Going Deep: A Gay Guide to Reality

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Gay men, and anyone who doesn’t match the style guide of their bio-families, can get hit with a special kind of emotional whiplash this time of year. However you’re spending these weeks, please know you’re not alone. Not with the feelings, at least. Plenty of us have been there, and many of us still are. I’ve spent Christmas Eve barbacking a thinly attended Monday karaoke night at Revolver in West...

I keep wondering how “sex-positive” became a buzzword at the exact same time everybody started having less sex . When we live in a reality where medication protocols like PrEP and DoxyPEP can prevent a person from acquiring or shedding HIV and STIs, when U=U , why are we having less sex now than when sex was literally deadly? Race Bannon, who writes the Substack Love At The Edges , shared a story...

My heart aches to share the community of men. Not a widespread sentiment among left-leaning queers, I know. Inclusiveness — meaning all people of all kinds should be in all spaces, every time we do anything — is the only acceptable way to socialize nowadays. I get it. But, I miss the fuck out of those all-male spaces. Even before sex became important to me, all-male spaces provided the kind of men...

Two months ago, I wrote about embracing the yoga practice of sexual restraint, brahmacharya, which is one of the five yamas in the first limb of yoga. Yesterday, I was lying face down on an exam table in my doctor’s office, my cargo shorts pulled down, ass up, and a needle injecting antibiotics into my left ass cheek to treat gonorrhea found in my urine. So, what’s going on? Over the past two mont...

Categorizing LGBTQ+ people as a single community , rather than a broad coalition of diverse groups, is paralyzing the advancement of services, spaces, and political outcomes most of us want. Recognizing our coalition-ness would allow for a greater diversity of thought and, more importantly, more resources for the goals we all agree on. This gay man would rather defeat MAGA authoritarianism and cel...

You are not reading the post I had prepared for today. The hot vomit of my pain Attacking the confusion this old gay man feels in the Rainbow tribe of 2025. Written in blind fury. Staggeringly numb. On edge, teetering on the precipice of oblivionUnaware of its grip on my heart. This heart, clenched. These guts, a slithering knot. My presence in this moment; Impossible. The venomous edge stalks lik...

Thanks for the invite. Who’s coming? When we receive an invite to an all gay event, what’s the first thing we do? Sure, we look at the theme of the party, the location, the date, but those are usually secondary considerations to the big question, “who’s going?” This is really a multiprong question: Will I feel comfortable with these guys? Is there anyone there I’d like to to date or fuck? Will any...

This post is sexually explicit and very AIDS-y. Two states older gay men know well. Those adhering to the standard narrative I wrote about in my last post will find this content disquieting.  So, with that warning, here goes.    * A few months ago, on my knees, among hundreds of bodies writhing around me, a cock in my mouth exploded with a rare load in the G-dosed molly-spiked energy of a dance pa...

“Hey! It’s you guys. I didn’t know you’d be on the ship!”   It takes me two full seconds to recognize the tall, lean Italian with dark eyes and grey-speckled beard stubble before a surge of joy-filled love overtakes me. I embrace him with one arm and squeeze my husband’s wrist in the elevator bay crowded with men in costumes.  “Dennis! Look who it is!”  We are taking a bathroom break during the fi...

Easy to say.  “You’re perfect.”  “I see you as perfect.”  All you need to do is let go of all the thoughts, beliefs, emotions, mental constructs, advertisements, comparisons on social media, and the tap tap tap of that nagging voice that says, “Don’t fall behind. You can still catch up. You can still win!”  Just follow your breath.  Well, notice it first.  Can you?  That thing you do every moment...

Just feelings. That’s what this week is about.  Preparing for an ayahuasca plant ceremony is an opening of the raw self.  It’s day 6 of taking away most of the things that help me avoid feelings. Coffee, weed, alcohol, refined sugar, red meat, lots of other things… and, wait for it, ejaculation! Yup.  Just sit there and take it bitch!  Worried about your substack, your husband’s struggles, your re...

Moments after the door to my condo closed behind us, the stranger I’d cruised on the subway locked his mouth on mine. I eagerly accepted. The tension of 30+ minutes of eyeing each other in the train car, up the escalators, down Sunset Blvd., to this moment, piqued our primal need to engage.  He pulled at the bottom of his shirt.   I leaned away from kissing his scruffy face and said, “Hold on, can...

My last post, Love, Contempt, and Leather Contests , ended up being a lackluster whimper that confused a few people. Thank you guys for the feedback. “Where’s the contempt?” they asked. And they were right to ask.  In haste to meet my publishing deadline (on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays), I rushed a piece that was not ready for release.  I also let an effort to be magnanimous prevent me from being br...

Overwhelmed by crowds of geared-up men at my first leather event, a Tom of Finland “Butt Boy” party in Hollywood, I escaped to an outdoor patio for a cigarette. I was in my late 20s, in the mid-1990s, wearing gear I’d purchased specifically for the event: a harness, armbands, a classic leather cap, leather shorts, and boots from an army surplus store on Santa Monica Blvd. With my naked back agains...

“I blink, and you’re hooked up with someone!” My husband says with his testosterone-fueled competitive voice. I get a wonderful turn-on when I see this side of my normally deferential, even-mannered, Vulcan-like boy. It’s dangerously delicious. His full 42-year-old, tall, masculine body radiates primal testosterone. Men turn me on, so seeing him charged with desire and vexed sexual frustration is...

I was recently at an all-gay birthday party, standing in a small gaggle of well-known friends comparing ages. The birthday “boy” was 44. I let the group know I will be 59 this April.  Then said, “I’m old.”  “You’re not old!” One of them insisted, his eyes confused.  I stood my ground and insisted that, by the numbers around life expectancy, I was in the final 3rd or 4th of my life. His expression...

Two years ago, while in my 57th year, I began going out to dance parties again. To my surprise, reentering the gay dance party scene at 56 proved to be, and continues to be, a much more edifying experience than it was in my 20s.  I give credit for this transformation to decades of seeking with my MFT therapists Karen, Jim, Winston, and Sharon, a Forum-like intensive called The Experience, MKP men’...

Interested in a 3-way? ... Sign up for our Masterclass Trio: Sex / Love & Relationships / Spirituality & Intuition Bundle In these courses, you'll learn tips, tricks and insider information from 3 generations of gay men. You'll leave knowing how to prepare your mind, body, and spirit to give & receive the sex you desire and deserve. You'll explore finding love in all the...

Interested in a 3-way? ... Sign up for our Masterclass Trio: Sex / Love & Relationships / Spirituality & Intuition today! In these courses, you'll learn tips, tricks and insider information from 3 generations of gay men. You'll leave knowing how to prepare your mind, body, and spirit to give & receive the sex you desire and deserve. You'll explore finding love in all the...

Hello GerleMen listeners. She is hilarious. She is irreverent. She is devastating in her academic acumen and her theatrical talent. And, although we may be laughing, her messages are packed with wisdom and insights many listeners will find life-affirming. While we pause our regular episodes and prepare a spectacular Season 2 of the GerleMen Podcast, we’d like you to enjoy some short, bonus episode...

Dear listeners - join us next week for our Sex, Love & Relationships virtual workshop !! We'd love to see you join the discussion and connect in real-time. xo Hello GerleMen listeners. She is hilarious. She is irreverent. She is devastating in her academic acumen and her theatrical talent. And, although we may be laughing, her messages are packed with wisdom and insights many listeners wi...

Hello GerleMen listeners. She is hilarious. She is irreverent. She is devastating in her academic acumen and her theatrical talent. And, although we may be laughing, her messages are packed with wisdom and insights many listeners will find life-affirming. While we pause our regular episodes and prepare a spectacular Season 2 of the GerleMen Podcast, we’d like you to enjoy some short, bonus episode...

Hello GerleMen listeners. She is hilarious. She is irreverent. She is devastating in her academic acumen and her theatrical talent. And, although we may be laughing, her messages are packed with wisdom and insights many listeners will find life-affirming. While we pause our regular episodes and prepare a spectacular Season 2 of the GerleMen Podcast, we’d like you to enjoy some short, bonus episode...

Hello GerleMen listeners. She is hilarious. She is irreverent. She is devastating in her academic acumen and her theatrical talent. And, although we may be laughing, her messages are packed with wisdom and insights many listeners will find life-affirming. While we pause our regular episodes and prepare a spectacular Season 2 of the GerleMen Podcast, we’d like you to enjoy some short, bonus episode...