Friday, May 31, 2019

Picking Up Men in Bookstores


Quick -- you have the choice of spending an hour in this guy's apartment, or in this bookstore.  Which will you choose?

I'm going with the bookstore.

Pecs, abs, and cocks are great, of course, but there's nothing like browsing through the stacks of a used bookstore.

Not new bookstores, with their coffee shops, rows of junk "bargain books" and bestsellers, and history sections devoted entirely to war.  Those are depressing.

Used bookstores, where you can wander amid the books of yesteryear.  Penguins with the old covers. Ace science fiction doubles.  The qui-sais-je series of small French paperbacks.

The first thing I do when I visit Paris is browse at Shakespeare and Company.  In New York, the Strand. L.A. used to have a great used bookstore, the Cosmopolitan.

The Book Trader in Philadelphia.

The Book Exchange in Amsterdam

Powell's Books in Portland.  Sigh.

They are also good places to pick up guys.








Surprisingly, the gay/lesbian section is not the best place to meet gay guys.  Many used bookstores don't even have a gay section, either because the owner is homophobic or because there aren't a lot of gay-themed books before the 1980s.  And when they do have one, it's in the same stack as "sexuality," which means books about how heteros have sex.

Most gay men give it a miss.











Theater, art, and music. Star biographies. It's a stereotype that gay men are all into the arts, but it's a stereotype that everyone knows, so if he is interesting in meeting someone, that's where he will hang out.

And it gives you an easy way to determine if your target is gay: ask if an artist, musician, or celebrity was gay.

It doesn't matter if he was or not; gay men will know the answer, or pretend to.










The foreign language section is another good bet. At least, it works for me because it allows for easy conversation starters:

"Have you studied Polish?  When I was in Poland a few years ago..."

"What is the difference between Hindi and Urdu?"

"I studied Mandarin for about a semester, but it got frustrating because I kept accidentally saying dirty things."





You can also try picking up the bookstore owner.  90% of the owners of the bookstores I have been to are quiet, shy, reclusive middle-aged men who live alone and rarely date anyone, ostensibly straight but open to suggestions.

Play with the bookstore cat, compliment them on their selection, let them vent about how young people don't read books anymore, and they're inviting you back to their apartment.









Of course, most of them don't exactly look like Tom Ellis, but every guy looks hot surrounded by books.



















Well, almost every guy.







Thursday, May 30, 2019

The Boy Hooks Up with the Christmas Ghost

Rome City, Indiana, December 1974

The boy sat on the bed, reading about fairies.

It was very cold in his aunt's attic room, so he was under the covers.  A space heater glowed orange beside the bed.  Downstairs, a Christmas party was going on, with his parents and aunts and uncles and friends from town.  Most he didn't know.

But they were all paired up into husbands and wives, male-female couples extending in all directions to infinity.

Even Santa Claus had a wife.

The attic door was open, to let some heat up.  Downstairs he heard talking and laughter, and a song, "Winter Wonderland."

In the meadow we can build a snowman,
And pretend that he is Parson Brown.
He'll say "Are you married?"  We'll say, "No, man,
But you can do the job when you're in town."

Wife, kids, house, job, his destiny.  His doom.



Suddenly he heard footsteps coming up the stairs.  A dark shape that quickly resolved itself into the form of a young man, probably college age, tall and slim with thick reddish hair and very pale skin.  He was wearing a red sweater and jeans.  Oddly, he was barefoot.  The boy didn't recognize him from the party downstairs.

"Can I come in?"

"You already are in."

"Fair enough."  The stranger sat down on the edge of the bed.  "I saw you come up here, and wondered if you were ok."

Bogus!  Why would a complete stranger come upstairs to check up on him?  Why not his mother, or Aunt Nora?

"I'm fine, just tired.  And this is my room. Mine and my brother's while we're visiting, so I can be here.  Are you friends with Cousin Joe?"

He ignored the question.  "What you reading?"

The boy had hidden the book -- his parents disapproved of non-religious books in general, and especially science fiction and fantasy.  "Um...science homework."

The stranger reached up and pulled the book from under the covers.  "Fairies?" he asked in surprise.

"Not that kind of fairy," the boy said, cutting off the criticism,  He wasn't reading fairy tales -- he had always hated Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and their ilk, stupid boy meets girl stories with some flittery things added, shouting that the meaning of life is to be found in feminine smiles.  He was reading about fairies, the dark, sinister figures of European myth, like Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream. 

"Midsummer Night's Dream!" the stranger exclaimed.  "I love Shakespeare.  I used to be a grade-A riot on stage!"  He flounced about the room, reciting:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding, but a dream.

"You look pretty solid to me," the boy said.

"Who cares?  It got you to smile.  Cold up here -- got room for one more, Jackson?"  Without waiting for an answer he climbed under the covers next to the boy and put his arm around him.  His hard bicep bulged against the boy's shoulder.

"I'm not a little kid," the boy protested, while he instinctively cuddled against the stranger's hard chest.

"I never said you were.  You've got all of your grownup parts in place.  You shave?"

"Once a week!"  He actually hadn't started shaving yet.

"I can tell."  The stranger brushed his open palm against the boy's face.  "You've got some hair under your arms..." he caressed the boy's shoulder.  "A manly chest,  a regular Jack Dempsey..."  he caressed the boy's chest.

The boy began to get aroused, and quickly placed the book over his crotch.

The stranger chuckled.  "You have other adult parts, too, I see.  Have you spooned yet?"

"Huh?"

"You know, kissed."

"Sure, lots of times!" Adults often asked about kissing girls.  Other boys asked about screwing them. You were always supposed to answer "lots of times."

"Banana oil!  Not the stories you tell your friends.  Have you kissed anyone yet?"

The boy looked down at the book barely covering his arousal. "No."

"Would you like to?  Be honest, now."

"No.  I don't like girls."  It was a heavy admission to make to a complete stranger.

"What fools these mortals be, to tell you it has to be a girl!  Any fairy can tell you that boys kiss boys, too."

Boys kiss boys?  Was that possible?  

As if in response, the stranger pulled the boy close and pressed his lips against one cheek, then the other cheek, then his mouth, and they were kissing.  It was bright like fire.

Suddenly he raised his head.   "That was intense.  I gotta go, but we'll see each other again before you go back to Rock Island, ok?"


"Sure."

Then the stranger left.

Through the closet door!

Later the boy was looking through an old photo album, and he saw a picture of a teenage boy who looked like the stranger. He even had the same red sweater.

"That's Bryant, one of my high school friends, at a Christmas party a thousand years ago" Aunt Nora told him.  "You never saw such a cut-up!  After graduation he went to Indiana U., and then I lost track of him.  He's probably got a wife by now, and grown-up kids."

"Or not," the boy said, smiling.

See also: The Gay Ghost Who liked oral

L

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