Jimmy is HIV positive. He shares my daddy’s name and lives in the Castro. He offers me a beer, sits on a leather couch facing the fireplace and pats the space next to him, saying, “Come sit next to me.” I pretend to be timid.

James is my daddy’s name, only everyone calls him “Jimmy” because people that love you call you things like Jimmy instead of James. He’s a good-looking man, a man who drinks Coor’s Light and says “I love you” freely. Jimmy Shook, the man that everyone loves, the daddy that everyone wants to be their daddy. Because he plays with us like he’s a kid too. But we know he’s not a kid and I know I’m special. Because my daddy is the daddy that everyone loves.

My daddy is a firefighter. His hands are dying to be held, calloused and fire-scorched. There is a picture of him holding me in the ocean, waves crashing in the distance, white water gentle on his feet. His abdomen is chiseled out and appetizing, carved in an upside down V-shape from the corners of the collarbone to the grotesquely parallel lines at the pubis. He is covered in hair that is dark and curly, that crawls up from beneath, gently, sternly, politely, and irreverently. We share the same hair patterns and it makes me feel like sex, irreverent, like I own something that must be devoured, that must be sucked and swallowed. Those hairs – his hairs – curl and twist on my body like ladders and intersections and maps to ecstasy.

I was his little girl once. He was my daddy. And I was beautiful.

The house in the Castro breeds nostalgia for dead man queers, for lover saints. It feels like a secret place, like a time warp in the soul. The air is filled with a tired history born of the kinds of losses that intoxicate us and we find ourselves searching for a pleasure and pain that could have once been enough to live on.

He asks, “Do you feel comfortable with me?” and I say, “Yes.” Because “Yes” is what I’m supposed to say. Good boys always say “Yes.” He asks me about my life and I tell him a story about death because death is in the air and those are the only stories I can think of. He is enamored of me. They are all enamored of me. It’s what they pay boys like me to be – enamoring, intelligent, articulate.

My mother says my daddy’s semen is like acid in her vagina and I say she should swallow it, just to feel the burn on the back of her throat as it goes down. She will always go to my father because there are many ways to fuck and he will always be there because he knows it. And I’ll be in between them, like a channel, where blood and sweat and cum once flowed.

“Wait here,” Jimmy says. “I have something I want to read you,” and he disappears up the staircase behind us. I stare into the fireplace, feeling like a traitor, sucking on the lip of my beer bottle. I am getting lost inside my body where my dead lovers and friends and children are coming alive, in this house in the Castro, on Jimmy’s leather couch.

He reads me pages from a war story, a battle story, about manlove, about loss and dead brothers, about the absence in the earth that we always know is there without them, and about our fears of movement into territories where we can’t take them. I watch the hairs of his mustache as they become stuck to the saliva on his lips. I watch his eyes as they turn to pieces of glass in an ocean and suddenly I feel connected to this man and I’m not pretending to be enamoring and I’m not pretending to be a good boy. I’m only pretending to be myself.

I want to be close to my daddy, to inhabit his body as my inheritance. In my dreams I follow his hair patterns, discovering how they lead to the strength and the beauty of a flaccid cock, that dangles and moves with his body and touches softly to the thick, dark, curling hairs of his thigh. Those hairs grow darker and layered upon each other, making me hungry for the taste of body kinship and lust.

I cry on Jimmy’s couch, staring blankly into the fireplace. I stuff my face into his crotch, into the crease between his pelvis and thigh and there I realize that his entire body is covered in the smell of the sweat beneath his balls. He exhales deeply, repeatedly, rehearsing a death rattle as I fondle them with my cheeks, with my lips, with my hair. I feel him getting harder next to my face and I get a hunger for this man that becomes a regular one day. His death rattles turn to cries, man cries that make no sound but that whip throughout the body like an earthquake from within. The hunger is intense and muddied with my desire to soothe him, to eat him, to swallow him and feel him deep inside my throat. It is a hunger that wants to suck the pain out, to suck that thing out, that thing that has taken my friends and lovers and children, that thing that will take him one day too. And I want to digest it, to devour it. I gnaw on his dick like a rabid dog to a piece of meat and he moans, “Boy. Yeah boy. I want you to fall asleep like that, with your mouth on my dick.”

He says “my dick” like he’s from Texas, like the “k” is stuck to the bottom of his tongue, and it makes him sound even more like he’s a man with a heart.

My mother says the neighbor kid from the Rome Street house forced dad to go down on him when they were young. It’s difficult to picture my daddy on his knees. The image makes me feel lonely, and powerless, and lost. I prefer to imagine the neighbor kid’s ass up against a tree, his cold pale skin rubbing up against the bark, his eyes closed, pain and joy on his face as if he were going to cry.

I imagine the heat and the sex of my daddy’s working-class man hand on the hairs of my head.

I imagine that I can feel his palm cover my skull and that my hair flops on my brow as he touches me, that my own hairs stick to the wetness of my prepubescent lips. I imagine that he pushes me, guides me, slowly down along his abdomen where the hairs brush against my face, growing thicker and thicker as I make my way down onto my knees. It feels good on my knees, with my abdomen flexed, my sex pulsing. I imagine that he pushes me to that place always hidden underneath his Levi’s, that he unbuttons them but only enough for my face. He lifts it out of his jeans so that it rests softly at the base of the fly. And once it’s there, I can rub my lips against it, my eyes closed, my sex guiding me with a new kind of vision, one that is marked by oxygen and carbon dioxide. I fall in deep lust with the age of his man-ness. I can feel it getting harder against my face, never in my mouth, always rubbing my lips, my cheeks, the dip from my brow to eye sockets. And I can feel its warmth against my ear. I want to pull it closer to my face with my hand. But I don’t, knowing that it will compromise the beautiful shape and the magical power it generates from inside, a power that I want to intoxicate me, overcome me, and to render me like a doll in his big rough hands. I take the life of it, the hardness of it up against my lips. The cream pours from it’s head and I lick it from the inside of my lips and off the sides of my cheeks. I brace my hands to grab it and I’m electric all over. I relish in the warmth of the cream that I spread like finger paint across my face and I watch him spray himself all over the mattress, like fountains of water in the summertime, his juice blinking in the sunlight creeping between cracks in the mini-blinds.

I was his little girl once. He was my daddy. And I was beautiful.

Jimmy and I smoke cigarettes on the porch and I can still taste his dick on my mouth. “Boy, you cold?,” he asks. But I don’t answer because I’m trying to remember the feeling of his dried cum, sticky on my face and down my throat, coated in his sex. He turns the shower on while I finish my cigarette and gets a towel from the closet. When I step into the tile shower he cleans me with a soaped up sponge. He rubs against my chest, matting my hair to my skin, over my face and lips, down my legs. “Turn around,” he says. He rubs the sponge down my back and my ass and my ass crack. And then he takes his hands and rubs them, covered in flowing water, along my shoulders and down the rest of my body. And he does it again, moaning. I surrender to the electricity. I watch the soap dribble off my skin and to the ground. I fondle his dick with my hands, hanging on it as I lower myself to my knees in front of him. He stands in the stream of the shower water and the taste of his dick is mixed with soap and with water as it flows across my face and into my mouth. I pull on his balls and his dick, sucking it with my mouth like I am milking water from within him. I suck the head of his dick like a bottle, a bottle that won’t give. I feel a dribble on my tongue, the taste of salt, a smell like no other and suddenly the piss flows into my mouth as if a fountain has broken. I suck and swallow until my mouth is full. I hold his piss in my mouth, tasting it on every inch of my tongue. I swallow it in two gulps, smelling the salty flavor as it goes down. I pull his shooting dick out of my mouth, pointing it against my forward, against my eyelids, my tongue. The hot sour piss rolls along my skin with the shower water streaming above his head and it’s mixed with the taste of soap and hard water.

Jimmy wraps me into a towel and carries me to his bed. He uncovers me and rubs his dick against my legs, closer and closer to my crotch, leaving traces of the fluid inside him. Its mark is cold and brisk on my skin, matting my hairs together. He takes the head of his dick and rubs it against me. I moan.

“You like that boy? My big dick against your little boy dick?”

“Yes,” I say, ravished for the feeling of his dick on my wetness. Jimmy kisses me, his mustache burning my lips.

“You like that? My big dick against your little boy dick?”

I’m wet and sloppy and he rubs easily against me, dipping in and out and against me. He moans the death rattles again and I say, “Fuck me.”

“You want me to fuck you boy?”

“Fuck me!” I say louder.

“You want me to fuck you?”

I’m crying.
“Yes, fuck me. Yes, daddy please fuck me.”

“Please fuck me,” I moan. “Please fuck me…”

I float up and out of my body, seeing myself underneath Jimmy on his bed. I cry. Tears with no sound trickle down my face and there is a voice in another world, on another bed, speaking calmly, moving like a phantom in the expanse between earth and sky. It’s like an ocean of milk rushing over my skin. It brushes the hairs of my forearm, ghostly, and tries to soothe me. I am restlessly moving my body, as if my skin is improperly formed to fit the muscles. There is something haunting and dangerous attached to my insides. It stretches itself inside me, against me, threatening to pull me outside my body. It’s like a million tiny voices screeching on each nerve. I want to find the voice and wrestle with it. I want to fight that thing, to hurt it. I want to stand in the face of it and laugh.

“Yeah boy,” he moans and smiles. “You like that, huh?”

My mouth is dry and I can’t speak. I lay on Jimmy’s bed, underneath his heavy body, his big dick on my little boy dick with my face turning from side to side, tears making a mess against the sheets.

“I want you to fuck me,” I whisper.

The voice repeats itself in a rhythm, a pattern that haunts me. And I would make my body move but for the weight of Jimmy on top of me. I lay flat on the bed, my fingers outstretched like tentacles, and I feel the hardness of the head of his cock rubbing against me where the lube and the liquid and the sweat and the continuum between us has run dry. I cry, “I want you to fuck me.”

Outside, through the filter of the screen door and the smoke that burns from lonely cigarettes, I smell my memories in the heat, dancing around me, thick and molded, lukewarm like half-dried laundry. I imagine that I am falling out of the sky like rain, and onto my body, onto my knees, onto the floor of his tile shower, and that my throat is bottomless and all the liquids flow into me and inside me.

There is a girl with me in the air above my body, a little girlboy. She cries and I hold her hand and run. Our palms flap against each other in the frightening air of that other place. That place where the thing is, the thing I want to devour, that I want to battle in the heavens. Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth. Blood for blood. I want to be covered in it, to spread it against my skin like war paint and dance a bloody primal victory dance with it’s decorative mark on my skin a sign of annihilation. I want to touch that blood, to hold all of my anger in my hands, and to dissolve it.

The girl and I laugh or we cry and there is a wind that stings our cheeks, leaving red circles on them and making our noses run cold dribbles of clear mucus. Everything around us is ambiguous and I am lost without my body. In the heavens, in the air, we run away from there so fast that we reach the edge of the sky and we almost fall off.

“Okay,” I whisper. “Okay, okay.”

“You like that? My big dick against your little boy dick?”

I curl my body into a ball and I pull her underneath me. We reach our arms to the edge of the sky and we hold on tight.

Jimmy slaps his dick against me. Whether I am wet or not I don’t know because I am not my body anymore. “You’re a good boy,” he says reaching his palm around my neck. “You make daddy feel so good.”

Suddenly her body disappears from me, over the edge of the clouds. I follow her, tumbling weightless to a sea beneath us.

“Okay,” I say. “Okay … okay,” I cry.

I chase her in the waters, diving deeper and deeper, until, with Jimmy inside me I feel her dissolve into the water molecules, becoming one of them, all of them.

Jimmy moans on top of me. The moan is a stuck “k” Texas moan and I can feel his heart on my chest. I swim inside her, unconscious, inside the waters of my girlhood. She evades me and I try to chase her. Until my hands are not my hands and my feet are not my feet, and all I can feel is Jimmy inside me.

At Burning Man I watched Dominic and Reynaldo call men out of the street, fine, shirtless young men, and command, “Flex for us.” The men would oblige. Calling out to women, “Show us your tits,” never works quite as well.

Another gay friend of mine tells tales of his raucous orgies in high school.

High School!

With girls!

And he’s gay!

I have to say gay men seem to have much more straight sex in high school than straight men. I was never privy to such delights.

I can remember taking a liking to the one girl on Fire Island. She worked in a store in the harbor. I was a shy, retiring young boy and spent two hours in the store pretending to make up my mind about what birthday card to buy. All the while the men were checking me out, happy to take the initiative. It would have been so easy.

Alas, it was not to be. The reason is rather simple. I love women. To be even more to the point, I adore women’s bodies.

The straight lines of men, the hard of our muscles, the square of the jaw, I have no innate appreciation for them. I can look at a beautiful man and think to myself he is beautiful.

I can follow the pelvic lines with my eyes, see well-proportioned arms, overlook the dangling aesthetic absurdity of the penis, I can think about it, but I don’t feel it. Nothing stirs. It is like gazing upon a placid lake.

But show me a woman and there come the waves. I am ignited by the flow of a woman’s body. Plumb lines give way to curves, hard gives way to soft, dry becomes wet…

(If you take your time and don’t rush things and make sure there’s open communication and she’s made comfortable and there’s plenty of lead up and you don’t trust the Internet porn you grew up on as how-to videos. Your mother should have taught you this but she probably didn’t because she has her own issues so I’ll be publishing a manual shortly.)

I love to lay my head down beside a woman’s naked hip. My eyes wander her landscape, up over her hip, across the curve of her leg then down the slope to the soft crease of flesh where her thigh meets her sex. When laying back her pussy arches above a woman’s thighs like a balcony, a place for a lover to stand and beckon you. My eye lingers, imagining the folds inside, the arabesque of flesh as one writer put it. And then down again and up along the other thigh.

I’ll return my gaze along the soft belly, the part women are always trying to make hard and flat like a man. Even higher lie the breasts, laid out like pools of liquid on endowed women, standing proud with nipples high for small busted ladies.

When they’re on their stomachs I love to run my hands down the gentle slopes of their shoulders. To wrap my fingers round their smaller arms, trace the line down the center of the back to relish the ripe round retort of the ass.

There are lines like these all along the side of Mt. Tam facing the ocean. The land curves and folds and dips into itself tracing the outlines of the female form, thighs, hips and asses writ large on a mountain side. From what I have seen it is mostly women lying on their sides.

But perhaps my favorite view is when a woman is on her hands and knees before me. From here I can understand why some women say the back is their favorite part of their bodies. From here I follow the flow of a woman’s sides, curving in at the waist before suddenly flaring out at the hips.

That brilliant flow is so alluring, so erotic in its symmetry, I have been known to gaze at in silence so long women have felt compelled to pull me forward by my most sensitive part.

It is then that I place my hands in a woman’s waist and I could swear that’s what it was made for. It is my favorite landscape.

Another set of definitions for your reading pleasure.

Mercury in Retrograde, phrase. An astrological term denoting the four times a year when everything is going to hell but it’s not your fault; it’s because Mercury is going backwards. The relief one feels at this news lightens the heart and makes one happy to pay the bearer of the news.

Dispensary, n. A place white people go to buy their drugs.

Intention, n. Your purpose, stated at the beginning of any endeavor, in order to free yourself from the responsibility of the consequences.

Example in conversation:

“I let you crash on my couch and you went and slept with my boyfriend and my therapist.”

“That wasn’t my intention.”

Listening, v. The practice of pretending to look deeply concerned while someone else is talking. A misnomer in popular use as almost all people who claim to practice listening are in fact talkers in-waiting.

Present, n.

1. To be with me, and not fantasizing about her.
2. To be here and not there.
3. A state of being invoked when one is not in the space to practice Listening. Note there is an element of shame involved in not being present.

Example in conversation:

“I’m worried about us. Where do you see this relationship going?”

“I’m just trying to be present.”

Weekend Buddhist, n. An ambitious capitalist who meditates on the weekend to better clear the mind in preparation to aggregate more wealth in the coming week. They consider the state of being Present to be really top tier, the Cartier of states of being.

Energy, n.

1. Something people read in lieu of character judgment.
2. A term used to tell someone you don’t like them without having to get specific.

Workshop, n. A class of dubious origin. Most often offered by people who have forgotten they don’t know anything for people who know they don’t know anything. Commonly offered workshops are:

• Whatever’s Wrong With Your Life Is Your Fault
• Cry Now, Cry Later
• Authentic Penis, Authentic Vagina
• Cum Bucket: A Path to Enlightenment

I dj, phrase. Said by nincompoops and nabobs who like to fiddle with knobs, press an earphone to the side of their head and have people watch them as they jump up and down.

Almond, n. A bourgeois peanut.

Nature, n.

1. Any place one hour in any direction without indoor plumbing.
2. A place whose resources one seeks to protect. But only after one has already taken the resources one needs for one’s own comfortable life. These people tend to eat almonds.

Sacred, adj. An attribute often ascribed to a mountain or a meadow where one has:

1. Experienced a particularly awesome acid trip.
2. Completely lost their shit but it turned out OK in the end.

Juicy, adj. Sexy, sexual, sexified, sex-o-rama, sex-sensual. Overt sexuality of a most feminine nature, denoting soft, warm and moist. This word is most often cited by women, usually as they rub their yoni’s up against someone else’s thigh. While rubbing they will say, “I feel juicy.” Or, “Your so juicy.” Or, “This party is so juicy.” The world is split between those who find it a good thing and those who want to send the people who say juicy to Fresno.

Holding Space, phrase.

1. The art of doing nothing and getting credit for it while someone else is having a hard time.
2. The art of pretending that you care, by paradoxically doing nothing and getting credit for it, while someone else is having a hard time.

It should be noted that it is impossible to tell the difference between these two.

Boundaries, n. What you claim you have when you just don’t want to do something.

It all began when I swung my leg over my bike. I heard a small tear happen in the crotch of my very thin, very favorite pants. Whatev, it’s Burning Man. So when Dominic and Reynaldo yanked me from my slumber for our first evening out I put on my slightly torn, very favorite pants.

First we stumbled upon an empty 80’s/90’s dance party. Not a soul. Sensing opportunity, Dominic strutted into the middle of the dance floor clothed in nothing but his signature blue fur shrug, boy shorts, and ankle boots. He struck his best John Travolta pose and within minutes had ignited the dance floor – pure animal magnetism.

We moved on to an art piece made up of large glowing dots arranged in concentric circles. The dots changed colors when you jumped on them. So we jumped, going from one to the other trying not to touch the playa.

As I stretched my legs wide to jump from dot to dot, the tear grew larger and larger. By the time I was done jumping and laughing and bumping into Reynaldo and hearing Dominic exclaim, “Oh God,” the tear ran the entire length of my leg, crotch to ankle.

I was swinging free, open to the world. Oh, what wonder and joy it is to feel the night air on your cock. It was as though the playa was reminding me, or as though I had a large rip in my pants.

The next day Reynaldo borrowed my pants. He stood on the street holding the pants closed waiting for people to pass by. When they looked over Reynaldo would throw the pants open and smile.

At night the air was warm and easy and with nothing better to do I dropped my pants. That’s one of the beauties of Burning Man; often there is nothing better to do than exactly what you are doing.

To be clear, I was not shirt cocking. I took my shirt off as well.  I did, however, have my moccasins on. Thus I invented moccasin cocking. I highly recommend it.

Reynaldo dropped his pants as well. He was straight up boot cocking. Side by side we walked through the desert night, a couple of cocked up angels. Dominic declined to join because he’s self-conscious about his small balls. But our friend Millstein dropped trou with us. Reynaldo complimented him on his large package.

I must admit, I do not know how to tell how big a penis will become when it is in it’s flaccid state. I know there are growers and show-ers. But how much will a grower grow, and how much does a show-er show? I honestly do not know.

When we came to crowds or lights we put our pants back on. That way we could talk to people and hear all the craziness. If we had kept our pants off we would have been the crazies.

At the tripper trap, an art piece of little balls that light up different colors in different patterns thus trapping people who are tripping balls, we appeared normal enough to meet a woman named Wendy. She told us about her two kids, aged 18 and 20.

“I was the cool Mom,” she said. “I let them have the parties at my house. I was the local MILF. My kid’s friends would come over and, you know, I started sleeping with some of the 18-year-olds. They were energetic. That was fun.”

Reynaldo, Dominic, Millstein and I all checked in to be sure we heard right.

Later, on an art car, I passed as normal to have a conversation with a girl done up in a white Grecian dress and sandals. “Oh my god, I’m so high,” she said.

“On what?”

“On life… And a little bit of e.”

She was in love but it was a love that couldn’t be. Why’s that? Because he was in jail. What for? Rape.

“It’s doomed love,” she said. “But it’s romantic.” She was from Sacramento.

We walked past one couple without our pants on but it was dark enough that they didn’t notice. We got to hear them say, “Aren’t we amazing? We are so amazing. I mean, look at all this. None of this would exist without us. We are so amazing. I love being amazing.”

We walked on, Reynaldo and I swinging sexy. Then our drugs went intense and we launched ourselves into the overwrought sexy dancing dome. Millstein was there feeling the buzz. Poor Dominic was on acid and had a look of horror on his face.

High on G Reynaldo and I went and danced in the shadow boxes, projecting as perfect silhouettes. We kept our pants on. It would have a looked a little funny with them down, a silhouette of our bouncing dongs. But with our pants on it was, as Reynaldo put it, like dancing as an idealized self.

With the two of us in the shadow boxes we took our pants-down-cock-out energy and gave it to the dome. At Burning Man that’s a public service.

That night I fell into my tent and tried to fall asleep but my stomach hurt. A while later I was on all fours, head against the bumper of a cargo van, pants on, trying to empty my stomach while listening to the gaiety going on all around me.

I was remembering every loss I’d experienced, feeling lonely, sick, raw, tired, miserable. The Playa had broken me down and spit me out.  And Misty had stayed home this year. I had playa dust under my nails.

The next morning Dominic and Reynaldo listened to me as I talked about all I felt I had lost, about my shadow of loneliness, about trying to survive the night in the dark of the desert. They listened to my tears and how, when I dance at dawn, all of those feelings disappear. I rise with the sun.

And so Dominic and Reynaldo determined to stay awake with me till dawn on our last night. To that end they took copious amounts of drugs. I was still wobbly. It was windy and the night was full of dust. Everywhere we went seemed less than inspired. We couldn’t even take off our pants.

We ended up back at the sexy dance dome. Dancing felt good. Dominic and Reynaldo were chilling on a lounge, watching me. I told them they should go to Comfort and Joy for the party that was happening that night. That’s why were such good Playa mates, no need to stick. I stayed and danced alone. I felt the freedom of moving in all that space and felt alive.

I walked back to camp to get some water. The wind had died down and the night was beautiful. I took down my pants and swung in the air. Walking alone in the desert with my cock out, protected from the revelry by the darkness, it felt peaceful.

I moved across the desert to my favorite dawn spot at Opulent Temple and began to dance. And there was Millstein. We had agreed to meet here but this was the first plan all week that had actually happened. Millstein and I danced through the dawn.

Then we wandered out into the desert, faced the rising sun, and one last time we pulled down our pants. I swear you could feel love at that moment as easily as gravity. Sometimes, the cock saves.

Let us take a moment to praise, nay, to give thanks, for sweet Alyssa.

Ahhhhhhh, Alyssa, your two S’s leave my tongue to linger, to slip and slide over the thought of you, the most beautiful thing to ever leave the shores of Brooklyn.

It’s the name of a girl with loose morals, the kind of girl who does things on the hood of a car, in your best friend’s parent’s shower.

How fortunate we are you were a child star; for only then could you have gone through your I’m-18-and-I’ve-Developed phase, The phase that gave us Poison Ivy 2 and, praise Jesus hallowed be thy name, Embrace of the Vampire.

Some beautiful girls have elegance. They wear gowns. You fear your truth is too dirty for them.

Then here comes this tiny girl with this face, these boobs, this ass; and there are no bell jars to be found, no desire to be polite. Those full, fertile lips, those big eyes, a set of cheekbones that seem to point straight to her pussy, she’s the most beautiful trashy girl I’ve ever seen.

Here’s a beautiful girl you wouldn’t think twice about asking to bend over in a parking lot. Here’s a beautiful girl who would sound good banging up against the trunk of your car, a girl who might even like the feel of the keys in your pocket.

That’s why she’s my favorite hottie, the one I click on first. Alyssa Milano is touchable, the exquisite hoochie, the beautiful girl you’re pretty sure you could make laugh, the belle of the ball whose tattoos let you know she’s no stranger to being on her knees.

She sits on the edge of a sink in her underwear for a Candies ad pretty as any model. But you know a model’s underwear will never slip off while Alyssa’s…just might.

And while a model’s expression is inscrutable, aloof even, sweet Alyssa seems to be saying, “you can put it anywhere.”

She’s not a movie star. She’s a girl for your living room. So thank goodness for the TV show “Charmed”. More to the point thank goodness for “Charmed” being a big hit in France. There is nothing quite like getting to watch Alyssa without having to hear her. The adorable French voice that dubs her only adds to her allure.

I hope I never meet her, never have to deal with however it is she conceives of herself. I don’t want Alyssa’s version of Alyssa. She is a real life projection of a young boy’s fantasy.

The kind of girl you always wished would be your babysitter, the kind of girl you dreamed about losing your virginity too.

She’s the secretary you hope winks at you, the waitress you order coffee from just to watch her pour, the girl you always keep an eye out for after you saw her one day on the BART.

She’s the girl the homeless man compliments you on when she has her arm through yours, the girl your friends always remind you about, the girl you hope sits next to you on the plane.

She’s the girl you hope is in your class, the one who is sexy before you know what that is, the one you go to dinner with and notice all the guys looking, even the ones with pretty dates.

She’s the kind of girl boy shorts were made for.

Alyssa does commercials and acts in her TV show and appears in movies but they are all just excuses, attempts to give us a legitimate reason to watch her. Alyssa Milano’s acting career is the thespian equivalent of purposefully dropping her pencil in front of us so she can bend over to pick it up.

We don’t care. Because she’s the kind of girl we hope will drop her pencil.
We imagine watching her breasts fall forward to rest against the bolero top she has on, her boy shorts rising to reveal the tippity-top of her thighs.

Then she looks up and we realize she’s the prettiest girl we’ve ever seen in that outfit. She has a face of privilege, of one who doesn’t have to give it up, but she does anyway.

She’s a cashmere sweater in the five-dollar bin.

I do not mean this in a negative way, though if you are reading this magazine I understand why you might take it that way. Most popular music has a sexual component. There is a continuum. It looks like this.

Penis ——————-||——————-Vagina

Prince is on the left, right below penis. (The P in Prince actually stands for penis.) I saw him at Madison Square Garden once. He spent two hours teasing the audience with the opening piano bars of Darling Nikki before actually playing it: one man, 20,000 people, two hours of foreplay and the world’s largest simultaneous orgasm.

On the right, just below vagina, is Cat Power. The kitty grown into a pussy, her voice slinky and dark, a life lived in alleys and sex with strays.

What’s that space in the center you may ask? That’s the space carved out by U2.

U2 strives for a kind of holy eros. It’s a, I-look-good-and-god-is-in-the-house-and-ain’t-that-grand kind of thing. But you don’t really want to get it on to U2. Ever try to have sex to “Pride”? Or “Sunday, Bloody Sunday”? It feels blasphemous.

Phish resides on another plane all together. I would liken it to this model.

~~Phish~~

Prince’s Penis————| U2 |————-Cat Power’s Vagina

Phish, those shaggy boys from Vermont, are not testosterone in song. They are not the tear-stained tunes of a woman opening her heart. Nor are they attempting to be rock and roll evangelicals.

The members of Phish do not try on new personas with every tour. 20 years later Trey Anastasio is still sporting a denim button down shirt and a bowl cut and John Fishman is still wearing a dress.

Phish, as “Almost Famous” as this may sound, love music. And it is that word love that has them floating above the pop-sex continuum.

Between any act and their audience there is a relationship. And when it comes to musical acts we almost always just dating.

Most acts create a kind of aural lust. You first hear their song and lust for it. You want to hear the music over and over again. It’s like the sex is great. But then you grow sated. You want something more. The second album comes out and it’s just more of the same. There’s nothing more there. Kind of like when you realize that girl you met last month unloaded every interesting thought she had on that very first night.

With the death of the aural lust we break up with the band. You occasionally listen to their album out of nostalgia, but you move on.

This is not the pattern with Phish. Phish fans are committed to a long-term relationship with their band. For years the band and the fans traveled together, getting to know one another intimately. Phish never seemed to run out of things to say and the audience never tired of listening. Even when the band played an old song they played it in a new way reigniting the love.

This relationship isn’t about the short-term fling of sex but rather about the long-term gain of a loving relationship. The audience communes through the band, they love the band for being the band.

Phish did not utter a single word to the audience the other night. There was no crowd banter, no foreplay mediated by a microphone. Many of their songs lack words except for a phrase or two. In one song they simply repeat the name David Bowie. In another, Divided Sky the wind blows high.

My sister-in-law Katja believes these songs are as zen koans. The band is not trying to say anything but rather put you in a state to simply hear the music and stop all that thinking. And at the end of each set as they bowed deeply and smiled wide, it was easy to see Katja’s point. They were being themselves, no persona, no gamesmanship, no working it.

Phish loves the music they create. Their audience loves the music. And they love Phish for the music. The fans smile at one another and hug and do that kind of silly bouncy sort-of-dance-thing, which is all you can really do once a band has reached the thirty-fifth minute of a jam. (Of course you can always tell the people on drugs because they’re the only ones still dancing at that point.)

Katja has had a profound and loving relationship with Phish for years. She loves the way the communal love of the band brings the whole crowd into harmony. As a wise man once said, a mark of our social evolution is how many people can we bring together and still feel safe? At a Phish show that’s a lot of people.

Yes, there are lots of hippies and white people with dreadlocks and skirts with bells on them and the post-show parking lot scene of veggie burritos and crystals for sale is enough to turn anyone into a Republican.

But the experience of transcending the simple sexual relationship to come to a place where you can catch a glimpse of the world in harmony because of the music of Phish is quite something.

It’s inspired Katja to make a pair of pants for Trey. So Trey, if you see this, please send your measurements to me. Katja has a great vision. It came to her while dancing at Shoreline while not trying to figure out the meaning behind David Bowie.

There you are right in the heat of it, hand thrashing, dog licking… No, wait, that’s for a different website.

So there you are right in the heat of it, hand thrashing, toes curling, and you can tell this is going to be a good one; especially if you give it that extra little push. So you dig your heels into the back of the BART seat… Wait, that one’s for The Lonely Planet Guide to San Francisco.

So there you are right in the heat of it, hand thrashing, toes curling, giving it that extra little push to be memorable. You dig your heels into the mattress, stretch your shoulders back, pay no mind to the odd way your head is curving against your headboard. You’re almost there; you just need the right image cause orgasming to the wrong image sucks.

No, not that girl! No, not her grandma! Now you wish you had prepared better. It’s always best to go into masturbating with a plan. You’re starting to lose it, that roaring momentum, and that’s no good, you’re going to be off kilter for the rest of the teacher-parent conferences that day.

Ah, there it is, the image of the girl who let you into The Gap dressing room three years ago, random but perfect. You push on, pressing your head sickeningly askew from your body. A passerby could be forgiven for thinking you had broken your neck. But you don’t care. You have returned from the brink. You tense all the muscles in your back in preparation.

And that’s when you here it, the pop. Something, somewhere, usually in the upper middle part of your back, has come undone. A very important muscle has unraveled. But you keep on, breathing through the pain.

We developed this ability so as to keep running across the Savannah away from the saber-toothed tiger even when injured. In a modern twist on this evolutionary advantage you are able to keep masturbating although your back has just come in two.

Hand thrashing, breath held, the roaring in your head crests and breaks open in a wide, beautiful arc. The tension releases and all is good. That is until you try to move.

No one knows why masturbatory injuries are always so centrally located. But the moment you try and right your head you feel it, the searing pain shooting through your back. Oh god, you think, I am going to be trapped here with my pants down forever. Somehow you manage to get up, your head to one side, your arms held as still as possible.

Whatever muscle it is, it’s the one involved in every single movement you make, holding up your head, moving your arms, walking, turning, sitting, pooping. Oh lord, you’re not going to be able to push anything out for weeks.

You better get one of those Toto spray toilets cause you can just forget about reaching around. And now your girlfriend won’t have any interest in having sex with you… Wait, that was for a Japanese scat site.

At work the next day everyone asks what happened. You scroll through the possible responses in your head.

“I was building a rock wall.”
“I saved a nun from drowning.”
“I was yanking my wang so hard it pulled my back out.”

You can’t say that. It’s too ridiculous. You’ve already told your partner and now every time you wince she laughs at you. It’s the sympathy-less injury. There’s something about seeking pleasure to the point of hurting yourself that reeks of indulgence. That popped muscle is a Puritan punishment.

Pulling a muscle is certainly not the only masturbatory hazard. Misty pointed out that you can get jizz in a paper cut. Then you really are rubbing salt in your wound. Misty also said you can fall off the bed which sometimes entails hitting your head. I’m not sure how you would explain that black eye? But Misty certainly seems a vigorous maturbater. Go Misty go.

Once you have healed you tend to masturbate gingerly for a while. That’s never that fun. You have to feel free to really get into it for the full effect. As a preemptive I’ve taken to stretching before masturbating. Below is my list of best practices, in no particular order.

Yanking your wang? Bikram Yoga.
Smothering your schmekel? Try Kundalini Yoga.
Choking the chicken? Ashtanga Yoga!
Head-in-the-pillow-ass-in-the-air-squirting? Come over to my place Yoga

There were girls exposing the stars painted on their breasts. There were buff beefcakes, hairless and shiny, wearing bright blue boy shirts to show off the bulge.

Then there was the sculpted boytoy with surfer shorts hanging halfway down his bubble-toned ass; all of it accompanied by a ubiquitous electronic thump, the unofficial sound of the gay national anthem.

It was Pride in San Francisco, a day when you can climb out of the Civic Center BART station to the sight of a man in nothing but Calvin Klein underwear and ankle boots, yes, ankle boots.

What did I feel as I stared at that Calvin Klein clad bulge? Nostalgia.

It’s true, Pride reminds me of childhood. It also brings on a strong desire to sleep with an older woman. Allow me to explain.

In the early eighties my father, a lawyer, was representing a client who was accused of importing 30,000 tons of marijuana. For those of you with lesser math skills that’s 60,000 pounds.

For those of you used to buying an eighth of an ounce – times 8 by 16 ounces to get a pound and then times that by 60,000. That’s 7,680,000 eighths. This man was my hero.

The client owned homes all along the Atlantic coast that he used to off load the drugs. One of those homes was on Fire Island. When he ran out of money he deeded that house to my father as part of my father’s fee. Suddenly, we owned a mansion twenty feet from the ocean.

The mansion was in The Pines. The Pines is a beautiful community full of large wooden weathered beach homes with huge plate glass picture windows and swimming pools and a gourmet market. It is also 99.999% gay. The Pines is queer as a three-dollar bill.

There are things you don’t often see as an 11-year-old boy. A man wearing see-through pants and a ring piercing the tip of his penis is one of them. I was a short 11-year-old and I can still see the image from about eye level. It looked painful. I kind of wanted to reach out and touch it, but that didn’t seem right.

Then there were the neighbors behind us. They were naked all the time. One of them had a tattoo of a snake that started as his ankle and wrapped around his leg until the head appeared on his inner thigh reaching it’s forked tongue out towards his sack. He had a series of brass balls studding the length of his penis.

His partner had rings in each nipple and liked to wear a bar across his chest connecting the two. They would take walks on the beach. The one with pierced nipples holding a leash connected to the collar around the neck of his partner. The tattooed neighbor in turn holding the leash for their dog.

None of this is particularly shocking when you are young. It just doesn’t make any sense. Why anyone would want to do any of these things is a mystery. Rumor had it the neighbors also had a sound proof dungeon.

My young mind spent years pondering the use of this dungeon. What on earth would you want with a dungeon? If you’re going to go with the castle motif why not a turret or a drawbridge and moat, or a throne room, but a dungeon? And why sound proof it?

The Pines’ harbor was home to the Botel; a hotel with a huge outdoor bar that served colored drinks called Blue Whales and hosted High Tea.

Since there are no cars on the island everyone uses little red wagons. How often I would walk by the Botel pulling my little red wagon looking at all the beefcake in their leather boy shorts and Freddy Mercury mustaches and ball hugging speedos with blue drinks in their hands and poppers in their pockets.

That was an average weekend. Then there was the weekend of the invasion. That was the day that 200 men got on the ferry in the neighboring, wilder community of Cherry Grove. Every single one of them was dressed in drag. The ferry would dock and the invasion would begin.

And wouldn’t you know it I happened to be in the harbor, pulling my little red wagon, when the invasion began. 200 drunk and beautiful drag queens swarming all around me as I tried to get to the market. They just thought I was the cutest thing in the whole wide world.

So you can understand how encountering Pride would make me nostalgic for my youth. Walking by City Hall I could feel the little red wagon’s handle in my hand.

But why, you may ask, the desire to sleep with an older woman?

Being a mecca for gay men The Pines was a very safe beach for women. More to the point it was a safe beach for women to go topless. When you’re 12-years-old this is amazing.

When you’re 35-years-old this is amazing.

My brother and I got a hold of a pair of binoculars and would sit on the deck of the house and wait. Bird watching can kiss my ass. While this was awesome there was a downside. There were no girls. It was a gay community.

I was left to ogle grown naked women and ponder the way their breasts fell flat when they laid down on their beach blankets and then gathered round and full when they sat up.

I was left to wait for one of them to take pity on me when I, oops, just happened to be right next to them as they lay naked on the beach. I was banished to a summer of fantasizing about older women illicitly taking me into their bedrooms and showing me the way.

This was the origin of my theory that we should have a cultural tradition of older women initiating young men.

Alas, it never happened. Years later, I found a girl my own age. I didn’t like her all that much but was kind of digging her mom.

(If you’d like to see what a ferry full of queens looks like go here – at one minute 45 seconds.)

Related at Good Vibrations:
Shopping Guide for Gay Men
LGBT/Queer Erotica Books

A good session usually begins for me earlier in the day, often on the street. Not masturbating on the street mind you, as that would be vulgar. It’s also illegal; maybe not in San Francisco but in most other places.

What I meant to say was that a good masturbation session for me usually begins when I see something worth masturbating too. Most often it is a person though certain orchids, the right pair of shoes, or a naked mannequin can help me set sail.

Yes, a naked mannequin can arouse my senses. Perhaps it is because of a young Kim Cattrell coming to life in the movie “Mannequin” making a young, shy boy wish that he too would get trapped inside a department store at night and find love. Perhaps it is because I am an abstract thinker and so the mere suggestion of the female nude is enough.

In any event, even if I do see one of those sexed up mannequins it only serves to heighten my vigilance to seek out a live beautiful woman, the erotic in the everyday. Living in the Bay Area, this might be why I have trouble masturbating.

I grew up in New York City where the streets are awash in feminine beauty. I’d see a pair of sculpted calves rise out of sharp heels, an asymmetrical hem slicing the air with every step. That woman would follow me home in my fantasy; or the slinky purple off shoulder number at 9 a.m., or the Ibiza girls falling out of a car on their way into a club.

People in the Bay Area don’t place such a premium on physical beauty. In Berkeley a woman is more likely to brush her aura than her hair. In San Francisco a woman is more likely to work her freak factor as sexy than have stepped out of the pages of a magazine. Even the Heights social set looks like a casting call for New York castoffs.

Even the architecture in New York has a sex appeal. Who wouldn’t mind tapping the Guggenheim’s ass? But do you really want to do anything more than cuddle with a Victorian?

The advantage to the Bay Area is people are more likely to actually find out who you are – and care. They are more likely to be on a journey towards understanding and to want to talk about it. Sometimes they want to talk about it ad nauseum, but communicate they will.

In New York you are more likely to find attitude, a refusal to admit uncertainty or weakness of any kind. But wow will they be beautiful. Which brings me back to my trouble masturbating last night.

The Bay Area is not a particularly good place for generating masturbatory fantasies for heterosexuals. If you’re a hetero woman you had better love really soft men or the fantasy of being licked all over by a posse of gays. If you’re a hetero man, well, you had better really love off center women or the fantasy of being licked all over by a posse of gays.

For both sets of heteros there is the occasional yoga toned body strutting by. But then you’re dealing with New York attitude.

When I first arrived on these shores I notice that my masturbating was a less intense experience. It took me a while to realize that I was resorting to old fantasies. I was having trouble generating new fantasies. And fantasies are kind of like gravity, the further away they get the less powerful they become.

So there I was last night, in bed, shaft in hand and what a soft shaft it was. There was no lift off. But I really wanted it. The old fantasies just weren’t cutting it. I tried to remember someone I had seen on the street of late, but girl’s who use hemp deodorant don’t do it for me, girls with big glasses and bad jeans don’t do it for me, girls in nice shoes, nicer dresses and blank faces don’t do it for me. What was I to do?

Then I remembered going to the water park in Concord the other day. On the other side of the Oakland hills lies another world, a world where women paint themselves for men; a world where looking hot is a full time job. Things began to perk up. I guess sometimes it’s important to leave the Bay behind you for a little bit.

I’m not saying any of what happens in Concord is good for the liberation of women. But it can be good for a fantasy or two. It may not be right, but it is true.

There’s no single answer. My relationship with my dangling self, like all healthy relationships, has evolved over time. We have grown and changed together, staying up late, swapping stories.

I must say it is undeniably fun to have a penis. It’s like walking around with your own amusement park ride.

But the relationship is not entirely fluid. Having survived 34 years so far I can attest to three distinct phases; and so, three distinct rides.

The first phase is from birth to puberty. It is like the bumper cars. For something supposedly pleasurable it seems to hurt more than it should. And you often get stuck just banging yourself into the corner.

When you’re young you tend to hurt your penis. A lot. In fact, the penis will never be in as much danger as it is during the early years.

Bicycle seats, swinging your legs over the top of a fence, sitting down with too much enthusiasm, all of these daily activities leave one’s testicles in mortal peril. I fell split leg on a tree limb once. Then there are the various hard balls thrown or hit at tremendous velocities in supposed “games” which inevitably find their way to your little schmekel. And, of course, there’s the sheer unadulterated terror of learning to use a zipper.

It’s why all little boys wear tighty whities. Boxers are too careless.

Now there doesn’t seem to be much point to the bumper cars after you’ve smashed into a few people. In the early years masturbating is a similar exercise in futility.

It consists of a certain number of rubbings, hands, pillows, mattress’, carpets, couches, deck chairs, anything really. It feels good and it’s neat to watch a part of yourself get bigger.

But it always ends the same way, a sort of convulsive overload of too much pleasure with no outlet. You stop rubbing and try and catch your breath. But there’s no pay off. Imagine never getting to see the end of a movie and you get the idea.

The best part of having a penis in the first phase is far and away the long distance pee. The ability to make a leaf move, to watch the stream arc through the air, to fill the toilet with bubbles, these are the earliest manifestations of a man’s will.

The second phase, from puberty till around 27-years-old, is like the ride Free Fall.

It is a chaotic phase. It begins one random day with the typical rubbing. But suddenly you go higher then ever before, nearly six stories. There’s a moment of weightlessness, then the amazing rush of falling straight to the earth. The ride lasts six seconds. And the first thought in your head is, “Again!”

For the next 15 years this is pretty much the state of things for young men. We spend all day thinking about how to go up six stories just to feel the thrill of a six second drop. And then we want to do it all over again.

It’s the again part that has given this phase it’s golden hue. How older viagra-dependent men wax nostalgic for the days when they needed just a few minutes to recharge. But the golden hue is a myth.

The second phase is a horrible time. His penis enslaves the young man. I was a Hebrew slave making straw and mud bricks while my Egyptian penis sat fanned by a palm frond, eating dates, and cracking its whip.

Imagine someone always demanding you fast forward to watch the end of the movie and you get the idea.

Ladies, imagine if your breasts suddenly jumped two-cup sizes busting out of your bra and the only way to appease them was to go somewhere and rather violently rub your nipples. Imagine that happening five times a day. And imagine it happening heedless of social context.

“It’s lovely to meet you Mrs. Mother of my Girlfriend. Please excuse me while I slip my penis under my waistband so I don’t poke you with it.”

Yes, somehow you have managed to get a girlfriend. You think it’s a season pass, that you can ride Free Fall whenever you want. But it’s not.

First she’s upset about the six-second drop. She wants to start out on the carousel, maybe make her way over to a gentle rollercoaster, finally ending up at Free Fall. And man, the rails on that rollercoaster are dry. And, this phase is best handled by three or four women. The demands are too much for one girl, much less a teenage girl.

So you’re always convincing and she’s always appeasing.

Unfortunately, men tend to marry the most appeasing girl they can find. They have little idea this phase is coming to an end.

One day, magically, you are set free. The third phase has begun, the age of the Flume.

It’s a beautiful phase. You have gained mastery of your penis. You tell it when to rise up and when to lie down. Your penis has become a glorious flume ride.

You rest comfortably in your log, sometimes alone, sometimes with one other person, sometimes with two or three, were all adults now.

You rise high above the park, but there’s no immediate drop. No dryness here, there’s plenty of water and you slip and slide along the path, sometimes rising up a bit, sometimes enjoying small drops.

You happily bang against the sides. And then, only after a lovely ride, you come crashing down in a burst of white foam. You rock gently in the water, panting, musing. If there’s anyone else in the log you take a moment to ask if they need to ride again. The circle catches you and you take your time stepping out of the log. You check out who else is riding the flume. You stretch and decide what ride to go on next.

Ah, the third phase. Still young enough to scoff at Cialis ads, but old enough to hold back when your baby needs that extra minute. Your physical feats are long past but you play a smarter game with feints and passes and teamwork.

I don’t know how long this phase lasts. I’m hoping at least another 10 years. But each phase seems wonderful at the time. That’s the beauty of having a penis. Even when it’s torturing you, you’d swear he was your best pal.

What else can I say about my penis? Some girls think he’s a dick, but I always have my best times with him.