As it happened, the Manly Fireplug did not break up with me just for Dore Alley. On the contrary, we spent it side-by-side, in matching cash belts, slinging suds for my softball team, doing our best to contribute to the drunken kinky South of Market mayhem.

There comes a tipping point at Dore Alley and its big daddy Folsom Street Fair, just around 4 pm, when the crowd expands and slides from buzzed to messy, and when the smart find refuge behind a counter.

Not that I have an aversion to sweaty men in leather, but invariably there is some free spirited creature – boy, girl, or something in between – who’s doused themselves with a half dozen jars of glitter and I’m telling you now, when they rub up against you it’s all over –that shit never comes out.

But since I’ve been a little quiet around here all summer I figured I should at least share some pictures with you. Mostly out of vanity, yes, but I felt I deserved a reward for all the tedious tubs of cottage cheese and protein shakes I consumed. Keep in mind that as a college freshman I was an inch shy of six feet tall, and weighed all of 128 pounds. That toothpick kid still haunts me, though for motivational purposes alone it helps to have a few old ghosts kicking around your head.

San Francisco’s kink-themed street fairs are a good excuse to publicly tap into one’s inner bad boy while simultaneously incurring the wrath of our nation’s most pious Puritans (every year conservatives reliably wring their hands over the Folsom Street Fair). But that’s what makes living in this “bubble” so attractive: we have the numbers on our side, and local politicians need to curry the favor of even the kinky freaks, or at least get out of our way.

Having both given up pretty much every chemical vice many years ago (neither of us understands this thing called “moderation”), the Fireplug and I stick to the sexual ones these days, with one exception: the occasional nice big fat cigar. Last year we attended a sober conference in Palm Springs, but by far the best time we had that weekend was sneaking out to the Barracks and splitting a cigar with two guys, one of whom looked downright UNFAIR in a pair of chaps.

Of course the mild head buzz (no doubt from incorrectly inhaling too much, but that’s part of our charm) didn’t exactly hurt.

So naturally we split another fat one at Dore where, in spite of my general incompetence with all things technical, I happened to take the best picture I have ever taken in my entire life, thankfully of the best person I know:

I know I had more to write, but I’m a little distracted at the moment. Must scroll down, away from hot boyfriend.

So the tips we raked in at Dore went right to my softball team, the Lonestar Inferno D (Burn, baby, burn!) and five months after I timidly set foot on the field for that first day of practice, for my first season ever (as in, my entire life ever) we all flew off to beautiful Columbus, Ohio for the Gay World Series. Something like 150 teams descended on Columbus for their biggest sporting event ever.

Frankly I was still stunned at being there. One day in January, during that dark time when the Fireplug and I had called it quits, I happened to run into a casual friend who happened to mention that he was joining a softball team. Since I’d recently decided to Get Out There and Socialize More, and since this team happened to be in the D league, home to beginners and misfits and the somewhat-uncoordinated, I got on board. If you missed the ensuing journey, which did to me and for me far more than I ever could have anticipated, you can click on the “softball” tag at the end of this post.

Let’s just say that I never thought I’d be a part of something that would qualify for an event where “World Series” was part of the title.

And though we did not do as well as we had hoped there, winning three games and losing three games, we’d gone farther than the Inferno D team had ever gone before. And since I hit well enough to get on base most times at bat, and because I made one spectacular running low-ball catch from right field, I felt like I could safely say that I’d pulled my weight.

The Manly Fireplug came along for the ride, and the most important consequence of that trip is that the Fireplug got bit. By the softball bug. It had started a couple of weeks back, when we bought him a mitt and went across the street from my apartment to the little park, where he completely surprised himself by actually catching the ball. He had a good arm, too, much better than mine was at the beginning of the season. Then we took him to the batting cages, where he completely surprised himself by hitting the ball, over and over.

At both times I could see the Fireplug transform. He faced those old demons, common to gay boys everywhere, that told him he’d be inept at all things athletic, that he couldn’t measure up to other boys.  A couple of boyhood experiences only fed those demons. These are not demons you’d guess he’d carried, talking to him. Let’s just say that the Fireplug has taught me more about confidence than any other person. But most of us keep our demons out of sight.

And challenging those demons lit a fire in his belly. When he started talking about maybe joining the team next spring, I was at first a little wary. I’d started softball when we were apart, when I was a single man, and I still thought of it as “my thing.” I’d taken on softball, a sport for which I had no natural talent, to prove to myself that I could do something, and improve at something, all on my own.

But watching the Fireplug face down those demons, as I had done earlier in the season, and watching what it did to his soul, all I could think was, who the hell am I to stand in the way? And like, c’mon, me and him on the same team? Fun! Havoc!

Speaking of old demons, I’m still fleshing out and hacking away at my book, that memoir about my big gay family that I’ve been toiling at for oh, six years. Living in the past, resurrecting and wrestling with old demons, wishing many times that I had just for the love of God written fiction instead, where you can make things up!

This story demands the right emotional distance and tone on my part, otherwise it slides really fast into the Land of the Maudlin. It’s taken me six years to figure out that distance and that tone. I think I have it now, though truth be told I’ve thought that before, more than once.

You can’t wrestle with old demons for six years without noting a few uncomfortable truths. Like, I share some not very attractive traits with my parents. The kind that bounced off them and hit me, and then bounced off me, like an echo chamber. Oh there are good traits too, of course, but those don’t gnaw at me.

I’ve seen them play out over my life – traits like coldness, and a tendency to neglect loved ones. Traits that don’t exactly work in my favor, but are stubborn to change.

Today marks my fourth anniversary with the Fireplug. I’ve felt that coldness descend, the closer he gets to me, with confusion. It comes automatically, without my trying. Why would I feel cold towards the man who gives me everything I’ve ever wanted in a partner? I’m not even clear what exactly I’m trying to get at here, by talking about that coldness. By admitting it out loud. I’m still figuring it out.

But the good thing about being a grown-up is that you can try to change, sometimes only in little ways. I try to wake myself up, out of that coldness. I try to draw my own wandering, self-obsessed attention, back in his direction.

I overhear a conversation between two men at the gym, both of them detailing all of their recent acquisitions, their trips abroad, their re-decorations. The thought that comes to me : I’m so glad Joe doesn’t talk like that, a thought that comes and almost goes before I have a chance to note it, to note my luckiness in winding up with someone who talks about what lies under the skin, both in himself and in others.

I note the greater number of compliments I pay people, and I trace it back to Joe, who taught me to do so by example.

I note his phone calls home to family and the ties that bind them together.

The pride and ownership he takes of his business.

His pride and joy in even my smallest accomplishments.

The way he gets what writing means to me, and the way he makes room for it in our lives.

Our impossibly well-suited-for-each-other sexual natures.

The number of times he tells me he loves me everyday.

We settled on this anniversary because of something I once said. We’d been dating for a couple of months already, but that night, four years ago, he came home from a trip, and when we finally got a hold of each other, in my bedroom, I told him that I loved him.

I’d told him that before. “I love you,” I had said, a couple of times, but I don’t know if he really heard me. Sometimes we need to hear things a few times before they sink in.

But that night I said it differently. “I love you, Joe,” is what I said, right in his ear, and that one extra word made him hear it, really hear it, for the first time. And I guess that’s what I’m trying to do here. I’m trying to to be deliberate, to stop relying on the automatic or assumed phrase, and to say the extra word that lets him know I’m paying attention.

The following is an article I wrote for the new issue of BARtab magazine – you can check it out on their site here.

When it came to sex, I used to be a closed book. This was due in part to my innate shyness, though growing up in Minnesota probably didn’t help. “Are you having a good time?” was a question I’d heard a dozen times in bed by various men, usually following a bout of what I thought were obvious noises of my approval. I went through life speaking, and groaning, at volume level 9, while the world heard me at 2.

A few twisted fantasies percolated in my head but I lacked the guts to ever talk about them until the ripe old age of 35, when I went straight from a sex life of pure vanilla to dating an International Mr. Leather.

Low volume was never a problem for Joe Gallagher. Even with his mouth shut he was communicating, like the first time I saw him, wearing a t-shirt that read: “I Make Boys Cry.” The T-shirt scared the crap out of me. My fantasies did not involve tears. But still I found him compelling. Some of us are just cursed with a need for bad boys.

We liked each other for more than just the physical. Still, we both harbored doubts about our sexual compatibility. I didn’t know what to make of leather, which seemed to me a world governed by a million mysterious rules, where stuffing a red hanky in the wrong pocket could lead to trouble. Membership in this world seemed to depend upon the right boots, the right chaps, and knowledge of rigid protocols.

As a kid I’d dropped out of private school because I hated the uniforms, and I found these rules stifling. I liked Joe for his irreverent streak – he’d carved out his own place in leather. He wore what he liked, when he liked, and made no apologies.

He showed me some essays written by Robert Davolt, a leatherman who’d died of melanoma in 2005. Davolt loved the leather community, but like all good writers he was a bit cantankerous. Leather, he argued, was a relatively young world, which began as a group of “outcasts, leftovers, the dark secret of the gay community.” He advised its members to question its “traditions,” and to distrust anyone who claimed to be a leather “authority.” He wrote often of leather as a group of people on individual journeys, with no two paths the same.

Like most of us, I looked for role models in all areas of my life, and here in leather I’d found two. Joe and Robert gave me the permission I’d always thought I’d needed, permission it turned out I had only to give myself.

I began my little journey by learning what I didn’t want. A Leathermen’s discussion group taught me that I didn’t want, for example, to walk one pace behind and to the left of Joe at all times, nor did I want to be in charge of his frickin’ Outlook Express. Fortunately, on these matters, Joe and I agreed.

At Joe’s side, I went to a lot of leather events and met a lot of kinky folk, most of whom I liked. Sometimes, though, I’d meet a boy who’d talk my ear off about protocols, questioning whether or not half the people at the event were “real” leather folk, or a titleholder who seemed to have gotten lost in the intricate local leather politics. I had no stomach for politics, and was wary of protocols, but I’d learned that leather was big enough to fit us all.

Prodded by Joe, I began to speak up in bed, to set in motion my fantasies, and to claim the kind of sex I’d always wanted. And though I’d long feared it, the first time he made me cry (during sex, that is) it came as a catharsis. In leather scenes, I watched others challenge their fears and their limits and come out exhausted, exalted, and content.

I felt this sense of liberation spreading into other areas of my life. I was less fearful, less shy, less concerned with what others thought. Still, I considered myself a fringe member at best until I heard an acquaintance dismissing leather as “just another form of drag.” My reaction surprised me with its strength: anger, yeah, but also a sort of protectiveness, for the people I’d met and the experiences I’d had. And pity, too, since the acquaintance was cutting himself off from trying something new. My reaction told me that maybe, in my own way, I did belong.

Two graduations in Pennsylvania, one in New York City, and a weekend at International Mr Leather in Chicago, all in one trip. Naturally the bag got searched at every single stop.

Since we last spoke, I:

- Wrote a little more of my book, but not enough to please my conscience.

- Met some of the Manly Fireplug’s family on the Jersey Shore, watched his mother play the penny slot machines in Atlantic City, took a quick tour of Philly, and lost my wallet in a cab on my way out of New York City. On my way to the airport. As in, no ID for security. No claim ticket for my car in the Oakland airport’s long-term parking lot. No credit cards or cash. But I managed to make it home and thanks to an intrepid girl on the Upper West Side who climbed into the cab after me, I even got my wallet back.

- Considered the trip a total success when the Fireplug’s mother said to him, in reference to me, “What’s not to like?”

- Got Louie’s ashes delivered to me in a box.

- Bought my first-ever suit, so that I can look good for my little brother’s wedding next month. How I got to the age of 36 without ever owning a suit is beyond me, and probably not worth your time.

- Threw out all of my long-held beliefs about only adopting mutts from shelters, and started looking into getting a purebred puppy. A small one so that I can take him with me to more places. I am turning into the bourgeoisie gay man I used to ridicule. But fuck it, having dogsat in the past for a Norwich terrier, I want one of my own. Here is a pic of some random person’s Norwich puppy. Perhaps you can see the appeal.

- Started looking into the possibility of getting an outside office, as the whole working-from-home thing is proving to be more of a challenge than I imagined. Found an ideal place that I can afford, that is currently under construction.

- Realized that, while waiting for both a puppy and an office, I’ve made absolutely no progress on becoming a more patient human being.

- Traveled with the Fireplug to a gay resort near Saugatuck, Michigan, for “INFERNO,” a SM retreat hosted by the Chicago Hellfire Club. Came back with a couple bruises and the sounds of whips and flogs and paddles hitting bare flesh still echoing in my ears. Not to mention a few sights burned into my retinas for all time.

-Bought my first piece of luggage-with-wheels. Between that and the suit, I am becoming a grown-up.

- Developed a taste, during our plane trips, for the New York Times crossword puzzle. Can barely make it though Monday without help.

- Made it an entire year with the Fireplug. Today’s our first anniversary. I love the guy.

In my fevered rush of self-promotion, I neglected to mention that there are, well, a few other people involved in the creation of the anthology. Some of them even blog. Rob and Ted are the glamorous, highly-paid editors, and the stylish contributors include Alex Chee and Joe.My.God., so that’s four more reasons to buy the anthology. If books by bloggers sell well, it stands to reason that the publishing industry will continue to troll through our backwaters for fresh meat. Which means your own inspired ramblings could get set down in a clean typeface for the masses, and soon David Sedaris will lose sleep at the mere mention of your name. So really, you’re doing yourself a favor by getting the book. Remember, I’m always thinking of you.

In other news, my little brother just got engaged. My. Little. Brother. I got a bit choked-up when he called with the news, and my mind raced with thoughts of little nieces and nephews running underfoot, drooling, stumbling, and calling me Uncle Mike. Thank God someone in my family turned out straight.

I myself am a long ways from walking down the aisle dressed in white. The closest thing I have to a fiancé is my workout partner, with whom I’ve begun…well…something we’re trying not label. It’s an interesting experience, to say the least, and not so easy to put into words. It’s easier to make art out of bad sex. Good sex just ends up sounding like porn. Let’s just say that he challenges my rather tame conception of what a bad boy sex pig does behind closed doors. The word “scalpel,” for example, has traditionally not made me think of hot, dirty sex. But life is full of learning experiences. And I’ve always found scars kinda sexy.

The porn star wanted me to meet him at Blow Buddies.

“Well,” he said, “not exactly in Blow Buddies. Above it. There’s a meeting room. You should come to the discussion group. It’s pretty informal – you know, folding chairs and chit chat.”

He told me this all over email; we’d met on a local BDSM-related personals site, where I was, you know, just checking things out.

The porn star had a bunch of hot pictures; he was a sexy little guy, and sexy little guys are often near the top of my list. Especially ones who act all tough and threaten to tie me up with rope. When I told him that I’d, like, hardly ever been tied up with rope, he suggested that I meet him at a discussion group for leather men, and sent me a link. I clicked:

Protocols in Dominant/Submissive Relationships: Master/Slave, Daddy/Boy, Dom/Sub…Power based relationships stimulate the mind and the libido. But how do we maintain that erotic charge through the scene and between scenes?

Cool, I thought, I can learn some hot, twisted shit to mutter during playtime. Besides, bad boy sex pigs aren’t just born. A little education goes a long way.

The porn star seemed to agree. “This is the perfect topic if you’re just starting out. And if we like each other, I live nearby.”

Yeah, so, maybe certain bad boy sex pigs out there in my audience could face such a situation without qualms. But going to my first “official” leather event (I’m not talking one a.m. at the Loading Dock), where I wouldn’t know anyone…when I owned hardly any leather…above a sex club…before dusk…to meet a porn star who wanted to tie me up with rope…

Okay, okay. Nobody twisted my arm.

Briefly I considered calling Joe to get his advice about whether this discussion group was worth my time, but decided that I needed to see some things for myself. This would be a test of my courage. A rite of passage.

Stomach in knots, I laced up my Wescos (my only leather) and drove The Blue Devil (my new car) to South of Market.

I hoped to find a room full of leather-clad Colt Studio models just salivating at the thought of a new boy in town.

God, where do I begin?

The porn star looked just like his pictures. They were absolutely true-to-life, and not the slightest bit misleading. But if the internet has taught us anything, it’s this: it’s all in how you carry yourself. He was nervous, and aloof, and totally lacking in charisma: the idea of letting him tie me up with rope made me giggle. As we chatted he kept looking over my shoulder at the door. Maybe it was mutual.

The next two hours were excruciating, and half my fault.

The panel consisted of three homely couples engaged in master/slave relationships. Yes, homely. Ordinarily on dogpoet I try to practice humility, but please. Don’t even try to tell me that you’ve never sat in a crowded room and thought, “I am simply the hottest thing in here.”

One couple were lesbians. All of the couples practiced their roles 24/7. None of this daddy/boy-for-an-hour-in-the-bedroom crap. No, these folks took their roles seriously. The submissives called their masters “Sir.” Even the lesbians. Not “my master,” or “my sir.” Rather, “Sir likes his coffee with a teaspoon of cream and two lumps of sugar waiting for him at the crack of dawn.”

There was a lot of this.

“Boy must walk on my left side, one half step behind me at all times.”

“Sir does not allow me use of the living room furniture.”

Then everyone argued for like, an hour, about whether these things were protocols or rituals. An hour. I wanted to throw my folding chair and scream, “Semantics! You’re arguing fucking semantics! What about SEX?!?”

Yeah, what about it. Nobody talked about sex. Instead we learned that the slaves did the dishes, the shopping, and the cooking. One slave even managed Sir’s goddamned CALENDAR. No, strike that; the slave managed several calendars because Sir kept filling the house up with new slaves, and the first slave had to manage ALL OF THEIR CALENDARS! The slaves, of course, could only have one queeny, nit-picking Sir, but Sir could have eight boys polishing the silverware in their thongs.

“What about the FUCKING?!?” I wanted to scream.

Beside me in his folding chair the porn star was chuckling at stories of new slaveboys forgetting which side of Sir to walk on at Safeway, or slaveboys forgetting that only Sir tells them when to take a piss.

I know everyone thinks they are open-minded. But honestly, when it comes to sex, I’m more progressive than most. What two consenting adults do is blah blah blah. But I’d found my limit. I wanted to run up and smack all of the “boys” silly.

“YOU HAVE A LIFE!” I’d scream, shaking them by their shoulders until their heads rocked back and forth on their little necks. “YOU HAVE A LIFE AND A MIND OF YOUR OWN! FUCK THIS QUEEN AND HIS GODDAMNED OUTLOOK EXPRESS!!!”

I wasn’t getting it. Clearly, I’d reached the limits of my understanding. I didn’t care how “spiritual” it felt for Sir to send boy back to the grocery store for the receipt he lost. Or how much confidence it gave boy to make Sir a BLT for lunch.

The discussion made my dick limp. I took this as a sign.

And that’s when it became my fault. Because there was a ten-minute break, and instead of bolting for the door I actually sat there in my folding chair, and waited for the whole thing to be over. Even when the porn star, who had promised in his emails to put me “at ease,” slipped into the crowd and left me there alone.

“Maybe,” I thought, “they hide all the sex in the second hour. There has GOT TO BE SEX at some point. Aren’t there supposed to be demonstrations? Wait, do I want to see demonstrations with these people? Oh, dear God.”

To be honest, I was still stuck in nice-guy mode. It would be rude to leave during the break, I thought. This is how nice guys finish last.

The second hour was the same as the first. Around this time Blow Buddies opened its doors for the evening, and disco music thumped through the floor. I longed to slip down there and find some real action.

Someone handed out a flier of “camps” around the country where boys could be trained in the art of “service.” There weren’t enough fliers to go around.

“Could I see that?” asked the porn star.

“Please,” I said. “Take my copy.”

When it was all over the porn star followed me to the door, and asked if we could play. If not tonight, then maybe Friday?

“Yeah,” I said, “actually, this week ain’t so good for me.”

I clomped down the stairs in my boots, and sucked in a lungful of air when I hit the sidewalk. Sometimes, when figuring out what you want, you get to figure out what you don’t.

I first visited San Francisco in 1996, with my then-boyfriend, David. One night we ended up at the Powerhouse, in South of Market, on an off-night. Lamps fashioned from Crisco cans cast dim circles on the scarred surface of the bar, and on the video screens a disembodied fist entered a disembodied butt. We were two boys from the midwest, simultaneously thrilled and scared out of our minds. Around us prowled lone wolves in leather jackets, Rolling Rocks clutched in their fists. They leaned against walls, the bench, the pool table, and looked around like they wanted to kill you or eat you, probably both.

David leaned over and whispered in my ear, “What is this leather thing about, anyway?”

I’d been wondering the same thing. The Village People, and Al Pacino in “Cruising,” was the extent of my BDSM education. My first reaction, when faced with my own ignorance, was to always feign cool. I shrugged and said, “Whatever.”

But David was an entirely different creature. My stepsister once compared him to a sheepdog; big, goofy, lovable, and completely naive. When confronted with his own ignorance, he’d ask the closest person for an answer. Getting nothing from me, he leaned over to one of the lone wolves, who stood nearby, glowering and chomping on a cigar, and said, “Excuse me, sir, but what’s the deal with leather?”

Was anyone ever so young? I’m here to tell you that we were.

I can’t remember the answer to the question, relayed to me by David in another whisper. I do remember that Mr Cigar Daddy was quite generous and respectful with his answer, and I remember that, underneath my nonchalance, was a hunger for knowledge.

The other thing I remember was a boy my age behind the bar: bare-chested, two leather bands wrapped around his thick arms, a tattoo stretching across his broad back, packed tight into a pair of chaps. You could tell he’d worked there for a while; he could pour out a Foster’s, ring up a shot, and swap spit with a muscle daddy all at the same time. He was on stage, in his element, and I watched the lone wolves watch him hungrily all night. Putting the cart before the horse (something I was good at) I figued that if I could ever get myself hired to tend bar at the Powerhouse, then I’d know for sure that I was hot. I don’t mean cute, or handsome, I mean hot – attraction inextricably tied up with sexual magnetism. The kind, well..you get the picture.

Fast forward to 1999; I’ve been in San Francisco a couple of years. Tired of scooping cat shit at the animal shelter, and inspired by weekend ecstasy-fueled fantasies, I quit my job to “become a writer.” A smarter boy would have lined up another job, but I was an idealist. A month later, my savings near depleted, I walked into the Powerhouse and asked for a job, thinking maybe I could start out as a barback, and work my way up the Ladder of Hotness. A half hour later I walked out a bartender, with no idea of the difference between a Rob Roy and a Seabreeze.

Thankfully the Powerhouse was a “leatherish” kind of bar. Guys ordered bottles of Bud and shots of tequila. I had every right to sneer at queens who wandered in and ordered a fucking cosmo. Yeah, sure I had a deck of flash cards with cocktail recipes at home, but nobody needed to know that. I worked South of Market; I could whip you up a cocksucker, a screaming orgasm, and a golden shower. I’d pound shots of Goldschlager with you and the other guys behind the bar, and if someone wanted a mudslide I could flash my endearing, entirely-believable, gosh-darn, I’m-just-the-new boy-smile, and the guy would tell me how to make his drink, squeeze my bicep, and leave me a ten dollar tip.

I wanted to be a bad boy, always had. I wanted to be a twisted, kinky motherfucker. And though I could throw in a tape of fisting highlights from Hot House on the bar’s VCR, I couldn’t walk into a video store in the Castro and rent porn for my own filthy enjoyment. I could serve MGD’s to guys who had just ducked out of our notorious back room, but I myself never went back there. Truth was, I had some dirty, twisted fantasies, but I lacked the balls to say them out loud, so they stayed just that: fantasies. Worse, addiction made my innate fear of the world worse; the further I went with crystal meth, the more I wanted to stay home, alone, and hide from the world. Last thing I wanted was to get on stage behind the bar and take my shirt off for Pec Night.

When my mom got sick I quit the bar and left town, and led a quiet, monastic, miserable life in Minneapolis for a few months as she got worse. Then I came back, got worse, got sober, and started cleaning up my life. Since by now everyone in the world has written a couple of books about some kind of recovery, I’ll spare you the details. I’ll just say things got okay, then better, then I went to New York. And now I’m back.

Joe, my good friend and new workout partner, told me over lunch yesterday that it’s a joy to see me transform from the old, passive, barely-audible Michael, to the new smart-ass who can push him back when he gets too bossy. Which is, like, every thirty seconds. A native East Coaster, he thinks it’s all due to a couple of years in New York. Undoubtedly that helped. I think it also helped to hear from some great writers that I myself knew how to write, and that if I would just fucking keep writing, I’d get my book published. I also finally got frustrated with five years of near-celibacy, with fear of what my non-kinky friends would think, with needing to be a nice guy all the time. Whatever the case, I’m no longer a push-over, and thank God for that.

Joe’s an International Mr Leather, from, like ages ago, and one of the most twisted, kinky fuckers I’ve ever known. Thus our work-outs are full of foul-mouthed banter, and my fantasies get aired in his company. He likes this new, smart-ass me. Of course, what I don’t tell him is that I keep smarting off to him in the hopes that he’ll eventually take it out on my ass.

Yeah, so the bad boy sex pig hath risen. If only in minor increments. Last week I fucked around with America’s Favorite Horndog, as he indicated on his blog. A day later I got an email from a friend in New York, who took me to task for getting in bed with someone who held rather, er, controversial views on HIV, reinfection, condoms, and sex, some of which I share, some of which I don’t. This friend also mistakenly believed that Geekslut had posted this without my permission, which wasn’t the case. I told Geek I didn’t care if he posted it, and that I was tired of the image people had of me. Which I told my friend, just before I told him to mind his own fucking business.

But after I sent that email I did a lot of talking, over a lot of coffee, with Jeff, and a lot of hard thinking on my own. It’s hypocritical to agree to allow my sex life to be broadcast over the internet, and then to say that it’s nobody’s business. And my motives were disingenuous. It was a cop-out, letting Geek do the work to tarnish my reputation, rather than doing it in my own words, on my own blog. And where’s the fun in that? It’s one thing to associate yourself with a bad boy, it’s another to admit I’m one out loud. Not that I assume anyone cares. Only that I have a lot more than books on my mind these days, and boy would I love to talk about it.

Greetings from Amsterdam, where I have spent the day at the Anne Frank Museum and Mr. B Leather Shop, in that order. And a hell of a lot of walking around. My feet are flattened and on fire and Jay and I have stepped into an Internet center on our way back to the hotel on P.C. Hoofstraat. We’re headed back to London tomorrow, then coming home on Wednesday. I’m more than a little tired and not too articulate, so I’m cutting it short. Hope everyone is doing well. My worries about being an American abroad were quite silly. I don’t think anyone notices, much less cares. As it should be, no doubt. Ciao for now.