Melissaphobia (Part 4: Welcome Home)

It's 1:15 on a Sunday morning. After a two-day bus trip at the culmination of a three-month spoken word tour, I had decided to take a trip to my local venue for a surprise appearance. People were surprised. I was happy. I drank. I was tired. I was writing in short, choppy sentences.

My friend Joycee drove me home from the venue. I pulled my bags out of her trunk, walked up to my door, turned the key in the lock and...nothing. Fuck.

I rang the doorbell, but I had witnessed Melisa sleeping through me banging on her bedroom door when she had blocked our neighbor's driveway with her car. She probably slept through the sex she had with all The Midnight Men. They were probably just a bunch of crazed necrophiliacs (except the Coke guy, I'm sure he had no crazed fetishes).

I realized she had probably changed the locks due to a run in with one of The Midnight Men. Maybe somebody hit her, or maybe she had decided she was going to stick to only one married guy at a time.

When she hadn't answered the door to the apartment, and Gussy hadn't even barked at my knocking and doorbell ringing, I went around to the driveway to check for her car. It was there. While I was in the driveway, I realized that I could probably climb in through my window. I didn't remember whether I'd bothered to lock it. But the odds were that I hadn't. I hopped on to the ledge and ---

There was no furniture in my room. Bed? Gone. Bookcases? Gone. TV? Gone. Desk? Gone. Pile of films and porn? Gone. The closet was open and there were no clothes in it.

I decided that even if the window was unlocked, no good would come from climbing through it. Instead, I walked the couple of miles to Su's house and woke her up, explaining my unpleasant return. She thought I might have just been so tired that I mis-saw.

It was true that I didn't do an exhaustive visual search. There were no streetlights, no lights from inside the house.

At about five-thirty I walked back to the house where I had lived for the past year. Melissa was comingo ut of the house as I walked up to the porch.

"Hey, Insafemode." she beamed. "How was your trip?"

"It was fun. I got to see a part of the country I've never been to, amde enough money to live moderately comfortable, met some nice people. But when I got home the damnedest thing happened. My key wouldn't fit into the lock."

"Oh, yea. You don't live here anymore."

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/28964.html

Melissaphobia (Part 3: Signs and Post-Its)

There were enough signs that Melissa was crazy to keep two engravers, four painters and a troupe of municipal workers in business for the rest of their unnatural lives. First off there was the dog, there were the midnight men, there was the dog, there were the letters addressed to various friends (who I never met) and family members filled with phrases like "you're not being conducive to my needs as a human person" and "I think I'm going to need some space from your negative energy for a while", and, of course, the dog.

I first witnessed one of her nuclear meltdowns in June. I am the sort of person who is pretty well known for being a good listener and problem solver (so long as the problems aren't my own) but when someone tells me they don't want to talk about something, that's the end of the discussion. I'm not going to expend effort to hear about someone's problems, unless there's love, money, or fucking involved. I never did find out what Melissa's meltdown was in response to.

She started leaving me nasty notes. I'm someone who uses a fair amount of notepaper and writing journals but absolutely deplores the Post-It Note industry. Every Post-It Note I've ever seen involves passive aggressive or just downright aggressive language. When I lived in Burlington, my landlord used to leave me love notes such as "Where's the fucking rent?" and "I hate you. Get out of my house." To be fair to him, I was avoiding him because I couldn't afford rent. I understood his frustrations.

Melissa's frustrations were whacky. "I found this pen in the living room. BE MORE CAREFUL!!!!" It was a covered ball-point pen, left in a room that Gussy was forbidden to go into. Another note declared "Gussy did her business in my bedroom while I was gone. In the future PLEASE CLEAN UP when I'm not home." Uhhh...since when is it my business to go into someone else's room and check to see whether or not their spoiled rotten guinea pig impersonator shat on their floor?

In mid-July she announced that she was leaving for Florida for a while. This made me very happy. When she returned home, there were Midnight Men coming at all hours of the day. Fortunately, I was rarely home at all hours of the day. The one great thing about us being roommates was that (after we both quit Crapplebees) she worked days, and I worked nights. We rarely ever saw each other or had to have conversations. Which was good, as I rarely had anything nice to say to her.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/28834.html

Melissaphobia (Part 2: The Midnight Men)

I don't sleep at night (have you noticed most of my posts are at 4 fricken AM?). My job requires me to be at work promptly at four in the afternoon, sometimes as late as six. I'm done at midnightish, and completely wired when I get home. My life has been like this for the majority of the last three years.

When I first moved in with Melissa, I had yet to buy my bed (best purchase ever), so I was sleeping on the living room couch. I'd invited my friend and coworker Quentin over to play cards. Nothing sleazy, just cards. This was before the madness that is spectator poker. This was merely Cribbage, a game I was once damn good at.

Around 12:15 I heard a key turning in the lock. Melissa was already home. I was already home. There were only two of us. Had Gussy gone outside on her own? If so, why?

A man in his early forties in desperate need of a shave and a shower walked in, blinked curiously at Quentin and I and continued on his way down the hall to Melissa's room. I was puzzled until I heard the sounds of someone trying to quietly fuck. Ahhhh, the boyfriend.

This happened several times through the course of the year that Melissa and I lived together. But it was never the same guy twice. I wondered whether she gave her one spare key out to people she met at bars or whether she always set the key in a plastic Easter egg, and hid the egg in a different location, perhaps putting out ads in magazines or The Internet with directions to where the egg was located. The ad would read: "Want to fuck a moderately attractive girl with dependency issues while being watched and barked at by a miniature dachshund? Go to Pope Hill Park, find the easter egg under the monkey bars in the playground, and follow the directions inside. Bring condoms and rawhide bones."

The only Midnight Man who ever caught my attention was The Coke guy.

I love me some Cherry Coke. One night at around three I went into the kitchen, surprised to find a moderately attractive man in boxers drinking the last of my Cherry Coke.

"This yours?" he asked.

"Yea."

"Sorry, I was really thirsty. I'll replace it tomorrow."

He didn't know what I knew. There was no tomorrow in our house for Midnight Men. Melissa was burying herself under a pile of anonymous men in a pathetic attempt to disguise the fact that nobody loved her enough to commit to her. Maybe we had more in common than I thought.

There was no Cherry Coke in the fridge the next day, but he had blocked up the toilet.

About a week later, I was in the middle of writing when the doorbell rang. There was a Coke truck outside. On the doorstep was Midnight Man with ten cases of Cherry Coke.

"Sorry bout the delay. I'm a little mad at Melissa, but I felt bad about taking the last of your Coke. She tells me you pretty much live off the stuff. Hope you enjoy this. Oh, and don't tell Melissa I said Hi."

I wanted to fuck him right there on the doorstep. Instead I said thank you and began stocking the refrigerator and the pantry.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/28575.html

Melissaphobia (Part 1: Hell Hound)

A couple of years before I met her, Melissa got dumped hardcore by a boyfriend who must have woken up one morning and gone "Woah, I'm dating a total dependent bitch with no personality of her own, and she's not even that good looking."

She didn't take that well. She apparently spent months crying in bed, leaving only for work and the occasional Ben & Jerry's run (the one aspect of her personality I respected). To get her out of her slump, her grandfather bought her a new puppy: Gussy. Gussy was named after Melissa's dead grandmother. This was my first clue that she was somewhat unbalanced.

The first three months that Gussy was in Melissa's possession, the two did everything together, including sleeping in the same bed. Those of you who know anything about dogs know that sleeping with the dog on a regular basis is a big nono. You must establish that you are the alpha, or you run the risk of having your new companion turn into Frankenpuppy.

Even obedience school couldn't save Gussy from being a horrid little shitstain. Maybe it's because, as a miniature dachsund, she had a Napoleonic complex (sometimes known as a Devito complex). I imagine that it had more to do with Melissa's intimacy issues.

The first day I moved in, Melissa and I were talking in the hallway when Gussy wandered in from the kitchen and took a shit next to Melissa's foot. Melissa's response: "Gussy, I can't believe you're doing this right in front of me." Then, to me: "She usually waits until I'm in the other room before she does her business on the floor."

Ummm...she usually shits on the floor?

"I take her out for walks all the time" (this was true) "but for some reason she likes to do her business in the house." She did. Every night. Every day. Whenever Melissa was home, Gussy was pissing and shitting on the floor. I locked my bedroom door and always watched my feet when I walked around the house.

Melissa was forever stepping in piss puddles (which she referred to as widdle water) and saying "Gussy, bad dog." Then she would give her a treat.

The true victims of the frequent floods of widdle water were the Midnight Men. None of whom ever learned from previous experience to watch their feet when they entered the house. Unless of course none of the Midnight Men were repeat customers. I couldn't tell any of them apart. And when even a gay whore can't keep track of all the random dick that comes into the house to fuck his roommate, you know there's a problem.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/27816.html

Stuck In A Moment I Can't Get Out Of (Part 5: Abrupt Ending)

My life is abrupt. My relationships start and stop without much hesitation or agonizing. This isn't to say I don't spend great deals of time considering and evaluating things as they happen, it's just that when I reach a decision or someone else makes a decision for me, I go with it. Regrets are dealt with later, if it all. As some have pointed out, my stories are the same way.

Some people seem to think that my stories end abruptly because I get bored with them, or I don't know what to with them. Nope. They end abruptly because that's the way I live my life. A martyr complexed knitter and her friends ask me to pick up my life and move to Pieceofshitdeserttown, I do it, despite my comfortable life and my friends' protests. When, five months later, I am broke and miserably unhappy, I take what I can carry and head home, leaving many of my Earthly possessions behind me. And when Scott accepted my invitation to Nantucket, that was it, we were going. Even though I didn't know him very well, and what I did know I didn't particularly care for.

It was my fault as much as his that the weekend sucked so incredibly much. I couldn't postpone the trip but I could have invited someone else, an old friend, CSB, Tommy, someone I would have enjoyed spending time with regardless of sexual activity. But I'd chosen Scott, and now we were two slightly frustrated gay men who had to spend one more night sharing a bed.

When I learned that he'd taken money out of his account to buy the books, and put some of it aside to take me out for our last lunch before we went home, I disliked him a little less. Plus, he had brought me orange chicken.

We didn't talk much that final night. There was no "coming to terms" with anything, no animosity, just nothing really to say. I woke up, showered, and was pretty much packed before he woke up.

"Morning." He said after a healthy yawnstretch.

"Yes it is."

By the time we made it out of the room, it was noonish. We put our bags down at the front desk, and went downtown to find a nice restaurant. I don't remember what we had, only that it was incredibly good (though not as orgasmic as lobster ravioli). After lunch, we headed back to the hotel, picked up our bags and called a cab. We had about a half hour wait before our plane left. We both read with our headphones on while we waited.

I didn't have any urge to push him out of the plane on our flight back to the mainland. Rather than have my mom pick us up at the airport and risk having to throttle Scott, we took a cab to her parking lot. He offered to drive me to the bus station, but I decided to toss my bags in my mom's condo, and wander around my old neighborhood.

And that was it. Apart from a rather terse Thank You e-mail, I never heard from Scott again. There was something comfortably familiar about that.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/90960.html

Stuck In A Moment I Can't Get Out Of (Part 4: Contraction)

It doesn't take a degree in physics to know that you shouldn't poor scalding hot coffee into a glass you've just taken out of the freezer. And any server from a corporate restaurant will let you know that you don't take mugs fresh from the heated dishwasher and fill them with ice and cold soda. A quick change in temperature and the glass expands or contracts and creates a fissure and crack, time to get a broom and pick up the pieces.

When I came out of the bathroom and saw nearly naked Scott laying on the bed, I was hot and bothered. I took a while to cool down and fall asleep, and all was right in the world. When I woke up the next morning, and he was prancing around in his see-through kimono, singing and dancing to David Bowie's "Heroes" AND GOING THROUGH MY SUITCASE.

Fissure. Fissure. CARACK!

"Why are you singing that Wallflowers song?" I asked. Once he'd stopped twitching, he explained to me that they had merely covered the song for The Godzilla soundtrack. I knew this already. "Oh, I thought it was a Dylan song."

After a few minutes of awkward silence, he asked "What's on today's agenda?" I do not have agendas. I had intended on spending a romantic sex-filled weekend with someone, anyone really on this tiny little island. As that was no longer going to happen, I was willing to take the events of the day as they came, though I suspected no coming would be involved.

"How about breakfast?" I asked.

Breakfast was phenomenal. Not because of the food. The food was good, but nothing special. Eggs benedict, sausage, and apple juice. It was also not because of the company. The company was mediocre at best. All Scott could talk about was how he used to be fat. There were several times during our breakfast where my fist considered assisting his bulimia. What made breakfast phenomenal was when the bill came.

Scott looked over the bill, did some calculations in his head (a welcome change from the finger counters I'd dated previously), and said "Your total comes to eleven dollars."

"Ok." I said, and I reached into my pocket. My wallet was gone. Oh the shock. The horror. I rechecked each pocket three times. I lifted the cushions of the booth. I checked under the table. The only thing keeping me sane was the knowledge that my wallet was zippered into my secret inner-jacket pocket. "I can't find my wallet. I must have left it back in the room."

"No problem, you can pay me back when we get to the room."

Remarkably, we were unable to find it in my room, even after going through my suitcase, checking under the bed, and going through all the drawers. "Fuck. I can't believe I lost my fucken wallet. I'm going to go down to the front desk and try and retrace my steps. I mean, I had it last night when I paid for our dinner. It can't have gotten too far."

Instead of going to the front desk, I went to the Nantucket Bookworks and proceeded to be frustrated by their lack of anything worth reading. After about fifteen minutes, I gave up and went back to the room.

"Any luck?" Scott asked.

"Only the bad kind."

"What are you going to do?"

Guilt trip you into buying all my meals. "I don't know. I guess I could spend the rest of the trip eating at The Tap House, and charging all my meals to the room, and have my Mom pay for the charges on her credit card."

"Orrrrrr." He said. "We could charge everything to the room, and then not check out."

I'd been trumped.

"No, I couldn't do that. How about you just pay for the meals for the rest of the trip? After all, I've already covered airfare, and hotel. We're only here for another day, anyway."

"I didn't bring that much money."

So don't eat Mr. I Used To Be Fat But Now I'm Thinner And Holier Than Thou.

I pretended to be in deep thought. What I was actually thinking about was this really cool Italian Seafood place I'd walked by. They had Lobster Bisque, and Lobster Ravioli on their menu. Ohhhhhhh lobster. "How much money did you bring?"

"Not much."

What had he planned on doing? Clearly, not me. He knew I wasn't up for being anyone's Sugar Daddy. He didn't seem to like my company very much. I'd invited him because I'd hoped he would be putting out. Why had he accepted? He hadn't even expressed an interest in sight seeing. "Then I guess we might as well leave."

For the first time, something that looked like it might be a genuine emotion other than "You don't appear to know shit about David Bowie" passed over his face. It was just a drive by, but it was a start.

"You want to go home?"

"Well, I don't see much point in staying." I confessed. "We don't have enough money to enjoy the trip or enough chemistry to cause any mildly entertaining reaction."

"You...you don't think we have chemistry?" He appeared to be returning fire in the war of bullshit.

"You've seemed pretty irritated since you picked me up in Barnstable. And then there was that shit with my mother. I mean, if you're going to tell my mother that we're having a romantic weekend here, the least you can do is put out."

"So you want to fuck?" This is the point in the poorly written romantic comedy where the two mismatched characters begin making out passionately, and the camera zooms out, showing that the two are clearly going to be fucking during the passing of time music montage.

"No." Maybe just a little. "That's not the point. I guess I don't understand why you wanted to come here."

"You invited me."

"Yea, but..." Damn it. "Why did you say yes?"

"Because I didn't have any plans this weekend. And the world's ending, and..."

"You didn't know that when I invited you."

"I don't know. I don't know why I came."

"Me neither." I left the room, not slamming the door at all, and walked back to the Italian seafood place. Their bisque was amazing. Their lobster ravioli gave me an erection that didn't go down for weeks.

Scott was not there when I got back to the room. His belongings were.

I was in the midst of determining the proper way to act when he came into the room when he came into the room. "I brought you some Chinese. Do you like Orange Chicken?"

There was hope for him yet. "I love Orange Chicken." However, I've just eaten lobster ravioli and and lobster bisque, so the Orange Chicken will have to wait. "Thanks."

"No problem." He sat down at the little desk in the corner of the room and opened up a bag from the bookstore. Not much money, eh?

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/90074.html

Stuck In A Moment I Can't Get Out Of (Part 3: Out Of Synch)

The worst entries in bad_sex are the entries that merely say "Bad sex is no sex at all. LOL." Being the moderator, it is all I can do to muster the restraint to not ban every idiot who thinks that shit is funny. But I am a master of restraint, no?

But the truth is, not having sex when you're expecting it is one of the worst types of sex. Still, having spent just a few hours with Scott between the bus station in Barnstable, and the restaurant on Nantucket, I resigned myself...hmm...that's not correct...I impeached the possibility of us having sex. He was cute. He was smart. He was also a complete asshole who didn't so much make my skin crawl, as actually stand up and run screaming into the night.

"That was a good dinner." He said when we were back in our room. "Expensive. But good."

"Yea, it's hard to find cheap lobster pot pie these days. I usually wait for June to roll around so I can have one of those delicious McDonald's lobster rolls."

"Ewwww. Are you serious?" He asked.

I gave the universal I'm-too-bored-to-tell-you shoulder shrug.

"I'm gonna go change for bed." We were already in bed, or technically, on bed at this point. While he was in the bathroom I read the unabridged, annotated version of War and Peace a few times, and still had time to complete the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle in permanent marker. When he came out he was wearing...

"Is that a kimono?"

"Yes, they're very comfortable." And see-through. Nice ass. Uh-oh. Red alert. Red alert. We have a breach in the cranial cavity, please direct all blood to the cardiac area. No! The cardiac area. Damn it, who let all that blood trickle down into the secondary brain?

"I'm going to go...brush my teeth." And look menacingly at my cock until it got in synch with my brain. It didn't take long to stare the wilt into it.

I made a very concerted effort not to look at his body as I climbed into bed.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/89444.html

Stuck In A Moment I Can't Get Out Of (Part 2: Uncomfortable Silences)

Some silences are beautiful. Holding your lover as the sun comes up over the ocean. The middle of the night when you realize that you are laying next to the most important person in the entire world. The seconds after orgasm when words become as useful as copyright warnings on Kazaa. The silence between Scott and I while my mother drove us to the airport was entirely unlike any of those silences. This was the silence of two men walking to the electric chair. One of them was going to be pulling the switch. The other...wasn't.

"Have a good trip." My mother said, knowing full well that we weren't going to.

I presented my tickets at the counter, submitted to the newly created security measures, and handed my bags to someone I hoped was an employee. I handed Scott's bags to someone I hoped wasn't an employee. Unfortunately, both worked for Cape Air.

"The reason we have to take all your bags." The cheerless woman behind the counter explained, "is because weight distribution on planes of this size is very important. We ask that you don't take anything on the plane with you besides yourself, your tickets, and maybe a book or newspaper. We also may ask you to move seats depending on the physical properties of our other passengers."

So if someone "of size" came on to the plane, I wouldn't be able to sit next to the borderline anorexic guy I was taking with me? How would I push him out of the plane if he wasn't within reach?

"The view is beautiful, isn't it?" Scott asked. That's right, keep looking out the window. If I kick you hard enough your skinny ass will go right through the glass and into the ocean. Just think, you'll be sharing your deathbed with a Kennedy.

We both survived the flight. Sadly.

Once on the island, we caught a cab to the hotel. "Do you want me to pay for this?' He asked. Let's see, I was supplying the hotel, the airfare, the dinner. Yes, I think I did want him to pay the ten dollar cab fare. This made him snippy. I had clearly picked the wrong guy to spend the weekend with.

Between when he'd picked me up at the bus station, and when we'd dropped his car off at my mother's, we had spent a half hour at his house listening to David Bowie and talking about how he used to be fat. The conversation bored me. I didn't care if he used to be fat. I would have cared if he used to be interesting, but that wasn't the case. He hadn't purged away the interesting part of his personality. He'd never had one. Hence we'd grown up in the same town, been only a year apart in school, yet I had never registered his existence.

"This hotel is great."

"Yea. The canopy bed is a nice touch."

"Do you want to watch TV?"

"Sure" Anything not to have to make small talk with you, Scott.

Every station in the country was still on 24 hour apocalypse watch. Even MTV was just playing Live's "Overcome" and U2's "Stuck in a Moment" over and over and over and over and over again.

"Oh, look, there's a minifridge in here. I'm going to go to the grocery store and buy a few things. Want to come?" I asked.

"I hope you don't think I'm going to put out this weekend."

The part of my brain that tried to connect my question with his answer, popped out of my ear and ran screaming for the ocean, where it gave itself a proper Viking Funeral. "I'll take that as a no then."

"I'm just saying you don't need to buy condoms."

"I liked you better when you were fat," I said, "and I didn't know who you were."

When I came back from the grocery store, Scott was in his boxers in the bathroom, admiring his body in the bathroom mirror. "You know I was kidding before about the whole not putting out, and the condom thing, right?"

Sure, Mister Mind Game. I've spent a month living with a spoiled narcissistic schizophrenic compulsive liar with a cute accent but no ass, your kung fu is weak. "Oh yea. Obviously. I would never seriously insult you for your old body size. I'm not an asshole." Luckily, he was in the other room, and I didn't have to make eye contact.

"So what do you want to do today?"

"I just want to walk around the island and check out the beaches, and the touristy little places." And if you're going to continue to be an asshole, I want you to cover your dick in snails and stick it in a lobster trap.

Our walk was mostly tolerable. It was Indian Summer (or Native American Warm Season When Most Schools Are Out, if you're going to be all P.C.), and the beaches were barren, but beautiful. We talked about our respective arts. Me, being a writer, he, a photographer. He was not very knowledgeable. I had studied photography in junior high, and I appeared to know more about it than he did.

When the sun went down, and the shops closed up for the night, we decided to stop at the restaurant attached to the hotel, The Tap Room. I ordered a Caesar salad, and a Coke. He had a Lobster Pot Pie, and a couple of beers.

"Hey, do you mind grabbing the bill for this meal?" He asked. "I didn't bring my money with me."

"How about I wait here, while you go up to the room and get your money? It'll only take about two minutes."

And we dived head first back into uncomfortable silence.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/87683.html

Stuck In A Moment I Can't Get Out Of (Part 1: Scotthole)

My father moved to Martha's Vineyard while I was away at school. It wasn't remotely traumatic. It wasn't even a remote island (I'm cockslapping myself for that joke, don't you worry). I started spending on average about three weeks of the year on the island. I felt like a Clinton.

But despite all my vast Martha's Vineyard experience, I'd never been to Nantucket. Sure, I'd drunk the Nectars, I'd recited the dirty limericks, but I'd never actually been there. I was overjoyed when, in April of 2001 I won a two nights stay at The Jared Coffin House, complete with round trip airfare for two from the Cape.

In July, I was hanging out with some jailbait who was crushing on me, and who I was...desperately trying not to crush back on (I barely made it...he was sooo cute/funny/smart/completely illegal), and he asked if he could come with me to the island. No. No. No. Hmmmmm...No. But it did remind me that I had to book the trip at some point. I was going to Seattle in August for the National Poetry Slam finals, and I was broker than an old pop culture reference, BUT I didn't want to go to Nantucket during the winter when it was all cold and desolate. So I called and made a reservation for September 14th. 2001.

September 11th, I was scheduled to do a poetry show in Portland Maine, with the only really Deaf Poet on Def Jam, Ayisha Knight. I was voicing all her poems, and she was signing all mine. We'd also interwoven our poetry into one long show. It would have kicked so much ass, but, you know the planes and the buildings and the dying happened, and it didn't look like the show was going to happen. We were also opening for Folk Implosion that night. Damnit.

After an awkward day of honing my ASL skills on the subject of terrorism, we drove back to Boston, where i was staying with Zuzu the Political Activist. That was fun. Really. I'm being completely sincere. No, I mean it.

After a few hours of nonsensical ranting, I checked my e-mail.

Hey Safey,
Looks like the world is kind of fucked up right now. Are we still on for this weekend on Nantucket? I completely understand if you're not in the mood, but maybe some time away from the real world will do us some good. Hope you're slamming your heart out.

Scott.

Oh, right. Nantucket. Scott.

Scott was the one person who ever replied to my PlanetOut ad (looooooooooooong since removed). He was 23 (I was 24 at the time), a former fatty who was now borderline anorexic, and interesting. Not necessarily in a good way. We'd gone to a PJ Harvey concert together a week before, and had...hmmm...we had something that was almost fun. The concert was good. I discovered he lived on the Cape at the same time I had, yet we had never met. However, we knew about a billion people in common, so we talked about them.

After out pseudo-date we sort of hugged, but not really, and he drove back to the Cape, while I was explaining to Zuzu why, despite our awkward first "date", I had invited him to Nantucket: "No other prospects."

Scott picked me up at the bus station (sexy, sexy), and drove to my mother's. The plan was to park his car at her house, take the cab to the airport, and be on our way. But nooooooooooooooooo, Scott wanted to meet my mother, and have her drive us to the airport. I love my mother, but she's CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAZY, and more than a bit bitchy to my friends. Jennifer had suggested running her over with my car, my boss at Kookaburra Canyon would hide in the kitchen when my mother came to visit me at work, and Liam was more direct when he asked me "Dude, why is your mom such an insufferable bitch to me?" She had plotted to have Elvis killed before I figured out that that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Why would I want to introduce her to someone I didn't particularly like, but wanted to have sex with in the near future?

I prepped him. My mom knew I was gay (she had nearly walked in on me and Elvis on more than the occasion), but we didn't talk about it. Talking about it involved crying. This is the woman who just two weeks ago, chastised me for voting in VT instead of MA (that's where my ID is from). "Just think, if you'd voted here instead of Vermont, you could have changed things."

"What do you mean?" I asked her.

"You did vote for Bush, right?" No, she wasn't kidding.

My prep for Scott included just telling her we were friends from College (he was currently attending the community college I had gone to a year and a half before), and that we were going to get away from the 9/11 stuff.

"Actually," he confessed when we were in her house, "I met him on an online personals site. We're going for a romantic weekend." I was so going to kill him.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/87001.html

Patchouli Boy Stink

There's a reason they don't make patchouli and cum cologne. Even if you're one of those people who enjoy the stench of patchouli (and it is your Evolution given right), the base note of sperm just brings a lot up: no, not memories, lunch; it brings a lot of lunch up. The smell hit me so hard that I almost didn't even notice the guy was cute because I was thinking "Charles fucken Darwin, I'm gonna puke." But just as I was about to enter the bathroom, the guy noticed that my eyes had rolled back in my head. He made a disapproving grunt.

I restrained myself from saying "I'm sorry my body's instinctive repulsion to your scent offends you, but maybe if you weren't beating off in a coffeeshop bathroom and trying to hide the scent with a hippie hooker bath, I wouldn't be gagging."

And it was a good thing I restrained myself. Underneath that noxious eau-de-I-just-jizzed-in-your-toilette were some seriously sexy pheromones. Plus, as the guy walked away from me, I noticed he had an amazing ass. But, I thought, no self-respecting gay guy would ever allow himself to smell that rank unless he was going for a million dollars on "Survivor".

But a bisexual would. And, while I am making a generalization, it's not that I think bisexuals stink, and heteros and homos smell like lavender meringue, I'm just saying that I know a number of bisexuals who like to wear patchouli. Granted, I'd never noticed any of them REEKING of patchouli, but it was entirely possible that this cute-assed, not so-sweet smelling boy had accidentally used too much patchouli when he realized that without the patchouli, he smelled like the last two minutes of a bukakke film.

When I got done using the bathroom (and washing my hands, as the little sign ordered), I noticed that the offensive guy was sitting on a stool at the bar. Not surprisingly, he was alone.

At the time, I was living in Burlington, Vermont, the patchouli capital of the East Coast. My friends and I called it Little Berkeley. This was not a loving nickname.

I was in the middle of a game of chess with a frustratingly ambiguous straight boy (author's note: chess is not a metaphor here, I'm talking about the game with bishops and queens...no, really, it's not a metaphor), when smelly barstool boy wafted by me again. This time, he stopped, looked over my shoulder, and proceeded to tell me where I should move my knight. I suggested a more painful location for him. Somehow this led to flirting. Flirting led to drinking. Drinking led to my loss of olfactory sense and memory. And loss of olfactory sense and memory led me to the all too familiar scenario of me in a strange bedroom with my pants around my ankles, trying to remember how many condoms I'd brought with me.

This is when my sense of smell came back.

Now, sperm in a coffeeshop is a terrible terrible smell. Particularly, if you don't like coffee. But sperm in a bedroom is perfectly acceptable. EXCEPT when you factor in the patchouli. No longer was it just the patchouli on this guy's body, but there was a pervading sense of patchouli in the room. Either he REALLY liked the smell, or he'd recently killed a bevy of dreadlocked trustafarians (rastafarian children of millionaires).

I tried to think of a polite way to tell him that the stench of the room, while decidedly animalistic, and probably very sexy to some, was not just going to kill my erection, but also cause my curried rice to come back for an encore. This is when I noticed that the perfectly shaped, naked ass directly in front of me, had a GIGANTIC pimple directly in the center of the left cheek. On its own, no big deal, but now I know I'm not going to be able to open my mouth without puking.

"Come on," Patchouli Boy says, "Fuck me." And then he slaps his own ass, bursting the pimple, which spurts out its money shot between his fingers.

Erection? Gone. Curried rice? In my throat. I swallow, trying to calculate the velocity I'll need to achieve in order to yank up my pants, and run out the door before Patchouli Boy can ask me where I'm going.

original post: http://community.livejournal.com/bad_sex/1153920.html

The Loop (Part 6: ErnieQuest 2001)

My room, no mater if it's in Burlington, Boston, Cranberry Lake, Pieceofshitdeserttown, or Florida, is always an altar to the God of Dirty Laundry. I never bring food into the room, or allow other public health hazards, but laundry be it clean or dirty, nearly always covers the floor. Laundry, notebooks and papers. I'm thinking of having a scavenger hunt: put together a matching outfit AND organize the papers by poetry/novel/miscellaneous unsent letters, and you'll win an autographed copy of The Long Dark Teatime of My Cock.

Though my room looks like it's in complete chaos, I can always tell when something is out of place, or, as is the case on that weird-ass Burlington night, when there's shit that shouldn't be there; Say, for example, Ernie's clothes, and no Ernie.

I envisioned Ernie running naked through the two feet of snow drifts, his feet frostbite blue. I threw on my blue jeans, and a t-shirt, shirt, turtleneck, and sweater, grabbed Ernie's clothes and jacket and piled them by the door. I went upstairs to take a badly needed piss before I left. The shower was running. so I crept into the third floor bathroom, got rid of the Cherry Coke backlog, and headed outside.

There was no Ernie in the park. No Ernie by the lake. No Ernie downtown. I debated checking out the police station, but if he wasn't there, and he wasn't naked but maybe wearing some of my clothes, I didn't want to have to deal with police officers. The last place I checked was The Loop.

When Zach had first told me about The Loop, I had mistakenly thought it was some sort of drug reference. The Loop was actually the place where the gay guys in Hippiesville met for anonymous sex. Random guys would wander around the block until a car, van or red pickup truck would pull over and ask if they wanted a ride somewhere.

As a guy who had invited strangers he'd "met" over The Internet into his house to fuck them, I was horrified at the idea of The Loop. But I could see how it had an appeal for someone like Ernie who was "straight" and without Internet access.

Though The Loop was the logical place to find him, he wasn't there. He'd had more than enough time to have already been picked up.

I went home, tossed Ernie's clothes in my room, checking to see if he was back in either my bed or the living room futon. No.

I went upstairs to run some hot water over my cold ass, but it seemed someone had beaten me to the idea. I went downstairs to think and write for a while. Ten minutes later the person was still showering. I wondered if it was the same person who was showering when I'd left for ErnieQuest 2001 over an hour earlier.

I knocked. "Hey who's using all our hot water?"

No answer. I decided to go in anyway, if one of my crack addict roommates was in their fucking one of their hos, I'd take another piss, and walk out. It wouldn't be the first time. But it wasn't one of my cracked out roommates, it was Ernie curled up in the tub with the shower head washing over him.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/54189.html

The Loop (Part 5: Educating Ernie)

Whoever said "sex is like pizza, even when it's bad it's good" was either a virgin or exclusively dined on Papa John's. Bad sex is like bad pizza: cheap, flaccid, oily, and with entirely too many chunks of tomatoes.

Because I'm the most unselfish man in all of creation, I could not stand idly by and let Ernie continue to go around giving terrible blowjobs to unsuspecting gay guys. As a member of "The Gay Community" it was my duty to either educate him or else tattoo "shitty sucker" on his forehead. I was all out of needles and India Ink, and while I'm sure my drug dealer/artist roommates would have been able to loan me some, I decided to go the sex route. That way, I'd not only be able to tell everyone how I'd molded the subpar sucking "straight" boy into the perfect sex toy, I would also be able to engage in some much needed release of sexual tension get my fuck on.

But, Safey, say those of you with more scruples than I have, you said yourself, he practically raped you. Why would you allow him the satisfaction of having your dick in his mouth/ass/nostril? Had Ernie woke me up with his dick in my ass, or with a knife/gun/copy of Dianetics at my throat/head/asshole, then I would have thrown him to the ground and beat him to death with my shitty futon frame. But, however misguided his attempt, he had been trying to pleasure me, not rape me. So once I allowed my hormones to overrule my better judgement, I let him return to sucking my dick, giving him appropriate criticism: "teeth bad, tongue good"; even threatening him with a demonstration of why grazing cock with teeth was unacceptable. Not only did he learn better tongue technique, I even convinced him to borrow my razor and shave off his stubble.

After about ten minutes of stubble-free, tonguelicious head, Ernie complained that his jaw was hurting. I started to give the old jerk the guy off into your mouth lesson when he interrupted "I don't want to jerk you off, I want you to fuck me."

What is it with "straight" boys that they're so eager to jump from sucking to getting fucked on their first rape date? I understand the wanting to fuck regardless of orientation, but "straight" boys wanting to get fucked have always fascinated me.

As a person who strives to be both tolerant and unselfish, I felt it would be wrong of me not to fuck him. So I unwrapped a Lifestyles and began the "Getting Fucked 101" tutorial. He got about a B- on the final exam. I fell asleep thinking that I'd diffused a potentially horrific situation. but when I woke up, Ernie was gone but his clothes weren't.

original post: http://community.livejournal.com/bad_sex/769822.html

The Loop (Part 4: Velocirapist)

I distinctly remember Gary Coleman's "Say no. Then go. And tell." campaign. I remember that incredibly disturbing episode of "Different Strokes" where the bicycle store guy asked Gary's friend to take his shirt off. I remember "No means no." But at no point in either my exposure to pop culture or my sex ed classes did anyone ever explain to me what one should say when they wake up with their dick in the mouth of someone unexpected.

Had the cock been in the other mouth, so to speak, I could have done the whole biting thing. But, as it was, I was unprepared. I can't knee him in the jaw because then he is gonna bite down, and I certainly don't want that They really should hand out pamphlets about situations like this in Boy Scout camp. Hmmm. Maybe a video or DVD directed at the escort and prospective altar boy markets. Not having any of the resources at my disposal, I was forced to take the completely lame "What are you doing?" approach.

Ernie took my dick out of his mouth, and gave me the velociraptor look. The fucker was infringing on all my copyrights. "You've never had a blowjob before?"

Touché rapist. Hmmm...Velocirapist? "I mean, why are you in my room giving me a blowjob?"

"I thought you wanted it." I checked to see if I was wearing a short skirt and acting in a Lifetime Television for Victims movie. I was not.

I sat up so that the closest thing to suck on was my toes, and prayed he wasn't a foot fetishist. "No. What gave you that idea?"

"Well, you're gay right?"

"Yea." I'm also a Democrat but I don't want anybody voting for me while I'm asleep. "But, I'm -- I thought you were straight."

He flashed me the stupid Guy Who Just Bought Me A Drink And Thinks I Now Owe Him Keys To My Apartment smile. "I'm up for a little experimentation. I've never sucked a cock before." This was glaringly obvious. "But I like you. And you know, you said that thing about getting me high and taking advantage of me."

"That was a joke."

He stood up at the end of my quasi-bed (I was sleeping on a glorified futon on a not so glorified frame), his rock hard cock pointing at me accusingly. What it was accusing me of, I wasn't sure. I wasn't the one who should have been apologizing.

"Look," I said, "If you wanted to fool around you should have talked to me about it. You can't just go around wrapping your mouth around random gay guys' cocks. This isn't a rest stop bathroom." Crickets chirped. Tumbleweeds rolled across my floor. In the distance, a truck passed. As the doppler effect faded into the hum of the heating system, I waited for him to apologize. If not for violating my trust and personal space, then for the horrible way his teeth grazed against my cock, the way his stubble chafed my inner thigh.

original post: http://community.livejournal.com/bad_sex/766517.html

The Loop (Part 3: Uh, Hey)

When Ernie started showing up at the store where I packed fudge in the literal sense, I knew I was in trouble. Potheads in a candy store are only good for business if they leave every once in a while. Ernie had been standing in the same place for so long that we'd actually varnished his shoes.

Around closing time, while I was sanitizing the knives, and weighing the remaining fudge, Ernie mentioned that he'd missed the last bus to Surrounding Town. At the time, I was living in a commune type house, three floors, seven bedrooms, living room, dining room, three bathrooms, kitchen, laundry room; a poor man's mansion. I was the poor man. "Well, we have a pretty comfortable futon in the living room if you don't mind my roommates coming in and out of the house at all hours."

"You know," Ernie said, "There was this sketchy guy in my college who used to tell freshman girls about his comfortable futon in order to entice them over to his dorm room where he'd get the drunk and fuck their brains out."

"I promise I'm not trying to get you drunk and fuck you. I'm trying to get you high and fuck you." It's important to note that I was trying to be funny. I was no more attracted to Ernie than I was to VH1. If I happen to be in the room while "Behind the Music" or "I Love the 90s" is on, I'll watch it, but I don't set aside time in my day to sit on the couch and watch "The Surreal Life" marathon. I was trying to be friendly and offer him a place to sleep, nothing more. I thought he was looking for an excuse to stay at my house because I lived with five very generous drug dealers, not because he wanted me to fuck his brains out.

As soon as we got back to my place, Ernie wandered into the dining room where two people who lived in the house, and seven people who probably should have been paying rent where sitting at the table, smoking. I headed into my room to change out of my work clothes.

I had just taken my pants off when Ernie opened the door. I regretted going commando. "Uh, hey." I said.

"I thought you were supposed to get me high before we came in here. Are you so horny you can't even wait?" I must have looked as uncomfortable as I felt because he added "Just kidding. I didn't know you were changing. Sorry." But he didn't leave the room or stop staring at me.

Four hours later he had been baked out of his bean, and his eyes had been properly glazed red. The rest of the crew had headed to the basement and plugged in the various instruments. Tonight's song to be butchered was "Running With The Devil." Somewhere in Obscurity, Eddie Van Halen started crying.

I had set up the futon for Ernie, said goodnight and headed into my room. I wasn't as baked as the rest of the household (I'd only inhaled second hand smoke), so I decided to forego my usual pre-sleep ritual. I didn't want Ernie to think I was decorating my cake for him.

When I woke up at 3 o'clock I knew something was unusual. It wasn't that the band had stopped playing. the house was eerily silent, but that wasn't incredibly unusual. There was the inappropriate ratio of smoke to air, and the house didn't appear to be flooded or on fire, and yet something was decidedly non-status quo. Ahh, yes, someone was sucking my dick.

"Uh, hey." Ernie said. I chose to ignore the fact that he was infringing on my copyrighted greeting, and chose to focus on the more important issue.

"Uh." I added more of a pause than usual, "Hey Ernie." I took a four second hour to figure out what to say. In the grand scheme of things, waking up to a houseguest sucking your dick is better than waking up to find a houseguest sharpening a knife or aiming a gun at your forehead or taking a shit on your toothbrush. But it's still a tad unsettling. I made a mental note to start locking my bedroom door. Oh, and to never invite Ernie over to the house again. I'd had much better blowjobs.

original post: http://community.livejournal.com/bad_sex/765359.html

The Loop (Part 2: Fucuvehicuphobia)

If love were a two-way street,
I would be a pedestrian
Crushed into a bloody paste
Beneath the wheels
Of a large red truck.

---Robin Blackburn

While my friends were fantasizing about being astronauts, doctors, rock stars, or Teen Wolf, I was harboring dreams of my own. I wanted to be a firetruck. Not one of those ladder-climbing masochist firemen. I didn't want to spend my time hooking up hoses to hydrants or putting on those unfashionable helmets, I wanted to be shiny red with flashing lights and blaring sirens.

When I realized that I was never going to transform, no matter how many Optimus Primes I bought, I settled on a new dream: writing my dirtiest secrets for the entertainment of a few close friends and hundreds of complete strangers. I'd like to thank LiveJournal for making that dream come true.

Apart from the occasional pulling to the side of the road, and a few high school fire drills, I haven't had a close relationship to fire trucks in years. Police cars on the other hand were becoming routine. So were red trucks.

During a trip from Boston to Burlington with Zuzu, we got into a very minor fender bender. Even the fender escaped unscathed. In the fantasy story that the pseudo-Abe Simpson who'd crashed into us when he wasn't paying attention told his insurance company, he was driving along minding his own business when a fleet of red trucks swerved around him causing him to crash into him. The insurance company was positively shocked to learn this wasn't true. Apparently Not-So-Honest Abe had used The Red Truck Defense in previous accidents.

Between that story, and the deja-vu truck, I was developing quite the case of fucuvehicuphobia (fear of red trucks). So rhe police car at the end of the street was somewhat of a relief. Of course, being having studied myself into oblivion (stupid Anthropology!), there was also an air of foreboding. I made eye contact with the officer in the car, nodded, and walked up a road between the mall and the parking garage. Neither the truck nor the cop car followed.

"You've really got to relax a little." Ryan said. "The world isn't out to get to you."

"Shouldn't you be busy decomposing somewhere." I muttered.

"That got boring real quick. Serving as your subconscious is much more fun."

I scanned the road for signs of life. "Go away. It's not Christmas yet, Jacob Marley."

"And I'm not indigestion, asshole. You're so baked you ---"

I started singing U2's "40" until I was safely at the building that passed as home for most of the year that I lived in Burlington. By then Ryan was buried in the same portion of my brain as Ted's talking cat.

"Hey Safe," one of the many people who didn't live in our house, but was nevertheless always there, said. "Want a hit?"

Hell, yes, I wanted a hit. I wanted a hit like A-Rod during his first month with the Yankees, like J*Lo's A&R man, like a masochist in the ring with Mike Tyson, like a guy with two deuces playing blackjack, like a hurricane on unprepared land, I wanted a hit like a paranoid kid coming home high from a party and running into a red pickup truck a cop car and the ghost of his dead boyfriend. God fucken damnit I wanted a hit.

"Do you want a hit?" Zach asked.

Wasn't he listening to the narrative going on in my head? Yes, I wanted a fucken hit. "Uhhh. Sure." I sat down at the dining room table, and waited for him to hand me the bubbler.

"Rough night?"

Again with the questions, what was he, Barbara fucken Walters? "Yea. There was this kind of....intense party at Seth's...shrooms...pot...a talking cat...an action figure in a an electric chair...and then this truck was following me...and there was a cop car...but the brownies were pretty good."

Zach was inhaling during the entire seven hours it took me to finish my soliloquy. Actually, it might have only been a second and half. I wasn't sure whether I was talking ridiculously slow, or insanely fast. All I knew for sure was that my pupils were spinning around my eyes. I was seconds away from "TILT".

I took another really long drag, sputtered out a "Thanks, I needed that" and retired to my room. But just like Ozzy Osbourne retiring from touring, I was up again five minutes later, taking another hit on the way to the bathroom, and then another on the way back.

I locked the door behind me (mostly to keep things like this from happening), took off my clothes and tried to find a comfortable way to sleep on my god-awful futon frame. After approximately fifteen seconds, I flung the futon on the floor, turned up the Gomez on my CD player and commenced an intense self-loveathon.

I think the reason the masturbation fest lasted so long wasn't that the various drugs had numbed me, it was that I couldn't decide who I wans fantasizing about. I have a strict no masturbating about people I could theoretically fuck policy. That way, if I ever end up fucking said person, I won't have ridiculously high standards. There's little worse than spending months fantasizing about drilling a hole in the tight, toned ass of a screaming in ecstasy coworker only to discover that their nearly non-existent ass can't even muster a proper moan when you insert your thermometer of love in their rectum. The prospect of another four years of Bush? Worse. The fact that they green lighted a spin-off of Friends? Worse. Mushroom clouds over North Korea? Worse. That's about it, though.

I flipped through the appropriate celebrities of the moment, then the most attractive of the guys I'd fucked during whore month, then the most attractive guys I wished I'd fucked during high school and college, I had just about settled on Cute Straight Boy when "What about me?" Ryan asked.

"Go. Away."

"I'm not even" And he wasn't. I went back through my catologue, and settled on Victor. I don't mean I settled for Victor like I'll settle for macaroni and cheese when I'm all out of steak, I mean I settled for Victor like Puritans settled on the North American continent. Actually there was nothing Puritanical about the way I was settling on Victor, but I was using him as refuge from the tyranny of the First Church of Ryan.

When I woke up, it was either still dark outside or dark again. I checked the answering machine for messages. Took a hit of the bubbler while I listened to my roommate's psycho bitch girlfriend's thirty-seven messages asking him where he was. Then I called Senorita Penuche and The Soggy Blind Lesbian and made plans to hang out downtown so I wouldn't spend any more time in the house getting high and/or jerking off. Not that there's anything wrong with either of those things.

I was on my way out the door when Zach, James, and an assortment of people I'd never met before in my life bounded in through the back door, prattling on about an upcoming Ween show. "...and if I go as a geisha girl, they're bound to remember me. Oh hey, Safe, heard you had a little run in on The Loop last night."

"Huh?" I was new to this whole drug thing. I'd smoked a little pot here and there in Cranberry Lake, but I'd never been up on the lingo. "The loop?"

original posts: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/51552.html

The Loop (Part 1: Studying With Monkey Boy)

I was at the stage of poor where I was salivating at the prospect of Ramen noodles. Even the mention of the word cheeseburger gave me an erection. After a month of living off popcorn, rice, and charity dinners, I knew I needed a change. More than change, I needed some paper money fast.

My friend, Penuche got me a job packing fudge. Sadly, this was not the first time I'd taken a job that some people might think was a euphemism for my sex life. I'd packed fudge in Provincetown, Cranberry Lake, Florida, and at a Renaissance Faire, and now it was time for me to pack fudge in Burlington Vermont. I hate being poor.

It was during a shift of fudge packing with Penuche that Ted the Monkey Boy tap danced into my life. "You're pretty good at that."

"Nah." he said "It's just real easy to fake on this floor."

I pretended not to stare too intently on Monkey as he and Penuche flirted. Cut fudge, wrap in tissue, center in box, fold corner flaps, wrap in bow. Cut fudge, wrap in tissue, center in "You can come, too if you like." he said.

"Sorry, I was in Chocolate Walnut Land. Come where?"

"My house. I'm having a little shindig. Do you....study?"

For those who have never lived in Burlington (which I believe is a huge chunk...maybe all of my friend's list), I should explain. One of the uberhippies in Burlington goes by the name of Jesse. Jesse is connected to one of the larger, more successful organic drug dealers this side of Canada...and the other side of Canada (that being, Canada). We'll call him The Guru. The Guru's legit job was as a book salesman. Therefore, people like Jesse called Guru at work and ordered textbooks instead of drugs. I don't remember which subjects corresponded with which drugs, but it was something to the effect of mushrooms being Biology, LSD being Calculus, Ecstasy being Anatomy, and cocaine being "look shithead, I don't deal cocaine, it's time for you to get counseling."

For this particular party, we'd be studying Anthropology. I brought my bubbler.

Do to the vast amount of studying I did at said party, I don't remember very much of it. I remember eating some sort of veganesque sandwich. About halfway through, I became incredibly full. Not just full to my stomach, but I could feel my brain pressing against my skull. Memories oozed out my ears. My two month backlog of sperm shot out covering the room with a --- you get the idea.

"I should go." I told Ted's cat. "I'm really tired, and I have to work tomorrow."

"Don't you think you should crash here, and call in high?" The cat asked.

"No. My boss doesn't mind me coming in high." This was true. During my interview, my boss, The Oompah Loompah, asked me whether I smoked. After a six hour pause where I looked quizzically at my shoes, he said "Don't worry. I just want to know if I should invite you over to my house for a few weekenders."

"Suit yourself." said the cat.

"Bye Ted's cat."

"Ted's bi."

"Huh?"

"Bye."

I staggered down the stairs of the apartment and out into the freezing fucken cold streets of Burlington. Having only been in town for a few months, and never having been to the section of town where Ted the Monkey Boy lived, I was somewhat unsure what was the most expedient way home. I knew the direction, but there was an assortment of annoying buildings and sculptures in my way. Plus a mall. Fucken malls.

I was a bit southeast of the mall when I noticed a pickup truck. I had an intense feeling of deja vu. Once I had ascertained that there was no gun rack or "I hunt red heads for sport" bumper sticker, I returned to my paranoid about everything but the pickup truck state and walked toward the mall.

About two minutes later, I noticed a pickup truck. I had an intense feeling of deja vu. Once I had ascertained that there was no gun ruck or "Honk if you love Homicide" bumper stickers, I returned to my paranoid about everything but the pickup truck state and walked toward the mall.

I was about fifty yards from the mall when I noticed a pickup truck. I had an intense feeling of What the Fuck I Know I've Seen This Pickup Truck At Least Three Times Now, and broke into a run. That's when I spotted the police car.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/49409.html

Converting Straight Boys

Tenth grade shall be etched in my memory forever as The Year of The Porno. It was several years after my initial contact with porn (or perhaps my initial contact with myself in connection with porn), but tenth grade was the year I first found out about group porn.

I'm not talking about orgy videos or gang bang photos, I'm talking about the curious practice of a bunch of straight boys wanking off together while watching porn. I don't get it. I like it but I don't get it. I'd feel weird jerking off to gay porn while some woman was fisting the kitty, and not because I'm repulsed by pussy (I'm not, I'm just not turned on by it) but because I find it an unerotic distraction from my special time with porn. As a gay guy, however, the fact that I lived in a dorm full of straight boys who masturbated together was a huge turn on. That said, had I been out as a teenager, this story might not be such a fond recollection.

I'll never forget walking into the basement at 3 AM on a Friday night and hearing the fap fap fap of future frat boy self love. I didn't stay too long. I watched enough of the porn to remember that it was a Star Trek ripoff where the set is made of paper, and a woman actually ripped through the paper as a naked guy made the "fsssssssssh" sound of Star Trek doors opening.

There were four guys fapping away. They weren't the hottest guys in the dorm. I suspect, it being a Friday night, the hottest guys in the dorm were out cruising in a girls dorm getting their fuck on. I returned to my room with only my curiosity aroused.

I found out that the Friday night fapfest was a weekly occurrence. And while I knew that some of the regulars were guys I wouldn't mind seeing spew into a towel, I would have felt exposed if I ventured down there on a regular basis, so I tended to avoid the basement on Friday nights. On one particular Friday night, I was in the midst of a movie marathon. Alien, Terminator 2, Caddyshack. About halfway through Caddyshack, the seat & beat crowd came in and demanded we eject our movie so they could watch porn. My fellow marathon watchers were sophomores, like me. The sit back and whackers were seniors. Our dorm was so famous for hazing that freshmen had been banned from living there. The porno went in.

The opening scene featured two trampy women sucking an ugly looking guy's dick. After a few minutes, the guy begins fucking Tramp #1 while Tramp #2 shoves a dildo up the guy's butt.

A few minutes into the video I went upstairs to wrap my head around a bunch of straight guys jerking off to a guy getting a dildo shoved up his butt by a woman who could have easily passed as a man, had she not had an innie.

Of course I walked in on my roommate experiencing a fap-attack. In the three years I went to boarding school, I had four roommates, and I caught all of them in mid-jerk. Little phased me. (I bet they'd all hate to think that I'd used the word little in such close proximity to the image of them jerking off) JBOB put his trouser snake away and flushed.

"Can't I go anywhere without seeing dick tonight?" I lamented for the last time in my life.

"Huh?"

"Oh, I'm just cranky because we were in the middle of watching Caddyshack when the Friday night crew took over the basement to watch a video of some chick sticking a dildo in a guy's ass. Bunch of homos." Yes, it's true what they say about people who protest too much.

"Dude, just because a guy likes getting a dildo shoved up his ass doesn't mean he's a fag." JBOB said, a bit too defensively. "I mean, it was a girl sticking a dildo up his ass. If he were gay it would be a guy sticking...whatever into his ass."

Of course, he was right. Our discussion drifted around various gender and sexuality issues until we came to the issue of guys jerking off with each other.

"I just don't get it." I said "The other day I walked into Seth's room to find out what the Algebra homework was, and there's nine guys sitting in a circle jerking off with a pile of nachos in the room. What the fuck?"

JBOB shuddered. "Dirty nachos. Bleurgh. Stupid fucking hockey mutants. I don't get that shit. Why you'd want to jerk off with a bunch of guys is beyond me, and the idea of the last one to come having to eat nachos with a bunch of other guys' come on it is---"

"WHAT???"

We agreed that Dirty Nachos was, along with Dirty Sanchezes, one of the most disgusting sexual ideas ever invented. Eventually we got around to discussing gay sex.

JBOB: "I mean, if I had to have sex with a guy, I'd want to be the guy getting fucked. That way I wouldn't get any pleasure out of it."

"There's something wrong with you. I'd want to be the guy doing the fucking so that I'd at least get to shoot my load. Besides, getting fucked in the ass sounds painful."

Then we started talking about pain in a very non-sexual way. What stayed with me, though, was the idea that he would rather be a bottom than a top, and he thought that enjoying things being stuck in your ass was not necessarily a gay thing.

JBOB and I never had anything remotely like sex. Walking in on him (to date, I've never been unexpectedly interrupted) was as close as we got. But I did eventually meet a straight boy who reminded me of him.

Randy lived up to his name. While I was working at Kookaburra Canyon in Cranberry Lake, it was my job to train new employees. Randy was finishing up his menu test when I came in. While I graded his test he kept looking at me oddly. I initially thought he was coming on to me. When I told him he passed he said "Is your name Insafemode?"

You can guess my answer.

"Oh wow. You used to be a counselor at the camp I went to. Remember me?" I didn't. "I was the kid who jumped off the boathouse and sprained my ankle." Now I remembered, he was the stupid kid. He wasn't one of mine. I had been sixteen at the time, and working with the eight to ten year olds. Randy had been fourteen. We spent the night working and reminiscing, and at the end of the shift, for no apparent reason he leaped on my back much the way the kids had when I worked at camp. Of course, the kids weighed about fifty pounds, and Randy weighed a buck forty. Had I been prepared, I would have lifted him easily, as it was I nearly fell face first into a table. "Sorry about that."

On a particular Friday night, while a new generation was lurking and jerking at my alma mater, Randy needed a ride home. He started talking about a girl he was casually seeing and how she liked to do E and let him fuck her. He was quite the charming conversationalist. "When she's feeling really frisky, she throws on a strap-on and fucks me up the ass."

I pulled over to the side of the road. "Bullshit. Why would you tell me something like that?"

"I don't know, maybe I'm hoping you'll take me back to your place and fuck me."

Who says that shit? Randy. I'm sure it was meant as a joke. Still, I pulled a U-ey.

"Where are we going?"

"My place. I've got a hard-on and a refrigerator full of beer." I am absolutely positive that it was not meant as a joke.

Randy was tall, blonde, and cut like a Bel Ami porn star. He wanted more than anything in life to be a Navy SEAL. I could never date anyone like him, but I could get him drunk and fuck him, though I didn't imagine things would go as planned. I figured we'd get drunk and pass out, have some really cool conversation that didn't involve either of us getting naked.

We didn't even make it to the refrigerator before he started taking his clothes off. "I have a few rules." he said.

"Ok."

"Tell no one. Seriously, I'm not gay, I'm just really turned on right now." Whatever,

There was nearly no foreplay. A bit of fingering to prep him, naturally, but no kissing or anything. Just him bent over the arm of the couch, upside down in the middle of the living room floor, laid down on the chaise lounge on my back porch. We fucked everywhere that night. And the next night, and a week later. By then we were making out first, caressing each other like lovers. The fourth night was so amazing we knocked over and broke my computer monitor and I didn't care. That time he spent the night, playing with my hair, nibbling on my ears. I knew that this was going to be my first post-Seith relationship. I sensed the coming of an overwhelming happiness.

Hence, I don't work for The Psychic Friends network.

Randy didn't show up for work the next day or ever again, A few weeks later a mutual friend told me that he'd run into Randy at the mall buying clothes for his move to Florida. Having no idea that Randy and I were anything more than acquaintances, he was quite surprised that Randy asked how I was and told him to pass along the message that he was sorry to move out without saying goodbye.

original posts: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/25618.html
http://community.livejournal.com/2_much_sex_info/92893.html

A Few Minutes In The Life Of A Fudge Packing Fool (Part 4: Verb Present Tense)

I've got my left hand on the edge of the bed, my right on the small of his back. My lower body is in the altar boy giving "bless me Father for I have sinned" head position. And after six positions in about twenty minutes after a full day of work serving dead cattle to zombie tourists, I'm not just fucken (adj. form) tired, I am fucking (verb present tense) tired. Even though neither of us have come yet, I'm thinking of grabbing my briefs off the floor and waving them like a flag. Then Aaron starts bucking against me and ---- we're done.

"Shit." he says, stretching toward Mecca. "Are you as wiped as I am."

"Yea" is all I can really manage to say.

It's been four days since I hired Erin, three since I realized he was, in fact, Aaron. In those three days, he's spent a great deal of time in my bedroom.

"Do you have to work tomorrow?" he asks.

"Yea, but I'm the first one in, so I should get cut early."

"What time should I come over?"

"Are you leaving?" I ask. He has this habit of taking off directly after sex, which is okay by me. I don't mind being a booty call. I haven't had anything even remotely close to a boyfriend since Elvis, and even though it's been over a year, I'm not sure I'm ready. Add to this the fact that I still had an enormous crush on my best friend (and things like that ALWAYS work out for the best), and the employee with benefits package fits my needs perfectly.

"Do you want me to stay?" Here's where we might end up in tricky territory, if I ask him to stay I might be perceived as clingy, and if I ask him to leave...

I'm saved from making this decision by the sound of my front door opening. This is one of those out of the frying pan into the spinning knife blades dipped in acid moments. There are three people with the keys to my house: my mother, my best friend (Liam), and my sidekick/former coworker/kind of formerish crush Cute Straight Boy. So, who's behind door number one?

A Few Minutes In The Life Of A Fudge Packing Fool (Part 3: Juice)

I can only fit 10 1/2 inches in my mouth when I've taken my socks off first. I have no idea how much I can take in the ass because no one has made an attempt to kick it since I was in junior high. While I think Aaron would be entitled to pull my foot out of my mouth and insert it up my own ass, I believe he has made other plans for that particular orifice.

"We should maybe continue this conversation at your house, with alcohol."

"Yes," I say, "lots and lots of alcohol." I'm not sure if there is an actual volume of alcohol that can be drunk to erase away the memory of gender identity confusion. But if there is such an amount, tonight I shall drink it.

Aaron rides my ass all the way home. I have a feeling he may continue to ride my ass once we get there.

"Nice place." He says when we've put the last shower-capped pan of fudge on my kitchen counter. "Beer in the fridge?"

"Yes."

"Where? All I see is hard lemonade, cider, and Zima. Are you sure you're not a girl?"

"There's Guinness in there somewhere. Let me see if I can find it for you." I reach in and start moving around the various togo boxes and Cherry Coke cans that have filled the lower two shelves. "Ah, there we are, one" penis presses firmly against my ass. "Hello."

"Just wanted you to be sure that it was there."

Apart from Randy, no one has ever been remotely as forward as Aaron is being. I am equal parts turned on and horrified.

He reaches over me toward one of the widget cans on the top shelf. "You, uh don't want one of those, let me get you a bottle."

"I prefer the cans, if you don't mind."

"No. They've been in their since R...they've been in there for a long time. The bottles are fresh."

He backs away from me. "Ok."

A Guiness for him, a Pumpkinhead Ale for me, and we are good to go. I go into the living room and sit in one of the cranberry wingback chairs that my mother left in the condo when she moved out. I am not terribly surprised when, instead of sitting on the couch, or the other chair, Aaron straddleds my lap. "Comfy?" He asks. I am decidedly not, but it is the type of uncomfortablity that I am growing accustomed to.

"So how many years have you been working at the faire now?"

"Three years."

"And all this time you thought I was a woman?"

Truth be told, I hadn't thought of Aaron at all until he approached me about working for us. I had taken the blank slate approach to working at the renaissance faire. I stayed in my little booth and did not very exciting fudge centered things, while the faire moved flamboyantly around me. In three years I hadn't learned the name of a single person who didn't work in my booth. "Well, to be fair, until last night, I'd only seen you from a distance."

"So you weren't interested in me at all? You were too busy drooling over Ben and CSB, I guess."

"Ben drools enough on his own, he doesn't need me helping him, and CSB is straight. I didn't notice you because I'm incredibly" He kisses me. Like a girl. His face is soft, like he just came from swimming in an ocean of aloe and vera.

"You're a pretty good kisser for a first timer."

"First timer?"

"Have you kissed a guy before?" His gaydar may be finely tuned, but his whoredar is apparently on the fritz.

"One or two" hundred.

"Anyone else from the faire?"

"No. Are there a lot of gay guys working there?"

"Most are trendy-bi at least."

"Like who?" I asked.

"Both nut boys, one of the mud men, the village drunk, three of the wax workers, three of the fudge men, one blacksmith, the jeweler, two of the leather & chain mail salesmen, the entire staff of the costume booth, and the red knight. The court jester, one of the guys at the fried dough booth, the other mud man, and about half a dozen of the actors are straight up gay."

"Jesus, is there any guy there that you haven't fucked?" I ask incredulously. Whether I am incredulous at the volume of people he had slept with, the shittiness of my gaydar, or the hypocrisy of me being shocked by someone's whoring, I'll let you decide.

He shakes his head and laughs at me. "I didn't fuck all of them, I just know they're gay or bisexual. I've only slept with" he began counting on his fingers, "most of them."

"Wait a second. You said three of the fudge men."

"Yea."

"I know CSB shows up on gaydar, but I'm reasonably certain he's bi. You haven't..."

"Well," he says, "I think he's at least bi, but I was talking about Brent."

"Brent's bi?"

"Yea," he says, "we work together at the hardware store during the off-season. Everyone there calls him Juice."

"Why?"

"Because when he gets drunk, he takes guys home and asks them if they'll juice themselves on him. You know, cum."

"Thanks, I got it." And I want to give it back. Brent is fairly cute when he isn't speaking or otherwise making a fool of himself, but I do not want to think of him spread eagled on a floor somewhere asking people to jerk off on him.

"I take it you don't want to invite him over for a threesome. It's just as well. I'd rather have you all to myself."

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/62770.html

A Few Minutes In The Life Of A Fudge Packing Fool (Part 2: The Little Lesbian)

At some point during the fifteenth century, a bunch of European artists thought it would be a good idea to start a movement. Donatello sculpted saints. Michaelangelo sculpted naked adolescents and painted God on ceilings, among other things. Raphael obsessed over The Virgin Mother. Leonardo daVinci chronicled Jesus's dining habits. Five centuries later we celebrate their influence by paying absurd amounts of money to dress up in outdated clothes and talk in pigeon middle english. If we're too poor to afford that, we rent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle DVDs.

I always imagined that The Renaissance was a fictional era created just for the purpose of pissing me off.

I attended a small private middle school where we spent several weeks of our mandatory Latin class discussing various Renaissance artists. My attempts to point out that Latin was spoken primarily B.C.E. and not seventeen centuries later were ignored. The following year, I returned to public school where our art teacher obsessed over the human versions of the TMNT. When confronted with the fact that there were other art movements throughout the course of history, she was often heard saying "Andy Warwho?" or "I think I've heard of Norman Rockwell, didn't he have something to do with Stonehenge?" After a year of the under funded over drugged public school, I went to a boarding school where my humanities teacher spent the first two months going over, you guessed it, Medieval history.

When I was at Sulfur City College, I made sure to avoid any class that mentioned the peasanty time period.

Why then, when I was free from the shackles of enforced American education, did I take a job selling fudge at a bloody Renaissance faire? Was I trying to match my poverty to a time period?

Whatever the reason, after two years of spending weekends and occasional week long vacations traveling the country peddling candy in parks, forests, museum gardens, and college campuses dressed in blue and purple tights, I had developed an intense hatred for thees, thous and sheep fucking jokes.

I had just finished training Cute Straight Boy on the finer points of not killing fat children who tried to steal lollipops, when he told me he'd gotten a job licking dog shit off asphalt or some other job that had slightly more dignity than renaissance faire fudge cutter.

"Dude. I thought you were going to help manage this stupid thing so I could take some time off."

"Sorry," he said, "It's a great business opportunity. Nobody there has ever stolen my keys, put it in their cleavage and asked me to remove it with my teeth."

"I thought you liked women's cleavage. Are you gay now?" I didn't succeed in convincing him to stay.

I spent the next day working with someone who I can only hope had been dropped on his head several times as a child. I racked my brains trying to think of who I knew that had low enough standards but high enough work ethic to hire as a replacement CSB (Cute Straight Boy for those who have trouble figuring out acronyms). No one. This was during the great unemployed cute boy drought of 99.

That night I decided to join the fair monkeys at a local bar. As much as I dreaded being surrounded by people who refused to change out of their personas in public, I liked the fact that they often bought me drinks. I was on my third Midori Sour when Erin approached me.

"Hey." She said. "What happened to your sidekick?"

"You mean CSB? He quit yesterday in order to take a job as an elephant gynecologist."

"Is he a vet or something?"

"No, he just likes sticking his head into gigantic vaginas."

"I see." She said in a tone that indicated that she didn't. "So are you looking to replace him?"

"Yea, do you know someone looking for a job?" I asked, trying unsuccessfully to restrain my glee.

It turned out that Erin wanted to quit her job at the face painting booth, but didn't want to quit the faire. Score! I told her she could start working with me as soon as she was ready.

She showed up the next day. I gave her the intense How To Resist The Urge To Throw The Fudgecutting Knife At No-Teeth Having Women Who Complain About The Size Of The Fudge training, and watched her interact with the rabble. She was great. She had a short temper that she accented with a sharp wit, and she knew how to smile while threatening to disembowel you. If she was a boy, I'd have been in love.

At the end of the second day, she offered to help me throw the tarp over the booth, and drive the unsold fudge back to my house, which was about a forty-five minute drive. "Are you sure?"

"Yea."

I packed each of our cars with fudge pans, and was about ready to take off when I noticed her pink triangle on the bumper. I couldn't say I was overly shocked. She was a tiny, buzz-cutted, sassy chick who played Ani Difranco CDs while we set up in the morning.

She smirked when she noticed me noticing her bumper sticker. "Yea, I'm gay."

"Cool. I figured."

"And it doesn't bother you?" Note to readers: I was not in any way, shape, or form out while I worked at the faire...too many aggressive unhygienic gay guys in kilts worked there.

"Why would your sexuality bother me? It doesn't effect how well you cut fudge. Dykes cut fudge just as well as straight boys."

"Dykes?" Uh-oh.

"I didn't mean it as an insult. I'm gay, I'm allowed." There, now we were on equal ground. We were each out to each other, and--

"You think I'm a girl?"

"I'm sorry, are you transgender?"

"No. I'm a boy."

"Boi. Like with an i?"

"No. Boy. Like with a penis."

Erin. Aaron. Short hair. Boyish face. "Oh. Wow, I'm really sorry, I thought..."

"I thought you hired me because you were trying to get in my pants." she said.

"No, I... you knew I was gay?"

"Yea, I saw the way you looked at CSB. And the only reason anyone would hire that meathead, Brent, is if they thought he was cute."

To be fair, I hired Brent because my boss made me. I've never had a thing for cute dumb guys. But I'd hired Aaron because I needed another employee. I'd even hired someone who I thought was a woman.

I tried to think of some way to gracefully turn the tide of this conversation. Not a single word came to mind.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/61352.html