any of the relationships I had with older men in my teen years—wasn't something I publicized to my parents. I carried on all my sexual escapades, as well as my romantic entanglements, entirely out of sight. I'd hope that any child of mine would realize that he'd be able to talk to me about what constitutes a healthy relationship, sexually or emotionally. More...

That would explain a lot of the sofas I've fucked upon!

C'mon, Hotload. You can practice with me.