The Dumb Shirt Selfie Brigade

I love photos of guys who are fully clothed except for their cock.  But they need to choose their ensemble carefully.  No matter how impressive your penis is, a dumb outfit can ruin the effect.

1. Cookie Monster?

2. The hospital-style bathrobe makes you look like an invalid, regardless of what's jutting out.

3. How am I supposed to look at your cock when I'm trying to read all of that?

4. Sure, multicolored cotton-candy hair is hot.

5.  Will Grandma want her sweater back when she finds out you borrowed it for an aroused
selfie?

More after the break.

A Bulge Sighting on my Fifth Birthday

Racine, Wisconsin, November 1965

Now I know that gender identity is fluid, with many tangible and intangible components, but when I was a kid, it was all about boys and girls, so distinct that they might as well be separate species.

What made a boy a boy:
1. Short hair.
2. A shirt and pants.
3. A lack of makeup, nail polish, and perfume.
4. Muscles.
5. A penis.

Mostly a penis.

I wasn't yet aware that it grows bigger and stronger, or that you can use your hand or mouth to bring the guy to organsm.

But I knew that it was the most private, intimate, and dangerous part of the body.

My father told me that I must never display it, even by accident.  Hide it at a urinal.  Make sure no one sees you when you are changing clothes in the locker room.  Never go skinny dipping.

Sometimes "dirty boys" might ask to see it, or touch it, but I must always recoil in disgust.

In fact, I must never touch my own penis, except when urinating or washing.  Never at night, in bed.

Other people usually pretended that no one even had a penis.  They never looked beneath the belt.  When it obviously shifted, or got bigger, they pretended not to notice.

I definitely noticed.  Even in grade school, I knew how to sneak peeks beneath the belt, gauging bulges, mentaly calculating sizes and shapes, detecting slight movements, shifts, and semi-arousals.

The first bulge I remember was on my fifth birthday, in November 1965.

Mom and I were both sick.  I was sad and worried as she lay in bed.

I got a Tell-the-Time Clock with a smiley face and gloves on its hands, but I was too sick to play with it.  There wasn't any cake.

I sat on the couch with Dad, sipping 7-Up and watching tv.  First The Flintstones, and then Tammy, with a sugary mawdlin song that I hate today, maybe because I associate it with being sick, or maybe because Dad sang it at odd moments for the next thirty years.

I hear the cottonwoods whisperin' above.
Tammy--Tammy-Tammy's in love.

It was a hayseed sitcom (1965-66) about a bayou gal who becomes the secretary for a powerful industrialist and sets her sights on his fey son.

In the episode that aired on my fifth birthday, Tammy is courting a boy named Peter Tate (David Macklin), who doesn't really like girls.  He's just playing along.

Do you see something extra beneath the belt?  He forgot to wear underwear that day.















How about now, with a semi filling out his chaps?

Remember, guys -- including cameramen -- always pretend not to notice, so lots of bulges and semis get captured on film.

David Macklin popped up  -- and out -- again and again during my childhood.  A teen surfer on Gidget (1966).  A fratboy on The Munsters (1966).  A hippie on Ironside (1968). An abused rich kid on Cannon (1973).

In the fifty years since that November night, I've seen my share of real-life penises.  And fondled them.  And more.  But bulge-watching is still a fun, exciting, and fulfilling pursuit.

And it all began on my fifth birthday.

A much better gift than a Tell-the-Time Clock.

S

San Francisco Is Still Gay Heaven

San Francisco, September 1995

For gay people in the 1990s, West Hollywood was a sacred site, a safe haven free from the heterosexism and homophobia of the straight world. Everyone visited at least once; almost everyone moved there (like my ex-boyfriend Fred); or tried to (like Oscar, the former lover of Ronald Reagan,).

But if West Hollywood was a Gay Mecca, San Francisco was Gay Heaven, a mythical, perfect place, beyond the reach of all but the very blessed or the very lucky.

In the fall of 1995, we managed it. For a little while.

First we tried the Castro, the heart of the heart of Gay Heaven, but it was impossible -- even the tiniest, most horrible apartment had dozens of people scrambling to fill out applications.

Other gay neighborhoods, South of Market and the Mission, were likewise impossible.  Eventually we found an apartment in "The Avenues," about 3 miles west of Castro Street.

There were lots of things wrong with San Francisco:

1. It was very expensive, and there were no jobs.

2. It was very cold and damp, with a wet wind whipping through you all the time.  And those quaint Victorians?  Drafty, freezing, cramped. Constant sinus congestion, frequent colds.

3. The Muni stopped running at 7 pm, so at night you had to drive everywhere.

4.  When we drove anywhere, we had to spend 45 minutes looking for a parking space, and invariably we ended up parking a mile from our destination,  in a scary neighborhood.

5. We felt guilty going anywhere, due to the dozens of panhandles holding out their cups and chanting "Any change?  Any change?"  If we gave in and deposited change, we were marked as "easy," and aggressive panhandlers would follow us around, demanding money.

6. Crime was everywhere.  People were robbed regularly. Our car would be broken into regularly, even if nothing was visible.  The trunk would be jimmied open to see if anything was inside.

7. There were lots of heterosexual tourists who thought of gay people as an attraction, and kept gawking and taking photographs.

8. And lots of homophobes.  Teens would drive in from the suburbs every weekend and yell anti-gay slurs and threats from their cars.

We couldn't stay there forever.  It never felt like home.  But in spite of the problems, San Francisco was still Gay Heaven.

Not because of the milling crowds of Christopher Street West, or the beefcake-nudity exposition of Dore Alley, or the GLBT Historical Society on Mission Street.

Because of the little things.

A matinee at the Castro Theater.
Browsing in All American Boy on a Saturday afternoon.
The Sunday beer bust at the Eagle.
A quick burger at Orphan Andy's
Climbing up from the Castro Street Muni Station early in the morning, and walking through the bright, cold new day.