Picture This

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my first date. Several hours after I posted it, the girl with whom I went on the date sent me a direct message on Facebook. And she attached this:

And, yes. Those cargo pants convert to cargo shorts.

Scents & Sensibility

When I was 13 years old, I stole a bottle of Bath & Body Work’s Warm Vanilla Sugar body lotion from my little sister’s vanity because I thought it smelled like sex.

Being a pre-pubescent micro homo (micro’mo?) with overprotective parents and no vision of the world outside of Cow & Chicken and Dexter’s Laboratory, I couldn’t grasp the concept of porking another human, let alone describe the scent it would give off. But I decided that warm vanilla sugar had to be in the ballpark. It was romantic and intoxicating and made my underwear tighter. So I took the bottle when Rachel wasn’t around, and hid it in my tin X-men lunch box between an unwrapped Ring Pop and several pictures of Erik von Detten that I’d printed out at school. Every now and then, when I was waiting for the bathroom to fill up with steam, I’d take the bottle out, hold it up to my nose and think, “This must be what falling in love smells like.” It smelled like that scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy opens the front door of her house in Munchkinland and everything goes gaytechnicolorfiesta. “Ahhhhh, this is lovely.”

Although the bottle of lotion would eventual play a major role in my sex life, my relationship with it never veered into self-gratification territory. Sure it smelled like an Aimee Mann song, but I certainly wasn’t going to rub it on my dick. This was captive romance – the sex we envision when we’re too young to understand it. Candles, and rose petals, and chocolate-dipped strawberries. No, no. This was not for jerking off. This was special. Sacred, almost.

On the evening of Brother Martin High School’s Eighth Grade Dance, I laced up my Doc Martens, walked through a cloud of Axe Body Spray, and smeared a tiny puddle of Warm Vanilla Sugar across my neck. Monica Carlisle’s parents were dropping her off at my house around 6:00, but I’d been ready since 4:30. This was going to be my first date, and Warm Vanilla Sugar was decidedly part of my A-game. I had zero interest in kissing this poor girl, but Monica was one of the prettier girls from my elementary school, and I knew that she would definitely elicit looks from the popular guys at my new high school. This makes me sound like I was using her, but trust me: gay guys and the girls who befriend them mutually benefit from the bond. Girls get a shopping buddy, gays get straight bait.

Needless to say, neither dinner at Bennigan's nor the hormonal, American Eagle-soaked fuckpit of my eighth grade dance resulted in a handy jay for either of us. But my sister’s lotion was now part of who I was when I braved the world.

From then on, I’d wear just a little bit whenever I went on a date. I thought of it as my secret weapon – the one thing you can’t put your finger on. I wasn’t wearing it the night I met my first girlfriend, but every time we hung out after that, I was. And when I graduated high school and moved to Lafayette, it came with me. 

Today, the same bottle of Warm Vanilla Sugar body lotion sits in my shaving kit among a handful of unused LifeStyles Tuxedo Black condoms and a lighter that reads, “Tease.” It only has about two ounces left in it, but I’ll make it lasts as long as possible. Sure I can go out and buy another (and eventually I will), but it’s got good juju attached to it, and it’s seen me through some weird and horny times. And if you’re wondering if I still wear it, I do. But only on first dates or when I’m 100-percent certain of penetration.

Looking back, it's charming how I used to confuse sex with love. Even more so that I believed either could be reduced to a song, or a scene from a movie, or a scent. But when we're young, and primed for fucking up, we see purity and we deserve it. We'll lose our virginity on prom night to the person we'll eventually marry, and then we'll see the world differently. In the mean time, we hold on to the items that will take us there. Some of us even hold on to them long after the fantasy is over; a reminder. A relic. As for me, I wouldn't even trade my secret bottle of lotion for a pair of ruby slippers.

Ruby combat boots? Let me think about it.

A Glitch In The Matrix

Whenever I experience déjà vu, I just assume that there's been a glitch in the Matrix.

This happens mostly when I'm hammered. I'll look at John or Nick with squinty, bloodshot eyes and ask, "We've been here before, haven't we?"

When I turned 20, I lost my ability to create memories on nights of heavy drinking – God's way of protecting me from myself. I'll blackout and wake up on the couch in my underwear, socks, and whatever shirt I wore out the night before. Most times, I'll be within grabbing distance of fast food remnants or a styrofoam box smeared with sauces and crumbs. On more than one occasion, I've actually had to peel a Taco Bell wrapper from my face. And then I'll go out again that night and wonder allowed why this feels so familiar. I’ll gaze into my cup of watered-down Absolut and focus on the mangled lime wedge that’s bobbing for air. I’ve had same drink in my hand before. These people are saying the same things over and over. There must a glitch in the Matrix.

This also happens when I’m dating someone. I’ll find myself propped up in a booth at P.F. Chang’s across from a guy I’m vaguely screwing and out of nowhere, a voice will whisper, “You’ve done this already.” And then I’ll recognize it: the guy, the stories, the haircut, the thing’s we’re avoiding, the sex, the looming break-up, the mounting pile of mistakes and red flags next to the lettuce wraps. This table for two feels habitual – almost ritualistic. He might not be a clone, but this experience has been replicated 100 times. And now we’re living in it, all thanks to our robot overlords changing a single aspect of our artificial reality. Bitches.

Sometimes I crave the feeling, a form of self-inflicted mind-fuckery. I’ll brave the deep waters of my Facebook pictures by scrolling backwards through 2010, then 2009, then 2008. I feel him coming as I edge closer and closer. Down in my stomach, something churns. I scroll. I close one eye and then I open it. My exboyfriend is right in front of me. It's a picture of the two of us together. And then the feeling bursts in my stomach, up my spine, and into the backs of my eyes. I've been here before; skinnier, and happier, and full of shit. And he looks beautiful; the best he's ever looked. It's not a comfortable place to be, but it registers. But it wouldn't be productive for me to stay here. It's been nice visiting, but I really must be going. Romanticizing a memory is the same as lying to yourself. And I lie
enough to myself these days. So goodbye. Miss you, kiss you.

Bye, nigga. It's been real. Well not entirely.

I wonder, could this be home – the place where I return for a feeling I can't explain? Or am I just monetarily suspended in my headspace – the victim of a mechanical animal poking around in my brain. Or maybe I just have a problem with drinking, men, and emotional cutting.

It's just more fun to blame the robots. 

The Other Side Of The World – Part II

"I’m writing this from seat 32E on the 4:15PM flight from Maui to Dallas. 

The time is either 6:30PM or 12:30AM, depending on where I wish I was, which changes by the minute. In my heart, I’m still with you. But in my head, I need to be home – undoing myself from us at a safe distance. 

I keep replaying our last conversation again and again in my head. In the moments before boarding the plane, I rolled my phone around in my hand like a hot coal until I finally dialed your number (which wasn’t saved). I’d waited until the last possible moment before I departed the island. If I told you I was leaving earlier, you would’ve tried to stop me. You would’ve tried to convince me to stay. And if I might have done it. 

But I want you to know that I meant what I said last night in La Perouse. I can still feel the cool leather on my neck as looked up at you from the backseat. The sun roof was open. Above us was the Maui night sky, littered with more stars than I’ve ever seen before. Listen to me. I sound like an asshole. Talking about night skies and stars and cool leather. You’d want me to be myself right now, wouldn’t you? You’d want me to say something honest. Something like, 'Fucking you wasn’t terrible. B+ work, champ.'" – Excerpt from my Maui Journal

Writing in my Maui Journal on the flight home.

I told my friends that I met Cullen at a luau, but that was a lie.

On my second day on Maui, I got blackout drunk and woke up in a shallow puddle of my own piss around eleven o’clock at night. I stumbled to the bathroom, peeled off my damp underwear, and sat on the toilet. When I returned to bed, I rolled onto my back and checked Grindr. In the grid of torsos, I noticed him. His name was Cullen and he lived on the other side of the island in Lahaina. We chatted for about an hour before he said that he’d be willing to meet me at my hotel in Wailea; a 45-minute drive from his house.

After showering, I ran downstairs to tell the valet that my cousin was on his way and ask if he could park his car in the unloading zone. I could tell that he knew I was full of shit, so I reached into the cargo pocket of my board shorts and pulled out a ten. He took it and I walked barefoot to the bar. My nerves were keeping my hangover at bay, but I still felt like it needed some nursing. I was halfway through my second Mai Tai when he walked into the lobby.

He was exactly my height and build and wore a familiar shade of mainlander pasty. Somewhere in the back of my mind, The xx’s “Heart Skipped A Beat” was playing. And I must have been smiling when he looked my way. "Hey, cousin!” he said with a smirk as he swung the strap on his backpack from one shoulder to the other.

He walked with me down to the beach and sat to my left on the edge of the water. He told me that he was from Rancho Cucamonga, California and he'd moved to Maui a year ago to work at the Ritz Carlton Kapalua. And like most young transplants, he was bored with Hawaii, which was unfathomable to me. We spent hours asking each other questions and trying to be the most distilled versions of ourselves, wrapped in masculinity and sex appeal. At some point, we stopped trying and everything kept spinning, so we kissed.

He held my hand on the walk back to the hotel. “I’m not tired yet,” I said. “You want to go for a ride? I can take you halfway to Hana,” he replied. “Just so you know, I’m not going to fuck you tonight,” I said in a voice loud enough for the valet to hear. “Sure you are,” he said without looking at me. “You’re already in love with me.”

When I climbed into his red BMW at 2:30AM, I didn’t even know his middle name. Just magnets and butterflies and the fact that I had five more days of Hawaii and an open road that led halfway to Hana ahead of me.

"You were wrong the first night. I wasn't 'already in love with you.' I just thought you were handsome and funny and adventurous. And I was drunk on rum and Maui. But I want to remind you that you said 'I love you' first, asshole. Somewhere between the first time you saw me in the lobby of the Grand Wailea and last night, you fell in love with me. 

The time is irrelevant because I need to be back in New Orleans. And now the flight attendant is inching closer with the beverage cart and I'm in serious need of a Mai Tai. 

Because you're not here. And that's the next best thing."

Sunrise over Maui.

A Good Ol' Fashion Cock Ring Story

In February, my exboyfriend asked me if I'd like to have drinks with him after work. We met at Marley's around sunset and drank our way through a bottle of Absolut over the course of several hours. Sometime after one a.m., Miranda Kellen, a girl from my undergrad advertising class who was still in college at the time, stumbled over, swung her arms around me, and vomited into my lap.

Outside in the street, my ex and I walked hand-in-hand and laughed about happier, less vomit-covered times, and he drove us back to his place. His apartment hadn't changed at all. On the wall near his bed, the frames that used to host pictures of us were empty. It had been one year and several new boyfriends since we broke up, but he still hadn't replace our pictures with anything.

"You should take a shower," he said. "You smell like Dina Lohan." I climbed into the shower, he followed, and then the theme music from Oz came on.

At some point, he slipped on a cock ring. I didn't even notice until I saw something shiny around his balls. I jumped out of bed, flicked on the lamp, and stood there staring at it, naked and panting. This was not your normal, run-of-the-mill cock ring. It was metal, and thick, and heavy, and looked like it could've been engraved with a Latin prayer. In all seriousness, one could seriously injure a person by throwing it at them.

Me: "THE FUCK IS THAT?!"
Him: "This? What does it look like?"
Me: "When did you start...using those?"
Him: "Stop freaking out. It's no big deal."
Me: "Why? Why do you need that?"
Him: "Fucking chill. It just helps me go longer."
Me: "You're 22! Why do you need help going longer?!"
Him: "Do you want to wear it?"
Me: "You've lost your fucking marbles. Is sex not enough for you anymore? I saw this coming when you left for study abroad in Paris. You're desensitized to normal sex!"
Him: "You're crazy."
Me: "I feel sorry for you. Toss me my underwear, please."

We fell asleep shortly after. And in the morning, we barely spoke on the ride home. I couldn't look at him. He used to be my boyfriend. Now he's a guy who wears cock rings.

A few months later, I dated a guy who aggressively liked for his nuts to be pulled. The first couple of times, it wasn't that weird. Then he started breaking out the toys – something that looked like a Koosh ball on a stick and an aluminum lobster cracker. The last thing I said to him was, "I'm just having a hard time accepting you as a person. It has everything to do with the ball-yanking thing."

Part of me feels like my role as a gay man should include advocating tolerance if not acceptance of personal sexual practices. But I still get skittish and uneasy when I discover that someone I like is into device-assisted sex. It's not for me. And looking back on my ex and his cock ring, I feel like I unfairly wigged out on him. He wasn't hurting anyone if you don't count his poor scrotum. Maybe I didn't like the cock ring because of what it stood for; discomfort and defiance. Or maybe it's something more metaphoric like the dichotomy of release by constriction.

Or maybe I'm a judgmental bitch who thinks rings and vices and butt plugs and Koosh balls are silly. And that my whore exboyfriend and the guy who likes his nuts crushed are craving something that clearly no human alone can fulfill and they're just begging for an ER visit.

Perhaps one day, I'll be walking down the utensil aisle at Target and come upon a lobster cracker. I might smile and think to myself, "Well hello, mister. You'd look good around my scrote."

No! Pick me! I tickle!

But for now, I'll stick with my child-size underwear and skinny jeans. My sperm aren't going to kill themselves. 

The Rash In Irrational

Most things give me anxiety, but fewer things actually scare me.

I've never had a fear of danger, or failure, or dying alone. Instead, most of my fears are completely irrational and involve dudes screwing with me.

For starters, I'm afraid that my date isn't going to return from the restroom. Whoever he is, wherever we are, when he wipes his mouth and excuses himself, I distract myself with texting and nail biting until he sits back down. Being abandoned in the middle of somewhere miserable like Texas Roadhouse is the most mortifying thing I can think of.

I'm afraid that someone I banged might try to frame me. Even in the movies, clearing your name after someone sets you up for a crime seems really difficult. I wouldn't have the wherewithal to turn the tables and I certainly don't have the moxie of Harrison Ford or Ashley Judd. Plus, I'm an aggressive arguer and I feel like the SVU cops would bash my head against the two-way mirror after five seconds of my screeching "this is a fucking crucifixion!" And like everyone, I'm petrified of jail. Not just the obvious rape angst, but the isolation. I was on house arrest for nearly two weeks after my DUI, and being tethered by law begets overwhelming hopelessness. I don't want that again on any scale, please.

Extortion also scares me. I have this vision of a guy tossing an envelope full of naked pictures of me across a table and demanding good or favors in exchange for their destruction. That scenario wigs me out mostly because I think I'd tell him to get bent. My impulses tend to get me into long-term problems, and hastily denying negations in a blackmailing situation seems like something I'd do.

One of my biggest fears is seeing someone I've dated doing porn. I think it's okay for everyone to be paranoid about this one. If I date or sleep with you, please don't let someone film you fucking. Because once I see the video, I will struggle of what to do next. Do I finish? Do I post it on Facebook? Do I finish and then posit it on Facebook? I just feel like it would present a moral dilemma that I'm not sure I could handle. Given my dating history, this scenario is by far the most likely. It hasn’t happened yet, but it probably will. But at the end of the day, I just want to go about my business and watch a bunch of people doing it without having to worry about seeing my ex getting plowed by a guy in a harness. Is that so much to ask?

So if you're thinking about framing me, or blackmailing me, or taking that nice gentleman from CockyBoys.com up on his offer, or ditching me at Texas Roadhouse with all those potato skins that I will finish in your absence, please don't.

I know I'm an asshole. But I'm an asshole to everyone. You weren't treated any differently.

A One-Way Conversation With My Ex's Facebook

Hey, stud. 

It's been a few months since we've talked; the last time being on your birthday when I sent you that special birthday text that said "Hope you're dead. See you in hell."

But that wasn't really talking. That was more like me texting bitchy things from a safe distance. Talking would require an exchange. You were absent. Or better yet — dead.

I just wanted to drop by and tell you some good news. Turns out, I can creep your Facebook and not feel anything for you. I can see that you've been around the world, and that you've gotten your teeth fixed, and that you look happy. And I feel nothing for you. Truly. You look good. Your new boyfriend looks normal. He's got a super cute hunchback. Apparently, ringing those bells is doing wonders for his traps.

It's been a while since I could look at you and not see all those guys from London and San Francisco and Dallas taking turns on you in an imaginary bathhouse. A hellish host of the men you slept with before, during, and after me just hammering you into submission while the smaller guys watched from darker corners, waiting their turns. It's all I could see when I looked at you after we broke up — an orgy of not me.

But that's in the past. 

Now, I scan your Facebook likes and see that you're a fan of Jason Mraz and Modern Family and you almost seem, well, vanilla. Gone are your days as the horny frat boy who posts shirtless pictures of himself with captions like, "Dinosaur go RAWR ;-}." Today, your most recent pictures show you cuddled between a curtain of nicely processed gays in sensible, work appropriate polos. You look...elevated. I picture you at home with the Hunchback; him nestled on the couch and you peering through the kitchen's serving hatch into the living room. You're chopping something (probably celery because you're trying to take care of those new bitchtits), and you both chuckle at how hysterical Cam and Mitchell are. "Uh-oh! Those two have NO IDEA how to boogie board, do they?!"

Your status updates are still riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors. You never could form a sentence in person or on the page. It was endearing at first, but after months of this, I wanted to hit you with my car. I thought you were stupider than Dina Lohan. But right now, at this juncture, it doesn't bother me at all. That's who you are. Less educated homos might even think it's cute. But sweetie, please stop using conversate for fuck's sake.

The point is, I'm proud of both of us.

I won't say that I'm happy for you, but I will say that your perceived success doesn't annoy me. Scratch that. I am happy for you. If I were to run into you on the street, I'd hug you and I'd mean it. And I'm confident that I wouldn't hit you in the face. 

Because I've matured.

I can't promise that I wouldn't get semi, though.

Good talk, champ.