As I said I had the time, and was curious about how y'all currently like my stuff when promoted through someone else, versus getting it straight from the source. Let me clarify this point, because it might not be as clear as I would like it to be.
In the earlier days of Tumblr, I got excellent traffic on my own, one of the post got 494 ❤️, after the great migration, the classification of my stream to explicit, and generally how the algorithm changed the traffic to my page, and just the make up of current Tumblr users the only way I get any attention on my work is from the signal boost of a user with a more popular page like @chantssecrets .
Included in this assessment of course is the bias or preferences of the particular user, as I pointed out in my first commentary about data, Chants wasn't a huge fan of my Sabbatical [2021] series, so he didn't reblog them very much of it. Generally speaking I love the pieces he re-blogs and I think it gives a good overhead view of my work, enough so that I think the trends it speaks to are close to an accurate assessment of what folks like.
In this second dataset I took a larger slice of the picture. With Chants I only pulled thirty images to assess. But back in the day it was very rare that I got dinged for anything, so included in this set are clear erections, penetration shots, genitals dangling from the back and open orifices ready for business.
Top 5
The top five are a bit different this time, in that my self-portraiture is at the forefront as I prefer it to be, as I said the Chants data showed a preference for me Shot By Others, but what I always wanted was my own work to be front and center in the frame, and it used to be that way.
The whyte models are still here, this time with Darin and Adele sharing the spotlight in my top spot. But the overall trend with nearly 45% of the pieces featured on this list being someone of European descent, is exactly what I said, the European aesthetic takes center stage, even though I am clearly not European, folks have a strong preference for the whyte body over my dark melanated form.
Last thing about the top five, is as I predicted, a beautiful self-portrait of my erect member curving up towards the viewer has the second most views of this list of 49 images. At nearly three-hundred ❤️ y'all have always had a strong preference for images that were a little more sexually suggestive than just purely artistic efforts.
Curiously it's an old shot, I think some time in the early aughts. But all the things you need for a good photo came together, good stiff subject material, morning light and a good angle for capture. Aside you would think taking a tasteful photograph of your aroused sex would be something everyone is good at, but sadly they aren't. Folks don't realize how much light, composition and proper positioning play into a good final product.
Color Mode
This time around color versus monochromatic was just about even, which once again was a surprise to me, I truly though more of the older work was in black and white. As I said I have never been adverse to color, so my own surprise is a bit silly, I just feel like in my post I desaturated a lot of images, but that isn't quite true. It seems I took each image on it's own merits and decided if the color was working or not, if it was I kept it, if it was not then it was removed.
Locations
There was a shift from the where I currently shoot to, as opposed to where I shot in the past. Previously I shot at home much more than I did in the newer data, there are a few factors that came into play here, my traveling more, my getting more comfortable shooting my nude body in outdoor spaces, and also just the opportunity to have a public/private space to be naked in.
I have spoken about this before I consider my self a private naturist, as opposed to being naked socially, I prefer to be outdoors on my own. A lot of this is related to the objectification I have faced since I was a child and the childhood sexual abuse that was perpetrated against my body, I just prefer to not be observed and enjoy my unclad time on my own.
Status
In the past whether I was flaccid or erect was more or less immaterial as far as what y'all seemed to like, I would like to think the artistic merits of the work was strong enough to stand on its own, but what I think is really true, is the fact that so much of the work is sexually suggestive, and I am not going to pretend I didn't lean into that. There was one image I came across that I titled "You Know He Wanted It", this was a penetrative shot, totally and completely in the realm of erotic photography, with enough elegance that it didn't spill over into pornography.
I have spoke to how I currently feel a way because I have moved away from the erotic, into the intimate, but the sexually suggestive history still remains, and y'all just a bunch of horny niggahs. I ain't gonna front I think this is par for the course with queer or gay art, this was present even in Mapplethorpe's work that sometimes blurred the line between what is sexual and what is art. I just wish folks could be a bit more respectful and not act like they're up on Grindr. But I have to be reasonable because previously I did play into the sexual playfulness of my imagery, and I can't be mad if everyone didn't get the memo that I am doing something different nowadays.
One interesting outlier between the two list there is only overlap with two images one by Boeschenstein and one a self-portrait. Lee's work is on both list, but different images, as are the Hamburg images, both on each, but different imagery. I think due to the restrictiveness of current Tumblr y'all just get happy when an pokey penis makes it past the algorithm.
Last Thoughts
I have said this before but Tumblr fourteen years ago was a very different place, and as an artist I have to say I enjoyed the freedom I had then. Looking through the work on Tumbex I can see I was really taking a lot of risk exploring bodily fluids and voiding, gif work where I was pleasuring myself or urinating. Short videos with curated music that showed a very different side of me artistically. It was a period when I had moved beyond just the still image and explored my body in motion in video and gifs. The juxtaposition of this experimental work along side of some of my other work was a lovely experience for me, because it allowed me to breathe artistically in a way I haven't since.
Currently I am always curating around what won't get dinged, or how much or less of which body part I can show or not show. Even today I came across some lovely photos where I have a very exposed anus and I only posted on of the six shots, because I knew the algorithm wouldn't like it. I hate having to be that way. This is what I loved about the Tumblr Wild Wild West period, they just let us be, and personally I think that is how every artist should be treated. Art should be allowed to live and breathe on it's own until it has found it's proper place, not legislated, regulated and community standard-ed into something that is more polite for mixed company.
[Spreadsheet courtesy of the Brown Estate]
Data - Part I
Tumblr is the place you go to be yourself on the internet. No performance, no perfection. Just you, and the people who get it.
Trust, I already know y'all don't like the same ish I like, and that is okay, art is subjective, and the reasons I like this particular piece is personal, and that's not something you would know just by seeing it's beautiful lines and tight composition.
There may be some of you in the studio audience that don't believe that I have issues about how I look, particularly with the fact that so much of my intimate photography exposes so much of my unclad form. Two things can be true at once, I can be comfortable being photographed naked, and have the most debilitating body image issues. It would be very easy for me to understand a suicidal model, albeit they may exalt beauty higher than anything anyone else has, they are still human beings, with all the faults and frailties that a human existence provides, ergo they can look amazing, but feel awful.
This is a concept I really want you to embrace when you think about why I love this image so much. I feel I look great here, I named it 'For Days [May 2020, Brooklyn] because it feels like I am giving you legs for days... I feel like I look tall and svelte, and raising up on my toes does nothing but extend the line of my legs giving them a very powerful stance.
Consequently my skin looks so beautiful, tanned and soft. My hair appears to be reaching right above my buttocks, and all around I look like I am in great shape.
All of this is an illusion.
May of twenty-twenty puts us dead smack in the middle of the COVID lockdown, which had been going on for two months by this point. This is something y'all also probably didn't know about this time period, I was working full-time, and supporting two households, my own and my grandmother's during her debilitating health. She was advancing in her dementia, and had to have aides to be with her seven days a week. I had to interview, hire, pay and manage these ladies all why doing forty hours a week with the Census. It was a challenging time to say the least.
This changes the entire scenario of my going to the roof, I was also looking for relief from my day, or more-so preparing to meet my day since I still did early sessions on the roof before work. With all the craziness of my life during this time I still found the time to do something that was totally and completely just for me. I had also been heavier during this time, even with riding my bike to the Census every day, as an essential worker, I seemed to miraculously maintain a heavier weight to my chagrin. That fact that none of that seems evident in this shot is so meaningful to me.
I am going to keep it 100%, on my toes and from the back is a go-to shot of mine, I have always thought I have looked better from the back, giving the illusion of a waist, and the appearance of stature in the length of my legs. My front-side which hasn't ever been overly developed, never seems as camera ready as my ass, which is always willing to lend a helping hand to buff-up a shot. I believe my default form is very boxy and shapeless, I have very thick thighs, wide hips and a waistline that wants to do it's own thing. If I don't contort my body into different shapes and forms, I feel that I come off very bland and uninteresting.
I have never had what would be considered a beautiful body, my skin-sack always wanted to play games like "guess the gender", not being clear about if it wanted to present as female and male. My chest has always been under-developed as have my arms, which would retain a level of tone, but never rise to be bulky or shapely. The only six packs I had were the ones I picked up for my mom at the corner store. My stomach has generally been flat, but uneventful, making the terrain of my face-side not my most desirable asset.
My body was never the one anyone was envious of, except maybe a handful of my college friends who didn't have an ounce of my natural fitness. I did do a quite a bit of dancing in high school, and also ran track, in my prime I was leaner, smaller and loosely toned. I have always had shapely legs though, and all these decades later it's something I have maintained. At the end of the day I know I would still look good in that EnVogue mini-skirt.
The most significant thing about this particular piece is I can hardly believe that it's me. It was under serious consideration to be printed, and still is, if I could just figure out where I could hang it. Albeit it isn't giving anything artistically amazing, it is well-captured, and as I said I look great. The thing about having body dysmorphia, well at least the flavor I have, is holding on to the idea that you look fine, everything looks good. It's another reason I am at the center of most of my intimate photography, I am repeatedly attempting to prove to myself that regardless of how I feel, I look great!
I thought I had this issue, but couldn't find it in my database. The Sienkiewicz cover alone would have had me purchasing it, well now anyway. In '84 the only way I got comic books were the hand-me-downs I got from my dad. But I do have one box of my comics that hasn't been cataloged, maybe this issue is in there. I know this cover and I don't think that's a fluke.
Let's try something a little different today, more importantly let's see if I can keep this up for at least six to eight images. I am great about starting new projects, but if it's too lengthy I lose interest, ergo my knack for writing shorter essays and not anything that is novel length.
Recently I have mentioned in some of the aforementioned essays that I have been reviewing my unedited work from my Tar Beach [2016] series, which is the heading Trespassing [2018] falls under, it's a subset of the larger series due to their obvious connection. If I wasn't up on the roof during '16, I would have never noticed the construction happening in one of the buildings in my row, and never decided to use the construction site as another location for my photoshoots. This series wouldn't exist with out the other, that is important to state, and for y'all to understand.
Curiously I actually found images I didn't do post on, and Throne [Aug '18, Brooklyn] is one of those forgotten shots, seriously when I opened it to edit it, I was like how did I miss this one? Here is another fun fact that I don't think I have previously shared, or if so, not often, I would usually process or do post-production the very same day of the morning I would be out shooting.
Ergo I would usually be up on the roof somewhere around three o'clock in the morning, if not a bit earlier, and I would stay up there until around eight o'clock in the morning. I chose these times because I knew the traffic from other buildings to their roofs would probably be non-existent, and I was correct, during these hours I had the roof-space all to myself.
So clearly on this August morning of the year of our lord two-thousand eighteen, I edited other work that I had taken in the bathroom, and thought I had enough interior shots for the day. I went and checked, and this was at a time I still had a Flickr account so that was the destination of my post, along with right here on Tumblr. Even back then I attempted to curate a diverse set of images not getting stuck in one place or one pose too long, that is how I over looked this gem.
What else can I tell you about the location, well I call this building #3, not it's actual address designation, but I preferred to number the buildings starting with the one furthest from my building as #1, and I think my building was #6 in the row. Obviously this is when the bathroom was all but finished, it was one of the C units, if I recall correctly the units were lettered A, B & C. The C unit was the largest one with two bedrooms, several closets and a separate dining room from the kitchen. I had been through the apartment so often that I remembered that I thought the layout was very awkward. This was also probably on the 4th floor which would have gotten the best light via the lightwell, that is a term I just learned two seconds ago, didn't even realize that was a thing. All the buildings in my row, seven of them all have lightwells separating them, seven buildings, six lightwells.
In the shot I am clearly basking in the glory of that morning light trickling in through the lightwell. This was one of a series of poses in that bathroom that morning, and I thought since this toilet seat is brand new, no one has probably sat on it, the workers mostly used the ground floor toilets, not sure if that was regulation, but I could tell that those facilities had been in use. I was amused that my derrière was the first one to grace the porcelain throne, ergo Throne as the name for this shot.
The only other thing I could say about this shot is I am a bit heavier than I was when I started the series two years prior, but even so I don't look bad. I wore my hair up often on the roof just to keep it out of the way, and right here it's wrapped around my head like a crown, which also plays into the name I have given this piece.
There is a vulnerability but also a casual comfort, I wasn't actually using the commode only utilizing it as a prop, but the bathroom is a very intimate location where we maintain our personal hygiene, and pass our waste. I am not pretending I am the first person to ever take a photo in the bathroom, nor one posted up on the toilet, but for me with the tiny-ass lavatory in my studio unit, shooting in there was never an option.
Looking at other shots from this same time period, I was very heavily leaning into color celebrating different shades of brown the only flesh-tone I have ever known. Even the other shots around the unit were all in full color a stark contrast to the desaturated and monochromatic treatments of my Tar Beach series. Also I was in love with the golden sunlight that filled these apartments so early in the morning. These shots were all taken before seven o'clock, because that is the time the construction workers would come to work, and I would escape out of the same roof-door that provided my ingress.
I am not sure if I would print this image, but I am leaning towards it, it would pair very well with another seated shot I have from my '96 Hamburg shoot, and it has the same vertical orientation which I am severely lacking in the self-portraiture I have hanging in my home. If I was actively exhibiting I would totally submit this piece for consideration. There is so much more going on here than just a fine art nude, and I think that is something worthy of hanging on the wall.
All on eBay of course, even with two bookstores finally coming to my neighborhood, I haven't visited either. These books were around 7 bucks each, between these "used" prices and finding so many books in our street library I haven't the need for the bookstore anymore. All of these books were related to something I was watching.
• Half of a Yellow Sun [2013] - I finally watched the film and thought I should give Ms. Adiche a second chance to impress me after Americanah falling so flat for me.
• The Lathe of Heaven - I think Captain Benjamin Sisko mentioned this book on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine [1993] which I just completed about a month or so ago. I didn't realize there was a PBS special related to the book, so I will probably watch that too if I can find it.
• Kingdom [2019] - I just finished the two seasons of the Netflix series, I still need to watch the film. I have already heard the manga is very different than the series but that is okay by me. I haven't read a manga since I attempted to see what the fuss was about with One Piece and I read one of their volumes, I wasn't as moved as everyone else has been and quickly passed the book onto a niece or nephew.
The Kingdom of the Gods has photos, and isn't about a historical event, so maybe I will start with that. The last Ursula K. LeGuin book I read, I was disappointed with, I am still a huge fan of her Earthsea series so I am giving her the benefit of the doubt that this one might actually be good, but still probably won't be first in the queue.
I wanted to write about some of my recently re-edited favorites, but then I got caught up in the data I pulled from @chantssecrets re-blogs, which I thought was a good place to look at what y'all like of my work currently.
There was the good-ole-days back when Tumblr was the wild wild west where I didn't need anyone signal boosting my post, I am tempted to use Tumbex and take a peak and compare how I used to trend, versus how I do now under the heavily regulated content. Actually I have time today, I may take that look back after I write about this particular dataset.
The Top 5
The images y'all allegedly like the most, and once again this is based on Chants Secrets re-blogs, not post that have been circulating around on my account and have accumulated large numbers on their own. I would have loved to look at that data, but Tumblr doesn't make it easy for me to see that with my restricted account.
Curiously in the top 5, two were Shot By Others, Two of a Whyte Person and only one self-portrait, which is curious because my blog is primarily made up of self-portraits, but in this instance it seems y'all like when I am shot by others more, than when I shoot myself.
Adele was the next big trend in the top 5, this has been an occurrence in my feed from back in the wild wild west days. That dominant European aesthetic leeches into what you like best of my work. Toby, Adele, Darin and a little bit of Stephen, albeit they compromise the least of my content they generally out-perform my best work, that is unless it's an erection or penetrative shot, than of course y'all loose your natural minds.
Color Mode
This was a bit surprising, I have always thought of my intimate photography as more monochromatic, and let's be clear I am not afraid of color as shown in my other works, but I thought generally and clearly wrong that when I was editing my self-portraits I would usually default to black and white, because it gave everything in the shot an equal value, your eye wasn't pulled to any one object because it was bright red or had a loud shape. I had thought this was an excellent way to help center the main subject in the photo.
Curiously enough as I have been doing my re-edits of older work from my Tar Beach [2016] series I have been deliberately making sure the edits were in color, usually desaturating the image, to even out blotchy skin tones, or funky exposures. But looking at the data y'all love me in full living color. 80% of your favs are in full color!
Locations
This was nearly an even split between Other Places and me being At Home. The most telling thing to me in this dataset was the fact that there were no images from my most recent shoot my Sabbatical [2021], I can say for a fact that Chants Secrets wasn't the hugest fan of that series, I think to-date he has only re-blogged one or two images from what would be my most recent body of work.
I can say definitively there are a lot of misses in that series, it was very hard for me shooting outside in such hot and humid weather conditions in such a rough terrain fully naked. I would find myself coming back to the same poses over and over again, and since it was so sandy it was hard to attempt laying down poses because I would come up covered in sand with no clear means to get it off of my very sweaty body.
Even with all of that I do think there are some great shots from that series and I wish they could over-all have better recognition.
Penis Status
When I do the look back to then vs now, this is one thing I am sure will vary, how much y'all allegedly like flaccid shots versus full erections. Something I noticed aside from the data I just collected is that regardless of what this data says, y'all still loved a shot with a hard cock more than it's flaccid equivalent. This was very evident in the Boeschenstein shots from Hamburg done back in '96, I mean I am also in my early twenties so I am not mad at y'all for literally loving the body and fullness of a young person in the prime of their sexual youth. There are seven shots from the Germany shoot on this list of thirty images one-third of the shots, and they out-performed the others clearly not only in ❤️'s but re-blogs. This is where folks show their true colors, and it becomes obvious that it isn't always necessarily about the artistic merits of the shot, but the fact that y'all be turned on by the content having an aroused member present.
Look I ain't mad at you, I love a hard dick too, it's part of my own frustration with the fact that I am currently limited in the kinds of things I can post because I have a lot more work with erect penises.
One that comes to mind which is actually really quite touching and intimate, is this shot of Toby and me at full mast our cocks sort of nuzzling themselves as they curve towards one another. It's definitively a beautiful shot and it totally crosses over into being clearly an erotic photo, but this is what I loved about my work it's ability to still maintain a tastefulness even when tip-toeing into being of a more adult nature.
Last Thoughts
There was one last curious overlap with this list of thirty images and my own opinions about my work. Three of the shots I have actually printed, framed and hung in my home. I arrived at the decision to want to print them in a different way than y'all were moved to ❤️ them.
In iOs you can highly personalize the content for your background image on your mobile device, I have chose fifty of my favorite image that rotate anytime my tablet is unlocked. I found myself continually drawn to a set of images that I eventually said fuck-it, let me get them printed. As I said three of those shots are also on the list generated from Chants Secrets. This was one of the hardest things for me to find congruence with during my exhibiting years. What I liked, versus what people would actually purchase to hang in their homes.
Even though I have gently suggested through sharing these very images framed in my own home, there hasn't been even the peep of interest in actually purchasing my work, no matter how many well-wishes I get in DM's or comments on the threads. I have resolved myself to be fine with that, I bet generally speaking the purchase of fine art nudes is a struggling business, when there is so much work to be consumed, and how it can so easily be downloaded onto your device.
There is a difference though viewing some art on your phone, versus living with it in your home. I can't be more pleased by the seven pieces I had produced by Frameology. Curiously I actually want to get more, but the lack of wall-space is a deterrent. Also attempting to figure out how much self-portraiture hanging in my own home versus other art work is a balance I am also attempting to navigate. Albeit my home is clearly a museum to my life and my interest I don't want it to become over indulgent. Now let's get into the sexy sexy list from back in the day.
[Spreadsheet courtesy of the Brown Estate]
Data - Part II
Tumblr is the place you go to be yourself on the internet. No performance, no perfection. Just you, and the people who get it.
I attempted to get my nephew into this Frank Miller offering and he wasn't having it. Aesthetically the art didn't work for him, and I didn't mind Darrow's very dense style. I had first encountered Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot through the '99 cartoon, which I also enjoyed. I then bought the graphic novel, which is under my mattress at this time, if I recall correctly the book was a bit over-size, not the standard comic book size ergo under my mattress. I thought there had been more stories, but I wasn't ever clear about that, I wouldn't have minded a continuation of these two's adventures they were quite enjoyable.
Trust I was never a fan of the Archie comics, curiously my nephew loves them. But I loved Josie and the Pussy Cats, particularly the cartoons, out of the two I really preferred their antics in outer space. I am clearly a Val stan, but Alexandria and her messy pursuit of Alan comes in second easily.
I'd be telling a whole-ass lie if I said I didn't have a thing for David Hasselhoff, when Knight Rider first aired, and I was tuned in, I lost my ever loving prepubescent mind. The theme song, the car, the cheesy 80s special effects, I was here for all of it. Previously we would be suckling on the nipple of the Hazzard cousins, curiously I think Dukes of Hazzard was on at 8pm on CBS, and Knight Rider was on at 9pm on NBC. I think it was smart for the networks not to make children choose between the General Lee and K.I.T.T., I think the Lee would have lost, because who doesn't love a talking car?
Yeah I know she didn't ask for all of that, but Imma tell the truth, particularly in the shadow of our society coming to terms with folks who have great accomplishments but do bad things. I could see clearly she was loving all the lighting tricks that Mike Lee was putting together for our 2006 New Jersey photoshoot. You know what, I won't take away his talents for making a lot of money and being able to spend it on a hobby that enhanced his personal fetish and desires.
Shots fired. No, let's be clear I am not coming for Mr. Lee, but also let's be honest Mr. Lee was a mediocre photographer at best. What Mr. Lee had was affluence, that allowed him a large disposable income in which he could use as he saw fit. He purchased a lot of camera equipment and probably upgraded his cameras often to the latest and newest technology.
Mr. Lee also had made a promise to someone, in sickness and health and all that jazz. Mr. Lee used his job and all the traveling he did for it, as a scape goat for his low-key sexual addiction, now that is an unfounded embellishment. But he had an entire Flickr account dedicated to all the women he put his penis inside of. Thousands of pictures and dozens of women, none of which I am sure were his wife, who also sired his kids.
You may be thinking, why am I going in like this? The reason being is Mr. Lee like so many men with wealth thought the rules didn't apply to him. I think the dude is primarily straight, but if he could get his dick wet, and get a photograph of it, I am sure he would. I am thinking he may have also done dudes who he just didn't post to this Flickr account, I know this because he thought I would fellate him. I refused and continued with our photoshoot as we had agreed to.
Now I can't recall if his request came at our first or second photoshoot, it would be logical to think it came after the second, and that his first shoot was an attempt to groom me, to get me prepared for his illicit advance. This was twenty years ago I can't be abso-smurfly sure about that level of detail, but it makes sense that he was getting me ready to be his next conquest. This supposition doesn't fall apart because that second photoshoot was our last.
I have said all of this to say, I am cool with a dude getting his swerve on, I have sowed my royal oats every which way and up. I would never knock someone's hustle. But don't think I am going to help you violate the promise you made to someone else. Don't think I am going to conveniently forget you've told me about your wife and kids, because I am so thirsty for your little cock. #BoyBye
The duplicity never sat right with me.
Let's be clear I am not saying I have never had relations with folks who were partnered, because I probably have, but the important thing is not consciously. I never let anyone into my bed, and trust I wasn't that discerning about whom was let in, who I knew was partnered. I am not the most moral person in the world, but that always just felt wrong to me, if you've promised some kind of monogamy to someone else, why are you over in my bedroom?
I am also not that person, to attack the person, my partner cheated with, because I know men lie, or omit, which is in essence still a lie. How can I blame him for not knowing this nigga was already spoken for? I have to give him the benefit of the doubt that he never knew.
I couldn't feign ignorance of Mike Lee's marriage.
That's not who I am.
But I am also not going to sit here after the fact, and put him on some pedestal of artistic excellence, when that just isn't the case. His photographs served the same purpose of a serial killer taking trophies off of his victims, a way to recreate and re-live the experience. And what was he reliving? The constant cheating on his wife with multiple individuals. I can't in good faith co-sign any of that or participate in it.
I need to apologize to Ms. @karlahoney who as I said didn't ask for any of that. Her excitement didn't sit right with me, first because she thought this was my work, and secondly because she didn't really know the artist behind this work, and I felt I should do my due diligence and inform her that he ain't shit. #MicDrop
This is easily one of my top ten favorite CYOA covers. After my grandmother made me unhoused during my tenure in college, she gave away all the books I left in my grandparents home after I was told they weren't running a storage facility. I would later find some of my books in her sister's closet which I of course restored to the original owner. Sometimes a few years ago I re-collected 55 books of the original run, I didn't initially collect all 184, so I thought I should re-acquire books I had previously. Maybe I should get a few more issues so I am at a solid sixty.
Update: I took a look at the numbers from 56-60 and I was reminded why I stopped at fifty-five. I have the uncanny ability to recall the cover of any book I have owned previously, when looking at those later numbers not one of the story names or cover art rang the proverbial bell ergo I stopped at 55, restoring my previous collection.
I was also eighteen, and had used a quote from Janet Jackson's fourth studio album, which I am thinking is my favorite from her catalog, the messages were so positive and upbeat, hopeful. We weren't all the same, and it wasn't only knowledge and wisdom that were separating us, there was so much more that I was only beginning to see. I was starting my real education, my eyes never deceived me, my heart did, with my continually thinking people were going to be better than their nature, I was proven wrong repeatedly.
I think that is the worst part of growing up, learning that the world really isn't fair. I mean by this time I had survived an attempted murder by my dad's hand, beat unconscious with a shoe by his girlfriend, and the mother of his second child, found my own mom dead on the couch a few days before my eleventh birthday, and was sexually abused by a child, who was probably getting the same by the hand of a male in my god grandmother's home.
I may have been headed for college, but I was also headed towards huge disappointments about what I wanted out of my life, and what those around me thought I should get.
I come from a line of folks who do not have natural smiles, to get the illusion in the photo my school-mate Eva Matuka was working with the photographer to make sure everyone looked their best. I think she made a joke or something and got me to laugh and that is what was captured in this photo, that single moment that makes me look more hopeful than I really was. A pleasant deception that made for much better wallet-sizes that my grandparents handed out like cigars at a birth.
Something else that is long past, that I see in this photo is the earring in my left ear. My junior high school friend, and co-worker at Petland Discount, Nelson Lorenzo literally bought me physically to this shop on Allerton Avenue to get my ear pierced, he said it completed my look, whatever that was. I think it was sometime after my three semesters in college that I let the hole close up, I had figured out on my own I wasn't really an earring person, and that single lapse of peer pressure was soon only marred by a bit of tougher cartilage near the tip of my ear.
Generally I think I have made it through alright, I don't have the people I once had in my life, I also don't have pieces of me that were bartered, stolen, raped, beat, and mis-trusted away. The people who did things to me took those parts of me with them as thoughtlessly as they would a piece of lint that had attached to their shirt.
They walked off with parts of me that I had needed, but could obviously no longer use once the damage had been done. I have spent my adult life attempting to cultivate the growth of new parts to fill the space where the old ones used to be. Some times I am successful, other times I am left with a hodgepodge of hopes and wishes that are standing in like replacement organs, trying to help me get back to the me I used to be, garnished with the knowledge and wisdom of the life I have led up to now.
[Photo courtesy of the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Arts and Performing Arts '91 Yearbook with the blessing of the Brown estate]
It was actually harder to recall friends I hadn't fucked, I had to go back to earlier points in my life, because I think it's a gay rite of passage to go through a phase where you fuck your friends, not because of any trends, but because of something more simple, proximity.
Where do I start? Umm, maybe the last one I was friends with, which I think would be Adam. Adamo and I met through a volunteer group at GMHC in the early 90s, this was my first experience of post-college activism, we were doing HIV/AIDS education to other young people, and at the time we were young ourselves, in our early twenties.
Young Adam was attractive, brown-eyed, broad-jawed, slim Italian man. I do have to say I prefer skinny Adam to the fuller adult body he grew into, he just had such excellent lines, but this child also loved to eat, and the amount he put in his face, versus the exponential amount of exercise needed to burn it all off never quite equated. I am not saying he was overweight, he just never recovered those youthful lines of when we first met.
I think we need to state the obvious Adam was gay, unequivocally. I need to make this distinction because some of my friends weren't always clear about their sexuality, or so new to it their confidence hadn't fully downloaded yet.
He was dating this very giant man named Kelly, who I was immensely curious about because Adam had done a cast of his penis in some kind of gold material which sat on his mantle. It was a very robust sized member, to say the least. If Kelly had been the boyfriend longer I would have possibly attempted to see if I could witness this greatness in person, but alas they broke up very soon after we became friends.
I can remember helping Adam move to the first of his multiple residences after that relationship ended, we were carrying this huge-ass bookshelves through Park Slope to Fort Greene. That was something I did often during that time, helping friends to move. Curiously I would only have two moves during my life, once out of my first/starter apartment, then the second time out of my aunt's home after staying with her for the year.
I can't say definitively if Adam was my first co-dependent relationship, it was just the one that totally had some problematic elements that would come into play later in the friendship. In all honesty I can say we had a very close and intimate relationship even though it never crossed the boundary into anything remotely sexual. Curiously in hindsight I question how close it really was, I never had keys to any of Adam's homes, even though I was made to feel like they were my own, and there were aspects of his life he seemed to keep away from me even though we spent so much time together. I had mentioned in a recent essay how I never met his parents, not even spoke to them on the phone. I was led to believe they never visited him once in New York, but I feel that may not have been true. Also he had this huge collection of collectable toys that I never knew about until he moved into his house in Crown Heights, I wondered how I had never seen them previously, when clearly he had spent time collecting them. It led me to believe he possibly had a storage place he kept all of these things in, that I was also not privy to.
Adam and I traveled together repeatedly, sharing rooms, we had dozens of meals together, clocked an ungodly amount of phone time and were very present in each others lives, well to a point. I stated I thought he was attractive, but I wasn't ever attracted to him, and maybe that made the difference, also we became friends when I had more or less gotten over the bulk of mixed-relationships with friends, I had sort of gotten it out of my system.
Later in the friendship he showed a level of jealousy over the relationship I had with my boyfriend at the time Paul. He expressed that I never bought gifts for him like I did Paul, and he seemed to be envious of how our time together had shifted to Paul and me. Interestingly whenever Adam was dating I didn't usually hear from him at all, and I can only recall one of these men I actually met, Rafi, the one who broke his heart and exposed him to HIV.
I found that it seemed easier for me to integrate Adam into my relationship with Paul than the other way around. All three of us even took a trip to Puerto Rico together, a trip that had always been exclusive to Adam and I. I was just looking for a photo of all three of us, and couldn't find one, this was the time before I started using the timer on the camera, so if I am in a photo with one of them usually the other one was taking the picture.
The closest thing to something sexual happening with Adam occurred when he wasn't even there. I had found the sex-tapes he had created with Rafi on his computer, and I watched them. Why sit and lie, I am queer, and dudes fucking dudes is my love language. Was I turned on by them, probably not, I think I was more fascinated than anything, because this had been the man who deceived Adam about his sero-status and proceeded to have unprotected sex with him, which was clearly documented in these videos.
I think it wasn't too long after my relationship with Karl, who was Adam's tenant, that our friendship ended. Adam thought Karl was someone he wasn't, he also knew my status, and thought I was doing to Karl what Rafi did to him, and that was the farthest thing from the truth. Unlike Adam I saw no reason to disclose any of Karl's business to his landlord. I understood the importance of not sharing someone's status without their permission, furthermore it wasn't any of his business.
The final straw came when Adam disclosed my status to another friend without my consent, looking back I realize he was really dealing with his unresolved anger issues with Rafi, but why did I need to be pulled into it? Why did what I did with other consenting adults need to come into play, I wasn't Rafi, I wasn't doing the old bait and switch, I was clear with all of my partners exactly what they were getting into, and they were consenting adults, and they agreed to it. It wasn't Adam's place to police what I was, or wasn't doing in my bedroom. His meddling ended the friendship, our relationship had always been based on mutual trust and respect, and for some reason due to what this other man did to him, he didn't trust me anymore, and that wasn't going to work.
Well damn, I didn't mean to spend one thousand words just on Adam, but clearly I needed to unpack some residual feelings about that relationship. Let's move on to someone else. Let's take it back to the late eighties, this is about four years before I met Adam, I am in high school, I am obviously a teenager, I am having gay-feelings, I am deluding myself that I might be bisexual, my sex-play with my elementary school friend has more or less wrapped up by this point. I am attending a specialized high school in Manhattan that brings me into contact with such a different class of folks than the ones I was meeting in the Bronx.
Enter Andy Feder
Andy or Andrew, I never called him Andrew, is a Jewish boy from Brooklyn. Tall wide-hipped very alternative with a pointy jaw, brown-eyes, ska-listening soft-spoken art major. I did say specialized school, it is what is known to the wider public as the Performing Arts High School, the one from the TV show Fame, which is actually called the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.
I was a drama major, very appropriate, I am trying to recall how we specifically first met, but I think it was related to him and his art major friends hanging around the basement a lot, that is where the drama department was located. I think I was drawn to him because he was so different than me, so exotic with his dark clothes, Doc Martens, curly-hair and withdrawn personality.
He was from a different class background than me, albeit it didn't come into play, it was obvious from his living with his mom in Brooklyn Heights in a co-op where he had his own room, which it seemed his mom let him have free range over. I can recall how parts of the wall were spray-painted, and how he had drawn black and white patterns on his stereo. He had a freedom of expression that seemed to be encouraged and I was curious and jealous of this.
The kids in my high school all seemed so much more mature and worldly, mind you I was doing myself a disservice I had already traveled to Europe, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean at that point it's not like I was bought up in some hood, didn't know what a passport was, or had never left the country before. But I was under the assumption that I was still poor living in a lower class household like I had with my mom.
That wasn't true, my grandparents were not upper middle class, but with their two income household they were solidly and squarely middle class, and because they didn't have their full litter, they had something none of their friends had, disposable income. But unlike many of her contemporaries my grandmother took that money and invested it, the smartest thing she could have done, because those funds took care of her during her later decompensation due to dementia.
There was something significantly different about my household versus Andy's, I was being raised by grandparents, not a parent, so there were certain cultural things that I wasn't getting exposed to with such a huge generational boundary, and I think that was part of the disconnect for me and why I found Andy and his world so fascinating. I had been bought up in a Christian household where service and prayer were a part of the foundation of their values. Andy was probably more exposed to art, music and just culture in general which made him seem so much more interesting to me.
We began to spend a lot of time together, I can recall riding the A train to Brooklyn spending time with him at his house, and even a sleepover that I sponsored with mostly his friends because my grandparents wouldn't let me sleep away from home. In some ways it felt like we were dating, we would fall asleep on the phone talking to each other, and be excited to see each other the next day at school. We were friends but it felt like there was something more going on, and I don't think at the time we quite knew what it was.
With much thought and meditation I have finally figured out decades later that I was in love with Andy, and albeit our relationship maintained a plutonic distance, there were feelings roaring under the surface that were never fully communicated, but comprehended by both of us. I think what needs to be understood about this time was I didn't really know what "gay" was, it was still more of an abstract, something distant and faraway, not something that looked, smelled and acted like me. I couldn't visualize a gay, and what that was and felt like, it would be another year before I met and had an openly gay friend, which would become very informative and nurturing to my burgeoning sexual identity.
This is what was so awkward when we "broke up", we called it that, even though why would two boys who were just friends, be "breaking up"? But that is how it felt, I can remember the phone call where it happened, and how upset I was, the tremendous loss I felt, and the deep sadness that seemed to linger for months afterwards.
That break up led to the first fight I had with my grandmother regarding my sexuality. I think she knew what was really going on and as opposed to be nurturing, and careful she attempted to belittle and attack me, asking me, "So are you gay?" to which I responded with the falsehood that, "No, I was bi!", this spiraled into a mandate that none of my male friends could spend the night at the house, to which I responded, well what about my lesbian friends? They should be safe. This was a prime-time teen hormone driven showdown.
The obvious transition would be to discuss my first openly gay friend Henry. I am not sure how we became friends particularly since he was an underclassman and traditionally those are boundaries that are not usually crossed, but I have never been one to color within the lines, I was friends with quite a few students below my grade, I even assisted in teaching them in the dance class.
Henry came out very publicly in People magazine, there was press outside the school it was a big to-do. Henry was a short hairy green-eyed Latino male fully stocked with an uncircumcised penis and he didn't mind getting a piece of his 15 minutes. He had like eight siblings, and lied that he was half-Sicilian and half-Dominican, he wasn't half anything, he was fully Dominican. Both Henry and Adam had identity issues which I never fully understood, both of them seemed to aspire to cultural heritages that weren't their own. Henry traded his alleged mixed-heritage in for indigenous Taino roots.
Henry had a very unstable living situation, I don't think his parents put him out as much as he felt the need to be on his own. He lived with an older friend Kim Magillicudy in the south Bronx in an apartment that was painted all white, I mean everything doorknobs, fixtures, I mean everything, it was a bit weird, and very poverty-adjacent. He left the basement in his parents house for this room he had in Kim's house, so I think he wanted the freedom.
I have always loved light-eyes so of course I found Henry attractive, but I never desired him like the whyte boys who chased him about. While still in high school utilizing the momentum of his People article, he starred in a documentary film, which I appeared in and worked on while in high school.
I talked about proximity and how that led a lot of young-gays to fuck each other. That was never the situation with Henry and I am not sure if he didn't find me attractive or maybe he didn't like Blacks in that context, I am not saying he was racist, but he had a tendency to exclusively date whyte men.
I remember he briefly dated author Michaelangelo Signorile that seemed like a big deal at the time because Michael was sort of a big deal in the early nineties. Henry also loved the nightlife and due to folks he knew like Chip Duckett, would get us admission to clubs like the Limelight and the Palladium. I think he also was briefly in a house under a mother who was a drag queen. He had embraced this urban gayness in a way I didn't fully have access to.
When I decided that I would be better off starting my theatre career in New York, Henry was my first roommate in our tiny two-bedroom apartment in Williamsburg. I used the remaining savings I had for college to buy some pieces at IKEA and futons for both of us. It really was a starter apartment, and I loved all the folks we made friends with and hosted during that time. It was all the things a starter apartment should be.
At that age Henry was attractive in a way that was desirable to the wider gay communities, I was his Black friend who didn't necessarily fit in any of those sought after categories, so folks like Chip wasn't in love with me, because he couldn't leverage my looks for his own interest, like he did Henry. Henry worked at Patricia Fields's boutique in the village another part of New York gay culture. But Henry was searching for himself amongst all of these trendy little circumstances, and he soon left our starter apartment to become a shaman. I am not sure if that ever came to be, but we would become friends again when he had moved to the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Our friendship ended over something I allegedly did or didn't do, but he never told me exactly what, I was like whatever, at that point our lives had wandered in different directions. I had had more financial success in my career, and he was still struggling as he had most of his life. For all of his looks, none of that ever translated into financial success.
There is one fond memory of Henry that I want to leave this section on, it was a time I was house-sitting for someone, I don't remember who. But I think it was on a break from college, maybe Ari had gotten me the gig. But I can recall Henry and Matt coming over to the house which I think was somewhere on the west side in Manhattan in the 70s or so. All three of us had decided to dress up in the lady of the house's clothes and attempt to go outside. We were all giggling so much, that we barely made it to the elevator before running back to the apartment to take it all off.
It was a lovely memory of being young and silly and maybe not being the most responsible, but having a good time. During that same week, I remember Henry taking a bath at the house, and I guess he had called me into the bathroom to talk. He wasn't in the least ashamed to be in the tub as his uncut penis floated in-between the bubbles in the tub. It was a comfortable moment, not remotely laced in anything sexual at all, we were just two friends talking to each other as we spent time in this strangers house. It's the way I like to remember that friendship best.
I am currently at three thousand words, and trust I am not giving my last friend here Brad another 1k.
You know I was just thinking if there were any photos of Brad and me together and there aren't, I think that sums up our friendship in a nut-shell. I wanted to be friends with him more than he wanted to be my friend. It was Kelsey Carrington all over again. I was a friend whom he called if Howie or someone else wasn't available.
But unlike anyone else on this list I had a crush on Brad from jump. I can remember in junior high school recording what top and bottom he wore every day. I would right the day of the week, then write what he wore for that day. I was a bit obsessed. Once again I can't remember how we actually became friends, we were in the same eighth grade homeroom, so that may have been conducive to us spending more time together.
Brad was blue-eyed, brown haired slim, and in the summer tanned. I think he actually had braces too, and if we're being candid he was totally whyte-trash. Our junior high school was predominately filled with people of color, the whytes that were there, were usually quite poor, and couldn't afford better educations. I remember he primarily lived with his mom, and younger sister Denise. But his dad Sheldon lived exactly one block away, the parents were separated, but lived close to each other.
Something else odd with my Brad friendship was how my hyper-sexuality spilled out. I can recall renting porn videos and the boys coming to either my house or Brad's to watch them. I am not sure why I begin doing this, but I started openly masturbating to the videos in front of the boys. In my head I wanted to encourage them to be as bold as me, but my size sort of scared them from showing their own members. I can recall our friend Howie telling me he learned how to improve his stroking technique from watching me. I was sort of flattered.
During this same time I can recall attempting to convince each of them separately to show me their penis. I was successful with Howie, and Brad's friend, who's name I can't remember, but Brad never gave up the goods. The most I saw of Brad was his rear, he really enjoyed mooning people, something that I thought was a part of those trashy frat movies of the eighties, not something someone actually did in real life.
If I am being totally honest, which I have a habit of doing, I was hoping to recreate the situation with my elementary school friend who I had been fellating for a couple of years. I would have been perfectly content to be swallowing all the spunk of other teenaged boys in the northern Bronx, but alas that never came to be, I had to suffice with the brief glimpses they volunteered, but none of them ever let me get close enough to pop it in my mouth. Subconsciously they may have known that which is why they kept their penises far away from me.
Brad was definitively straight and nothing I did, nor how much porn we watched together ever swayed him from how he was born. I really wanted to explore sexual play something well-known amongst adolescent boys, but the opportunity never presented itself. Our friendship for what it was, more or less dissolved when I ended up going to a specialized high school and he just went to the local high school Columbus or CoDumbus as we would call it locally.
These were four very different friendships with four very different kinds of people their social economic background varied, their races and even their sexualities. I was closer to some, not as close to others, but we were still friends, we still attempted to be all the things friends were supposed to be during the tenure of our relationships.
Personally I don't have any regrets about any of them, I mean I would love to do a post-mortem with Andy, but I don't think he was ever really interested in ever talking with me after high school, I did make some tentative attempts, and they were always met with a lukewarm response. But Andy is also on the list of people I would like to see before I die, not that I ever finished compiling that list.
Having a totally plutonic relationship isn't odd to me, of course that is the standard in all of my relationship with women, for obvious reasons. With men it does present a unique challenge, because if left to their own means, men will fuck anything and everything, so its nice to have a relationship where a certain level of restraint was shown.
Nowadays I don't really have any friends, I have devolved into a life of mostly solitude finding my connection usually with myself in exploring some unprocessed experience from my life or a person from my past who had some significant impact on me. I actually don't mind it, I am at a different place in my life, and more than anything I value my piece of mind. As a child I had learned how to entertain myself and be my own best friend, those are the lessons I now apply to my life, keeping my own council till it's time for me to go home.
[Photos courtesy of the Brown Estate]
Sexual Experimenting
💬 1 🔁 1 ❤️ 3 · Sexual Experimenting · Just to be totally clear me and the person in the photo, who I will be discussing in this essay, are
Friends I Fucked
💬 0 🔁 0 ❤️ 1 · I Fucked All Three of Them · Yes, that was a bit course for a beginning, but it got your attention, and it was the first th
Well that was where I started out thematically for this weeks selection, but one of the films I wanted to watch A Different Image (1982), I couldn't find streaming anywhere. So I shifted my parameters a little bit to all for other options. My final list still primarily centered Black women, with two Black women directors, one Black woman who wrote the book the film was based on, and strong Black women leading ladies all around.
This was the final list:
• Burning An Illusion (1981)
• The Watermelon Woman (1996)
• Eve's Bayou (1997)
• Half of a Yellow Sun (2013)
I can say definitively three of the films were solid offerings from front to back, script, story, production, directing, costumes, cinematography and casting. I gave them all a rating of 10 on IMDB. The weakest entry was the queer film The Watermelon Woman, it was a passable story told in an interesting way, but not as polished as the other films. Curiously director Cheryl Dunye didn't really do any other full-length feature films after it, she moved to primarily directing in television.
The film I was most blown away by was the entry from the United Kingdom, Burning an Illusion, out of all my films this one felt the most authentic, I was sorely disappointed to see the director Menelik Shabazz only did documentary work after his feature film debut. It was such an important story centering Black African and Black Caribbean voices and culture. The melding of these two distinct identities, and how that fits into being the product of Englands colonialism, was very fascinating for me. I was seeing a part of Black British cinema I hadn't witnessed before and this was a film from the 80s. More disappointment of course to learn the that two leads didn't go on to have a long and prosperous career in film and television. It was surprising and not surprising at the same time, the UK hasn't been known for a long history of diversity in it's television and film, and I am sure there weren't any roles these two beautiful young people could fit into that merited their ambitions and talent.
The most surprising of all my offerings was the American independent film Eve's Bayou, I think I first saw it when it came out twenty-nine years ago. I was appalled they hadn't been nominated for any Academy Awards, particularly when the film was clearly an instant-classic and was flawless in it's execution, nearly hard to believe this was the director Kasi Lemmons's debut feature film, she understood the assignment and over-delivered. I know everyone thought that Jurnee Smollett had a break-through performance for a child actor, but I have learned to always expect greatness from her whether in 2016's Underground or the runaway hit Lovecraft Country (2020).
I had seen the trailer for Half of a Yellow Sun back in '13 and wanted to see it, but just missed it somehow. I was pleased to finally see this film I had been wanting to see just based on the cast alone. I will be very frank, with all due respect that I am not impressed with the author of the book Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I think she's an eloquent speaker, deep thinker, obviously well-rewarded, but I find her middling as an author. Her New York Times best-selling book Americanah felt bland and hard to follow for me, I was so excited to sit down and read the book I had seen so many copies of when it first came out that all the hype did nothing but raise my expectations, which were quickly deflated.
The film was amazing, Anika Noni Rose is a beast, what can't she do? Sings, voice over, dances, acts, snatches up your edges with her brilliance every-time. Thandiwe Newton was illogically beautiful as one of the characters said about her, I enjoyed her very bougie ass getting raked through the African mud. I am not Nigerian or African for that matter, so I held no issue with a film about a very problematic part of Nigerian history being told by non-Nigerian actors. All the performances were flawless, and more importantly I learned about a piece of history of this western African country.
All in all I had an excellent time being immersed in all this Blackness, thrilling at the Black Girl Magic that was present in all of the films and once again rooting for everyone Black in how we showed up and showed out, as we always tend to do. I'd recommend all of these films, but would really push Burning an Illusion because I didn't expect it to be so fucking good!
Just to be totally clear me and the person in the photo, who I will be discussing in this essay, are no longer friends, that is all behind us. But back in college we were close-ish, young, gay, still trying to figure it all out. I wasn't aware of my childhood sexual abuse, it would be easily another thirteen years before I was informed that that was indeed abuse, and easily another decade before I came to some resolution around it, which ultimately led to my current celibacy.
But in college I was sowing my wild oats as it were. I mean some folks drank, me I fucked. What led me to wanting to talk about this a little was the memory of me and this friend spending the night together in his single in the quads. The reason for this probably eludes me, but was more than likely because my roommate Rob had his girlfriend over, and even though my presence in the room wasn't a deterrent, I asked this friend to spend the night with him.
As I said it was a single, so one bed, so we slept together, well not 'slept together', but went to sleep in the same bed. But we did do a little sexual experimenting. Now by this point I think I had fellated this friend before, with another friend who had a single in my dorm back in the towers, so I was aware that he was a girthy-fellow. This was something that fascinated me because up until this time any penises I had sucked were more or less average-sized.
While we were still up I had suggested that I attempt to mount him, just to see if I could take something so thick. I want to be clear, this was nearly a clinical experiment, not a sexual overture, we were both in our late teens, about to soon leave them, obviously our hormones and sexual drives were a lot more active, and we both had a certain level of curiosity of being so new to everything. Then there was just the freedom of being out of our parents homes, on our own and the excitement of our freshly realized gay identities.
I am not trying to occlude what exactly we did, so I am going to say it plainer. My friend was going to penetrate me with his penis. I remember at this age, getting an erection wasn't even a thing, I don't think I had to encourage him, he may have gotten aroused just by the suggestion. I want to paint a clear mental picture that there wasn't foreplay, or any other inappropriate touching, we were just attempting to see if the physics were possible, something appropriate for two freshman, to try a little science experiment on their own. #ExtraCredit
He had a condom, I can't recollect if he had lube, but let's say he did. He lied in his bed on his back and I took off whatever bottom I was wearing, probably just underwear. I straddled him, mounting in a direction where I was facing him, and I did manually attempt to guide him inside of my anus. I will admit it took a bit of work to get him past my external sphincter, but soon he was passing my internal sphincter to the sweet spot of my inner rectum.
I remember finally being seated on his pelvis completely as his engorged member was filling up my anal canal brilliantly. Remember how I said we didn't have sex? I maintain that, and I wish we were talking so I could confirm what my foggy memory recalls. I sat on him maybe a minute or two, and dismounted, he didn't fuck me, albeit at that point I may have wanted him to, we were friends, and we were just trying something out. I also didn't want to be deceptive, if that makes sense, I had told him I just wanted to see if he could fit, and did just that. Taking it further would have been a violation not only of trust, but what we had agreed to.
That may have been the last sexually-related thing we did, after being caught by my short-term boyfriend, literally on my knees with one of two friends cock's in my mouth, I think I just kept things plutonic with this friend moving forward. Mind you there were many others who weren't friends that I gladly partook of during my three semesters at the college.
Curiously I haven't any regrets about any of my behavior during this time, even sort of cheating on my boyfriend. I mean it was definitive cheating, but it was also just a compulsion from the sexual abuse. My hyper-sexuality was still fully in effect, even if I didn't know the reason for it. Being in college and away from my regular oral-partner back home, I sort of missed fellating someone regularly, and albeit I did have a boyfriend, having a boyfriend was something new, navigating a relationship was a frontier I hadn't really explored before. Coupled with being on a college campus where seriously no one would turn down a little head, didn't help the situation at all.
Ultimately I look at all of it as sexual experimenting, figuring out what it was you liked, enjoyed, craved, desired et. al. There were also not a lot of restrictions stopping you from partaking of all the local delicacies, and I did just that. I can still recall Ryan Dieterle who was this amazing receptive partner who auto-lubricated, I don't think since him I have ever met a partner who had that ability. That coupled with the very desirable shape of his derrière, its no wonder we both fell into a habit of not using protection. He would later die of AIDS, I have a photo of his square from the AIDS Memorial Quilt. I would like to think that my very fond sexual memories of him, would be something he was proud of, I know I am.
