Videogames?

Yes, videogames. Sometimes I get into them. Granted, this is a rare thing. I think the last videogame I actually completed was Myst. That was twenty fucking years ago.

But anyway, I like to read about videogames more than I like to play them, and yesterday I read about a game called Gone Home and it sounded like something I’d dig (it’s pretty similar to Myst, actually). In fact, it sounded like a video game version of an idea I’d come up with myself a few years back, and wrote up in this story called The Secret House Idea which I published on my website back in 2009. Here’s a bit of it:

As you furnish [the house] you begin to create an imaginary family who lived there.  You designate rooms for certain people.  The parents would probably have the largest bedroom, and maybe there’s a room for a son and a daughter.  Or maybe a broken family lived there, like some deadbeat parent who never was around, and the kid just took over the place, inviting all of his friends to stay there and trashing the place.  Then again, maybe he cared for it, and made it into a private teenage paradise.

So now you’ve created a living space for these people.  The next step is understanding who they are.  You have to create an entire life for them – letters, diaries, old telephone bills, recipe books…everything.  You have to create this family out of thin air.

Once you had it all created, all laid out, you could invite people there.  Or, you could just leave the door unlocked and let people find it.

The house would be stuck in time, as if the occupants left one afternoon and never returned.

They could snoop through the detritus of this imagined life, pick and prod through these people’s things and get to know them, create this grand story that you’ve conceived only through what you’ve left behind, these certain clues, pieces to the puzzle.

It’s actually kind of insane how much Gone Home matches up with my idea, which I don’t say to pat myself on the back (well, not too much) but more to express to you how much this game appealed to me on a basic level. It’s not an intense game by any means – I met its objective within a couple of hours – but it’s pretty singular in the way that it creates a world and allows you to explore it. Highly recommended!

At the Moment

I am listening to the album ‘Cape Dory’ by Tennis and thinking that it’s right up my alley and would work great as background writing music.

I’ve been internetting for about the past hour, updating my Star Jones Quotes Twitter and my own Twitter. My Facebook profile is disabled.

I just submitted the fourth chapter of ‘691 Suburban Dr’ to Nifty (the first three chapters are up already and of course if you want to read the whole story you can buy the ebook here). I didn’t write today (except for this) and I feel a little guilty about it.

I realized that I’ve been editing The Anonymous Sex-Confession Blog for almost three years. (Lately I find that time is catching up with me, and it’s a little scary but I know it’s normal). I started this Tumblr to solicit 1) True stories that are 2) Two paragraphs or less. I remember hoping for a larger response at first but over the years submissions have come kinda regularly, about one a month. Some of them seem fake, some of them seem fascinatingly real. There are cute and poignant ones. I often reject the ones that seem too fake, especially if they’re not well written.

This one turns me on more than any of the others:

Best Finish

This is less about sex and more about masturbation. A few weeks ago, I came across a Tumblr post that showed a woman giving a man a handjob. When the guy was close to orgasm, she made him roll back onto his shoulders so that his “member” was pointing towards his face. She kept jerking him off so that he eventually came into his mouth/on his face. Being bored one night, I decided to it out, albeit on my own. Well, I’m glad I did, because that’s the only way I masturbate now. There’s something so unbelievably dirty about it that turns me on more than any other way of doing. Plus there’s no clean-up to speak of. I even don’t mind swallowing my cum!

But I think this one is my favorite:

Mama Found Her Sex Drive After 20 Years

It came back suddenly. I lost my sex drive for 20 years – saw it as a chore, vaguely annoyed by any show of affection, told by my mom all of my life that sex was dirty and gross. One night, I had an amazingly sexual dream and woke up. I was so horny. I attacked my husband and it shocked him – the best sex ever! After that, I could not calm down – we had sex again and again. In between, I pleasured myself. I took him to an adult toy store, went to a racy lingerie store and meandered through the mall with the store bag, titillated a strange man by talking to a saleslady in an adult toy store about vibrators, and shaved my entire crotch. I discovered a few things. My husband loves a shaved crotch. I love oral sex. I am multi-orgasmic, I orgasm with nipple play, I love sex toys and most surprising of all, I like anal play. I love sexy underwear and am throwing out the ugly bras and panties. I love pleasing my husband. It has been a week – I have become more horny, not less. I look forward to lots more sex with my husband! I hope my sex drive never goes away!

Porn Poetry

I became so enamored of this scene tonight that I wrote a poem about it. Watch it first then read on if you dare.

They’ve Done This Before
by Natty Soltesz

They watch straight porn
(you can tell from the girl-moan sounds)
I prefer to imagine
they know each other –
friends, frat bros, roommates
They’ve done this before
only when they’re drunk
Black ball cap
demure in his towel
White ball cap
removes it
“I want to see your butt when I fuck it. Alright?”
“Uh huh.”
“Thanks. I just need uh…”
the only discernable dialogue
What else do they say?
(first line seems like a comment on the porn)
What does the flag represent?
tv / computer / dvd player? / red pillow brown sheets ashtray
What logo on the black ballcap?
Why are some sections slowed?
one or both know that the camera is there
no condom
Just spit?
rough and raw

(The House Bottom by Natty Soltesz
They’re drinking one night and Black cap says “I’ve always wondered what it would feel like” and White says “Fuck it I’m drunk, I’ll fuck your ass.”)

Black barely raises his head
never touches White who
barely touches Black
White flails arms outward to avoid hand/body contact
yet lays atop, bodies close, surely smelling and hearing Black
swivels his hips – what a stud
(eyeroll)
never removes his pants / underpants
huge cock
spits on the hole, close
considers licking it
but doesn’t.

‘691’ on Nifty

The first chapter of ‘691 Suburban Dr’ is available on Nifty. I’m going to be publishing one chapter a week on Nifty and in a few months the whole book will be there. It’s like the opposite of what I usually do – taking the stuff I’ve previously published on Nifty and packaging it as an ebook. That’s worked well for me, and I’m hoping that this approach can increase sales for ‘691.’ In the interest of balancing out my crass money-grubbing, I’m donating fifteen percent of what I make from ‘691’ in the months of September and October to the Nifty Archive. You should donate to Nifty, too: http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html

Or buy ‘691’ if you haven’t already: Queer Young Cowboys

What else is going on? I spend about half of my time working at my job. The other half is divided between social functions and writing, though it all ebbs and flows. I’m writing a novel, it’s going really well. I go swimming, I go dancing. I’m reading a lot. I have sex now and again. Watch movies. My cats love up on me when they’re not driving me nuts. Dats about it!

An Appreciation of Hairless Men

This is rather Pittsburgh-centric as it was originally published in the April 2013 issue of Queerburgher. Just know that Shadyside = Chelsea = West Hollywood = anyplace upper class and queer).

I went to the Jeff Mangum show in Oakland a few weeks back. It was real good. There were lots of dudes there, and 75% of them had beards. I joked to my friend that the evening’s must-have accessories were a beard and a girlfriend. I wondered if, in some cases, their girlfriends were their beards.

We have no way of knowing these things. But objectively speaking – and also speaking in an objectifying manner – many of them were utterly fuckable. Beards are sexy. I have a beard, because I think it makes me look sexy. But in these modern times when facial hair in the GLBT and hipster community is rampant, it’s important to appreciate the sexiness of the shorn man.

You will find many of these men in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh. In fact, you might even say that in Shadyside, this type of man runs rampant, like a herd of hairless cattle in Nylon running shorts, charging down Walnut Street and smashing into the windows of the Apple store.

We’re generalizing here, a lot, so let’s continue with that and just say that there’s a Shadyside man, a metrosexual sort of fellow who actually does spend fifty dollars on a t-shirt, for some reason. This man, be he queer or unqueer, probably works out at a gym. He probably has Craigslist Missed Connections written about him being at the gym, by a guy who looks like a gayer version of him. He takes pride in his appearance. He spends a lot of money on it. He primps and preens. He’s sexy and he knows it.

And, he shaves. His face. His chest. His neck, his back – perhaps even his pussy and his crack. He takes on traditionally feminine characteristics. He emasculates. And god help me, there is something that is just so sexy about that.

I mean, I get the appeal of the overgrown man. The man who is self-assured, confident. Manly. The man who doesn’t care; who knows you’re going to be attracted to him and is going to do whatever he wants to you. He holds the cards. He holds a big, hairy dick. His chest is a carpet one can curl up upon, like a pussycat on a bearskin rug. But what of a slippery lady-man, with skin that is oh-so smooth, stroke-able and poke-able? What of two-day stubble, the ritual of shearing and regrowth, the lushness of rich creamy lather whisked away by the steely edge of a blade? What, I ask you, of Daniel Craig?

We may judge the men of Shadyside for their consumerist tendencies. For isn’t it easy to assume that, in a world where everyone is out for your money, people have been sold a look and a lifestyle that requires them to deny their primate heritage and purchase products (such as razors, Nair and anal bleaching treatments) so that they might conform to a certain look? Perhaps, but we all make choices and concessions in this life. We are all doing our best in our little slices of corporate hegemony.

And besides, passing judgement is for the birds. Let us merely raise our glass to the men of Shadyside for all that they do to make themselves beautiful, and remind them – and ourselves – that there is nothing quite like the sensation of a beard rubbing against a shorn taint.

The Return of Sebastian Wallace

UPDATE: As Rob G. notes in the comments, further chapters are available at Men on the Net.

If you read my stories, you’ve probably also read – and jacked off to – one or two of Sebastian Wallace’s stories. I’ve been a fan of his for quite some time and probably stole a few literary tricks from him in my early days as a writer – unwittingly, of course.

Sebastian hasn’t published anything new that I’ve been aware of in the past few years, so I’m more than pleased to announce that he’s back with a whole new series of stories called Butt Monkey, which he has written under the name Robert Furlong. I’ve read the first four chapters…and I’ve cum twice. Bravo, Mr. Furlong! As always, these stories are literary teases of the first order – a reading experience akin to a feather tickling your shaft, balls and taint for over an hour. For now the first two chapters are available on Screeve. Read and enjoy! I will alert you to further chapters.

Butt Monkey by Robert Furlong [Screeve.com]

Might

I wrote the below for a faerie gathering I attended in February, but it might translate to real life.

You might have flinched when somebody touched you. You might have wondered, Do they want something from me? You might have looked at beautiful men and collapsed under the weight of your wanting.

You might have listened to a near-stranger share his pain and wanted to reach out, to teach, to save. You might have found that your reach exceeded your grasp. You might have forgotten to hold on to something yourself.

You might have breathed. You might take a breath right now. Another.

You might have been naked, watching the steam rise from the pool and into the pines, and realized you were no longer thinking of your body as something that was in need of improvement.

You might have been in a room with a hundred other people and looked each of them in the eye without fear. And they might have touched you, and you them; soft parts of bodies brushing and mixing until you couldn’t imagine looking at any person with difference or suspicion.

You might have wondered how it could be so easy, how you could ever forget that that the space between us is the space where we connect.

Journaling Compulsion

This is a Post In Which I Brag About My Accomplishments

…because this is my website and I can, also because I never brag and it feels good.

Sometimes I look at the subheading at the top of this website and think “I’ve been doing this for three years past a decade? WTF was I doing that whole time and why do I still feel like I have so much more to do?”

Then sometimes I remember things. Such as:

1) I’ve managed to carve out a reliable secondary income for myself through self-published ebooks. And to those who continue to attach shame/failure notions to self-publishing: wake up and smell the new economy. I’ve made more money through self-publishing than I’ve made through all the stories I’ve sold combined.

2) Speaking of those stories: I’ve had over twenty-five of them published in nationally-distributed print magazines. Remember magazines? They used to be pretty popular, and ubiquitous. Those old issues of Men, Freshmen, Mandate and Torso sitting in a box in your uncle’s closet? There’s a chance that there’s one of my stories in there; and trust when I say that they were not easy to get into and they paid pretty damn well.

3) I’ve contributed stories – fiction and essay – to over seventeen books. Print anthologies, mostly – the kind you used to buy in bookstores. I go to the library, and there are my stories. I’m still getting published in these. They’ve never paid well but damn if credits like Best Gay Erotica 2011 don’t look good on my resume.

4) So far I’ve had one single-author volume published through an independent press. It’s illustrated, for fuck’s sake. And it was a finalist for a goddamn Lambda Literary Award. My first book.

To my readers: love and gratitude. To the bitches: suck it up, swallow it down and don’t expect a call tomorrow.

691 Suburban Dr – Buy It

Hi! ‘691 Suburban Dr’ – my sequel to ‘428 College St’ – is available for purchase over at the Queer Young Cowboys store. Hope you like it!

Oh and if you prefer to order directly from Amazon you can do that right here.