You'd think that by 2005 I wouldn't have to explain this any more. "Hey Queer!"(1) Yep, that's what you'd think...and you'd be wrong. Last updated 09/05

Doc:

"Interesting website. Really interesting actually, but not in a 'genuis' (sic) way like you advertise. I had to say something after I saw the first parts of your sex pages section and here's what I see. All these 'gay' colors (if you know what I mean), lots of talk, no pictures of your girlfriends, just one picture of you in another section with your balls shaved.

Here's what I think. If it looks like a woman and smells like a woman, it couldn't have balls. And you've got no balls 'Doc', except for the ones you say you have and never show anybody. I think you should tell people who you really are if you are going to have so much stuff up. And you are either a RAVING faggot, or a chick who wishes she had a dick, or a she-male (sex change maybe?).

So, 'Doctor'. You don't seriously ecpect (sic) people to take you seriously do you? If you have so much to say then start by telling us who you really are. Or more importantly, WHAT you really are. If you ARE gay, you deerve (sic) to get your ass kicked. Not for being gay (I've got nothing against gays) but you should be shitkicked by your own people for passing.

Your sex pages section pretty much suck (sic) anyway. Stick to collecting toy cars.

JT (name and address withheld, received 09/09/05)

What can I say except "fair challenge"? The more I think about what ol' JT has to say here, the more I tend to agree with him...perhaps the pseudo-dating-service-profile in my private jerkoff ("Me") section wasn't sufficient, particularly taking into consideration that most of the guys hitting the home page for the first time are likely to dive straight for this section. In that light, I really do leave myself open for the blindside tackle. And I'm not going to lobby the ref for an unsportsmanlike conduct call...the spellnig mitsakes are acceptable, particularly since JT is obviously firing this off in the heat of the moment, and not bothering with a spellchecker on a message he clearly doesn't expect to be published (bwahahaha!).

So okay...a fair challenge merits a fair response, but the nature of this challenge pretty much demands a response, front-page-center in this case, because I do expect people to take me at least somewhat seriously, and I do consider my sexual orientation something I really need to make clear, particularly if I expect this section to be in any way effective at attracting interested members of the opposite sex. I'm hardly doing my social life any favors if I come across as gay.

It's not like I didn't expect to be posting pages like this related to this section of the site, either. I just didn't expect to get towel-snapped on the ass this quickly (just four days after posting the first few pages) or this harshly.

The color thing

Fruity? Okay, maybe for a white guy. But I loved this sweater. I only wish it had been a men's cut...the left sleeve in particular was awfully short.

As if it bore any more repetition at this point in the game, I'm not exactly normal. And that extends to my sexuality. If you have any eye at all for deviance, you've probably figured out by now that I am not the most stable or mature genius in the trailer park, so to speak. I've had a very rough life. And I've survived without turning into the kind of person I despise in no small part by maintaining, and leaning on, what "inner child" I've been able to preserve from cultural demolition. While it's been increasingly hard to wear it with pride, I've worn virtually this same haircut for nearly 30 years. (And I don't appreciate it being named for a particularly foul-tasting fish.) And I love lurid color. I once got chewed out by a band I was in for wearing a green and white hockey sweater over bright green straight-leg jeans to a gig. The wild chenille sweater you see at right? I got it from the women's rack at a local mall, one of four different sweaters I bought on the same day with the same brilliant patterns and colors. And my sweet tooth is legendary...well, okay...nothing about me is legendary, but most people who know me know I love candy.

But don't call me a "metrosexual". This isn't about vanity. It's about emotional security. Which doesn't say much for my manhood, does it? Isn't that the kind of thing that babies do? Isn't the hot new trend in parenting to overload the kid with lurid color? Aren't they supposed to like those things? So what does that say about an adult male who likes the same things? Certainly not that he'd be at home in khaki and camouflage.

But here's the thing. A white guy into bright colors is fruity...unless, of course, he's urbane, in which case he's arty. A black guy into bright colors is flamboyant...unless, of course, the black guy is dumpy-looking, in which case he's fruity too.

The name's Cub, not Artie.

The sexuality thing

And this extends to my sexuality. I seem to be anomalous among the native males since my sexuality seems to revolve far more than normal around eroticism, as opposed to passion. The first major essay planned for this section (this links to it if it's finished) is, in fact, a discussion of the continuum of sexual feeling and expression, a continuum I paint with eroticism at one end and passion at the other. I'm not good at passion...passion is to no small extent competitive, and I haven't had a lot of pleasant experience in competitive situations. (The reasons are probably relevant to this discussion, but I won't go into them here.)

Don't get me wrong. I don't lack passion. I'm just not good at it. For a variety of reasons, ranging from role-modeling by a milquetoast father to an inherent weakness at team sports to brutal sexual badgering on a daily basis through the first two years of high school by both the guys and the girls in my class have left me with a decided aversion to the competitive aspects of social interaction with either gender. Cooperation? That I can do. When it comes to measuring dick-length, I'll fold without showing, thanks very much...later rounds of the game always involve pain, and I don't play at all well with pain. As long as there are no social or emotional consequences for fucking up, I can get silly and childish with the best of them. But ranking (trading creative insults) and other testosterone-driven social activities have never felt right to me, and I've probably got one hell of a lot to get over before they do feel right to me.

I prefer to go with my strengths rather than shore up my weaknesses. And the innocent, childish, sensual and cooperative just work better for me. That's about eroticism, not passion, and in many respects, that runs counter to normal male preferences. And that's why this section is about essays, toys, technique, fiction, fantasy and fucking around rather than being about personal boasts, biography, tools, tactics, and just plain fucking. And really...as straight web content, shouldn't you prefer it that way? Can't you get the hardcore, down'n'dirty, in-the-trenches stuff pretty much anywhere these days?

So when I decided to add a sex section to my site, which necessitated conforming to my own design spec and color-scheming the section, the notion of applying rich reds, purples, skin-tones and blacks - the hard-ass "passion" colors - just didn't even come to mind. What did come to mind was color...lots of brilliant, light, expressive color.

But it's still going to be a while, I think, before I'm completely over all those times when coworkers and "friends" referred to me as a woman. Oh, to have been born into a more tolerant and open world...(*sigh*).

The effeminacy thing

Still, this could also be explained by effeminacy. Sexual orientation (passion/eros) and gender preference (own sex/opposite sex) fall within a continuum for each of us, and so does gender. While I don't have proof, and will likely get into as much trouble on this point as I got into with my take on racial issues (no longer online...gee, I wonder why...), I believe that the range of environmental and genetic factors which ultimately decide our gender don't all take effect at once. We may all be created as females, but I believe that in the first few weeks of pregnancy, the mother's experience, internal environment and genetic makeup can "steer" the gender selection in the fetus either toward or away from an absolute ideal and impact on gender preference at maturity, thus accounting for straight males who have effeminate characteristics and vice versa, straight-looking males and females who are overtly homosexual, and effeminate males or immasculate females who are overtly heterosexual.

Here's a frightening thought: this had pubic hair, and something resembling testicles. A snip here, some silicone there, and now you know where librarians and Walmart pharmacists come from.

I don't discount the possibility - still uncertain, even at this late date - that I have certain effeminate characteristics. But my personal history doesn't suggest that they were beaten out of me by daily abuse in adolescence, which would certainly be a possibility in my case. I collected, sure, as a kid I collected toy cars to race and customize, not to display as knickknacks, and I collected sport cards like businesspeople collect assets. I never cared for dolls...not even action figures. "Tea party" and "house" games bored me to death; I only endured them because I valued the friendships of the neighborhood girls who played them. If anything, I may be a bit too male, because aside from a good chick-flick (I'm a sucker for a quality story of any kind), I find most of the activities associated with "gender-typed" female recreation to be boring to the point of torture.

My physique has frequently been yet another point of contention. I've occasionally been in very good physical condition, but I've never been classically muscular. I've always been more lean and lithe than lean and mean. The lean part is simply the product of acquiring the knowledge and ability to avoid falling back into the dumpy, amorphous shape I found myself in shortly after puberty, and having the good fortune of being convinced by a genuinely concerned neighbor just how bloody ugly I was becoming. I actually weigh five kilos less today than I do in the photo at right.

I've never made a serious stab at buffing up, and in all sincerity, you ought to be very glad of it. I've got one hell of a lot of repressed anger, and testosterone doesn't exactly mix well with that. I stay "lean and lithe" (sounds better than "skinny and weak", doesn't it?) simply because it's safer, cheaper, and very likely healthier - secondary consequences such as assaults, property loss and conviction records considered - than biting the bullet and building the bod. It's also likely to be far less traumatic to the eye...the men in our family have truly grotesque butts no matter how fit or lean we get(2).

So am I repressing effeminate characteristics? Possibly. But there are a few specific syndromes into which I would fit neatly which have as one of their markers a particular affinity for intense - even lurid - color, sound, taste and smell. And given the rest of my makeup, I'd say that this is a far more likely reason for my selection of 'gay' colors than a repressed effeminacy. And sorry, JT, but I'd prefer to think of these colors as 'evocative' rather than 'gay'.

And hey, who's to say that had I grown up in Philadelphia or San Francisco that this would never have been an issue with me? Instead, I grew up in a town where the only Chinese family ran - you guessed it - a Chinese restaurant, and the only four black kids in our high school of eight hundred were treated not as a minority, but as exotic. If I'd grown up stateside, I would undoubtedly have identified this part of my makeup as "closet blackness" rather than closet effeminacy. When you live in Canada, have three legs and love color, you learn to live with the conservative male fashion spectrum, which runs the gamut from green to gray to any brown or deep red you could ever want. I used to have real fits of jealousy watching Soul Train on one of the US stations and seeing the amazing range of style and color that Americans - specifically black Americans - had available.

So if Asperger's or emotional degeneracy don't quite cut it for you, then feel free to attribute my color sense to having grown up in Canada as a poor, fashion-starved black child.

The shaving thing

I plan on going into this in more detail in a separate page (you'll see it prominently linked on the sex section menu once it's online (hopefully by Sept. 2011).

"...and women's underwear, which I thought we agreed was a comfort thing..." - Homer Simpson -

As Homer Simpson so eloquently explained his penchant for wearing Marge's underwear ("which I thought we agreed was a comfort thing"), it has nothing to do with gender preference or gender identity. I shave because I like it, and because I can. I have very fine hair, which means that I can use "epilators" (devices that rip hairs out by the roots) with a lot less discomfort than people with thicker hair. I also have a very taut nervous system.

Sure, wearing a bare crotch is about eroticism. But in all seriousness, this is more than just a comfort issue...it's a wellness issue in a very real sense for me. I can't count the number of nights when I've been almost asleep when one stray bent hair on my leg or knee broke just free enough from the sheet to spring back straight, fire a nerve ending or two, and bring me back to fully awake. I've kept my legs hairless even when I haven't shaved my pubic hair simply for the added comfort I get when I sleep, and I've reached a point where I'm also willing to risk hairless arms in public as well...not that I ever had much body hair to begin with.

And as I explained "elsewhere", it's not something I'd recommend to anyone else, even a girlfriend, although I do get a huge kick out of a bare pussy. I have a comfort level with this, and I use epilators, which allow the hairs to grow back normally and comfortably. I tried shaving a few times, and the itching when the cut, stiff hair ends began to grow back was unbearable, and in no way worth the extra thrill it brought me for the few short days that it was bare and smooth.

Now the big one...the 'gay' thing

But what real evidence have I presented that I'm not actually gay?

Look, I've got plenty of reasons to want desperately not to be gay. I had a father who was the spitting image of the hottest movie idol of his day...and, well, you can see how I turned out. I grew up in one of the ugliest little towns in this country, in an environment where anyone who was outed as gay would have been destroyed. The only "out" gay in my town of 7,000 was so severely and brutally beaten and derided, and so desperately isolated - for reasons I never discovered, he had no real escape from that environment - that he eventually killed himself. And at least one gay I went to school with was so heavily conditioned by that environment that he is still in the closet in his forties.

In retrospect I was very fortunate to have parents who, if they were pathologically messed up in regard to nudity and sexuality, were at least hell-bent on making sure I grew up well-informed. I read every book on sex that I could find, and with my parents' blessing, too, until they found out that I was actually enjoying it. So I had the goods on deviance and homosexuality long before most of the other kids I knew, and never lost my tolerance or openness in that area. I did the experimenting thing in high school; a close friend and I got drunk and tried to go down on each other...it was laughably bad; he just couldn't bring himself to do it, and I couldn't open my mouth wide enough to avoid biting his cock. Neither of us ever said anything about it again, except when the memory became a private joke between us, and that's where it ended.

But of course, it didn't end there. I suspect that my father always privately wondered if I was gay. To this day he has never once inquired about my love life or my sex life; it's only ever come up between us when I brought it up. I never dated in high school...the abuse I took was so vicious that by grade 12 when it finally slowed from a steady torrent to an occasional drip that I didn't just dread what I would have to endure if word ever got out, but what the girl I dated would have to put up with for being seen with me I have never done well in that department...the only women I've ever spent time with in a non-platonic sense have all approached me...I gave up on the whole idea of dating at about age 21 when I decided to retire with a perfect record of never having been accepted by any girl I had asked out...and it wasn't like I was limiting myself to strippers and supermodels by that point. This solid wall of rejection was understandable to a point...I wasn't exactly blessed with sex appeal. Charisma, sure. Grace, not a chance. And as for looks...well, at certain angles, I look positively ghoulish. So while I haven't exactly been seen as some guy's arm candy, there is certainly some justification for the assumption on grounds of association alone.

And appearance seems to factor into it as well. Looking back at family photos, I think the last time I looked anything like cute was at about age seven. Thanks in part to a lifetime of wearing glasses, which has permanently deformed the bridge of my nose, and to a spinal defect which pushes my head forward, my profile has always resembled something between a humanoid shrew and a 1930s-era Warner Brothers caricature of a Shylock-ish Jew. And while some fancy camera work does help somewhat, I have the classic endomorphic body type, which means that my ass cheeks have been creased at the bottom since I was 12 and the only way I don't look potbellied is if I'm morbidly underweight.

So could someone please explain why I seem to be so attractive to gays...particularly overweight ones with severe drinking problems? Because I've probably been propositioned by as many of that type as I've been turned down by the female of the species...and it's not like I'm a social gadfly. On those rare occasions when the opportunity has arisen to do so with minimal fear of harsh consequences, I have checked this out with other guys, and it seems that while just about every guy eventually gets propositioned at some point, to a certain bizarre sector of the gay world I am a virtual fag-magnet. All I can figure is that there must be something in the expertise with which I've learned to hide any trace of emotion or sincerity that strikes a chord...perhaps because in the world in which I grew up, that ability was more than just desirable to gays, but virtually essential to self-preservation. But in any case, I must - alas - bear the burden of having some strange allure for a particularly morbid segment of the gay population.

"I once heard a former colleague of Kinsey talk about how he felt when he was cajoled into homoerotic situations by his boss, and his discomfort sounded like the perfect description of my own feelings about this boy."

And for some reason, it seems that a lot of women pick up on the same vibe, leading me to wonder if maybe there is something in my mannerisms or appearance that shouts "gay". In fact, about fifteen years ago a close family friend who was highly respected for her depth of insight approached me in all earnestness and gently but firmly urged me to stop "limiting" my life, accept the facts, and embrace my homosexuality once and for all. She caught me at a particularly vulnerable moment in my life - I'll only say that a lot was going on at the time and not much of it good - and I was utterly unconvincing in defending my sexual orientation. It didn't matter to her that every sexual fantasy that had ever given me wood involved girls(4), that my sexual interests fixated entirely on girls, and that men didn't even appear as extras or body-doubles in my wet dreams. She was utterly convinced that I was, as Freddie Mercury so eloquently put it, "as gay as a daffodil", and nothing I could say was going to sway her.

Her timing was prodigious...and, I'm sorry to say, somewhat tragic for a guy I'd met over the phone through an organizational contact. He was gay, and without knowing what I looked like, had acquired a powerful crush on me over a few phone calls regarding a personal problem I was trying to help him with. I couldn't reciprocate...and after talking to this family friend in the state I was in, I actually felt it was in my own best interests to give myself as much of a chance as I could. He seemed to be a pretty down-to-earth kind of guy, and so stereotypically effeminate that he was dishing dirt about friends and colleagues in the casual, offhand way that girls so often do. It wasn't in me...this sort of thing involves pretty superficial emotions and casual judgment, and the masculine equivalent, which involves real judgment and real outrage and/or disgust was the only kind of dirt-dishing that had ever felt comfortable to me. The situation came to a head when he lured me into phone sex, and while he got off, I certainly wasn't contributing...I liked the guy, but I simply didn't have the physical attraction to him at anywhere near the depth he had it for me. I did get wood at one point, but it seemed to have a gender-neutral feeling about it, kind of like the arousal you get from riding in a stiff-seated car with a badly-tuned engine, or from having a cat in your lap.

So if there was ever an opportunity for latent or repressed homosexuality to emerge, that was it. This guy was safe, totally undemanding and intensely attracted to me, and I was about as willing to reciprocate as I probably ever have been, and since I had only his voice to go on, I could have painted him in my mind in any way that suited me. But you know, what suited me best, I'm almost ashamed to say, was picturing him as a girl. Many years later, I heard a former colleague of Alfred Kinsey talk about how he felt when he was cajoled into homoerotic situations by his boss, and his description of his sense of discomfort and discontinuity sounded like the perfect mirror to my own feelings about being involved with this boy.

And I can't even say today that an attraction wouldn't have developed. Because at almost precisely this time, an event transpired that was unparalleled in my experience: a woman whom I didn't find grotesquely unattractive was interested in me as more than just a friend. And she didn't brook any competition. Since this was an opportunity I would have been a fool to pass up, I broke it off with the guy then and there in the gentlest way I could, and in doing so, broke his heart at least a little bit...and I still don't feel quite comfortable about that even fifteen years later.

Finally, the pictures-of-girlfriends thing

This one's easy to handle.

If you were my girlfriend, would you want your photo on this website?

Matter closed.

A possible explanation

Why is it that no one will believe that I am not gay! WHY??

So...I appear to have a lot of...well, let's just say if not overtly effeminate, then at least less-than-manly traits, a certain attraction to at least a significant portion of the gay population and a lack of attraction to most women, but I'm not gay...or even, at least as far as I know, even more than just a touch bisexual.

Why, then, does it appear so much that I am gay?

The answer is not an easy one to offer in a manner this public. In fact, it might even be a touch dangerous. But you know, if I escape this without broken bones or scars, and just happen to strike a chord with a girl who understands or is even attracted by what I'm about to reveal here, I'd have been a fool not to do it.

And if, after reading this, you get a sense that it all seems to come out just a little too easily, then you've probably got it just about right. Because writing and posting this is the easy part...I found that out the first time I posted a nude shot of myself. The hard part comes afterward...when I have to live with the knowledge that I've exposed myself to that degree. And this will be no different.

Enough chitchat. It's time to 'fess up, and in so doing, explain that rather bizarre little photo parked a few inches to the right of these words.

It's about infantilism. Feel free to squirm as often and intensely as you like...I know all too well what a touchy subject this is.

Infantilism...that word conjures images in the typical male mind which can be more repulsive and squeamish than the mental picture of one man's dick penetrating another man's poop chute...and for some of us, this is a notion even more repulsive than that all-time clincher of a doubler-upper: the thought of our own parents having sex. So as you've probably come to expect, this is going to require a fair bit of explanation. Because what I'm talking about probably isn't what you're thinking about....at least, not in my case..

I know, I know...infantilism conjures the whole spectrum of the ugliest masochistic bondage and domination images..."water sports", "scat", even the most deviant and ugly forms of pedophilia. And had the circumstances in my life been substantially worse than they were, it's entirely possible that I might have gravitated toward this moral sewer.

But I didn't. I've never gotten off on domination, masochism, or much of anything at the "hard end" of the fetish spectrum. Infantilism at this extreme is about retreating into scenarios of past abuse as a shelter from incapability to cope in the present. While I don't deny at least a portion of that sense of incapability, it's not abuse that I retreat into. Infantilism in my case is far more about exploration and experience of sensuality and wonder than about ritual and passion.

I don't argue that this isn't deviant, either. It is. But it's a deviance bred of neglect rather than abuse. The uglier sides of infantilism tend to stem from early-life experiences that involved unwanted or injurious attention. My particular brand of infantilism stems from lack of attention and affirmation. My motivations are truly no different from those of men who pay to be dressed up as girls, beaten and humiliated. But where that sort of individual is seeking to associate these ugly scenarios with benign intent(5), what I'm trying to do in most cases is internalize positive - or at least benign - infant experience rather than specific infant behaviors.

At some level, we all have a visceral sense of what these kinds of perversities are all about. Western civilization for the most part makes it very difficult to recover from this kind of early maladjustment, and sends some damnably confusing signals about what is and is not permissible, and what particular behaviors and preferences actually mean.

Take color, for example. It's not considered to be masculine or "manly" to have an affinity for bright colors...if you're white or oriental. We're supposed to be happy with the limited palette of grays, browns, blues and greens that we're given as fashion choices year after agonizingly-drab year, and only deviate when certain fads such as day-glo or tie-die or Hawaiian or neon happen to be in vogue and acceptable. But certain subcultures of blacks, Latinos and others have no such prohibitions, and men in these subcultures don't suffer masculinity penalties for wearing tight, bright colors...especially if those colors highlight particular muscle groups or masculine attributes such as a beard, a large "package" or a tight, well-dimpled ass. Certain of the moneyed classes have from time to time suspended the same prohibitions around infantile mannerisms, curiosity, intelligence or artistic sensibility, or some other "infantile" attribute. Today, for example, we have something of a suspension of prohibition around male expression of grief...it's supposed to be okay to cry, and okay to cry hard. But eventually it seems inevitable that this too will once again become "unmanly" and "effeminate" and disappear again from the cultural landscape.

None of us gets out childhood scot-free. With a little luck, the scars are relatively minor. But most of us end up so badly scarred, so destroyed by cultural institutions that decimate natural emotional and psychological growth, that we literally no longer believe we're scarred at all. We grow up as patriots or wrestling fans or fans of romantic literature or upstanding churchfolk, and never brook any suggestion that these characteristics may in some way reflect buried wounds.

Don't take this the wrong way. I'm not in any way suggesting that my particular brand of infantilism is shared by every guy who has a fascination with guns, football or stock cars. I'm a relatively extreme case. But I'm as overt in my behavior and expression as I am precisely because I can't find culturally-acceptable hiding places. And I've actually been there, so I damn well know how helpless I am in this regard. I've tried to fit in with a church crowd...I could accept the teachings; they couldn't accept me. I do love stock cars and old-school metal...I simply can't stand the noise enough to make those things regular parts of my social life. The normal cultural outlets just don't work for me.

And that makes me a really bad player at emotional hide-and-seek. So I do the one thing that's left to me: I can't "hide out" with the rest of the group, so I'm trying to act out in carefully-selected ways that hopefully allow me the best chance to actually outgrow my less acceptable fascinations and deficiencies. Hey, if I was into stockers and still playing bass with loud and nasty 80s hair bands, I wouldn't even see the need to get over these fascinations, because they wouldn't be problems.

So I hope I'm clear on this. Yeah, this is "acting out". Those pink shorts in the pic above may be unisex, but I damn well know that's not how I'm posing them. Rainbow spectra may be the most ideal way to depict truly intense eroticism, but I'm not fooling myself or anyone else (I hope) that I'm such a mature, well-adjusted individual that I choose these colors for the "right" reasons...I chose them because they stimulate me. Maybe I never will get over these particular deviations. But as long as I can have them, and not suffer unduly from them, at least they won't decay into the more dangerous forms of degenerate behavior.

So here's the crux of the matter. This is about infantilism, and infants are inherently asexual or autosexual, not homosexual. But if deviation from the norm is seen as gravitation to the extreme, then of course I'm going to be seen as gay, or at the very least a little fruity. Infants are also relatively genderless. Boy babies pretty much look, act, and behave like girl babies until they get close to toddler age. But if any lack of displayed maturity is seen as evidence of effeminacy, then of course I'm going to be seen as effeminate. I could go on, but I think you can get the picture from these two examples.

The upside: eroticism

But I want to toss one more example in. Babies are also relatively passionless. They pretty much have to be. The only real aggressive potential they have is limited to their throats - a baby's scream is one damned potent motivator - and to a lesser extent their assholes (nothing like a good, smelly shit at a particularly inconvenient moment to let mom and dad know what you really think of their parenting) and, in boys, their pricks (the old "squirtgun surprise" is another good weapon of infant expression). If sexuality is lifelong, and the capacity for passion is limited in infants, then the capacity for eroticism should be just as unlimited.

At least, it sure seems to be in my case.

"I had been led to believe that I was going to have severe performance problems. I found instead that I could keep it up for hours on end if I kept myself relaxed and if blueballs didn't force the issue."

Opposites attract, true, but when it comes to what's buried below the surface in our subconscious, it's likes that fascinate us. So it should come as no surprise that I tend to attract women who are just as emotionally immature as I am, women who suffer from post-traumatic aftereffects of the same types of infant neglect that I suffered. Unfortunately, I also attract women in deep denial of this type of scarring. Both of the long-term relationships I've had have involved women with serious infant-neglect issues who have convinced themselves that they are sexually well-balanced and healthy. And while neither of them actually owned up to it, both of them goaded me - within an inch of my life on two occasions - into committing the rawest, roughest expression of possible: rape.

This is no joke, and it's not the least bit funny. When identity and sexuality get wrapped up with infantile emotions, things can all too easily spiral this far out of control, and because so few of us actually remember even how we felt as infants, when it does pass the point of no return, it's rare that anyone has any clue what really started the whole thing in the first place. But the fact is that anyone with neglect or abuse issues from infancy is almost certain to have at least some significant trapped aggression simmering under the surface, and isn't likely to recognize what it's about when it surfaces. When this kind of emotional intensity surfaces between two people who care about each other, it can look to outside observers a lot like one party goading the other into violence. What it really represents is an invitation to re-enact a particular scenario in a way that produces a better result than the original scenario. And if neither party knows that this is what's going on, it can just as easily be interpreted as an invitation to do something extreme or violent with the other party that the initiating party would actually enjoy. So guys on the receiving end of this kind of provocation can interpret this as invitation to rape...and can even convince themselves that their partner will actually enjoy it. I've known women who freely admit that they interpret this kind of provocation from men as an invitation to humiliation, and sure enough, they too convince themselves that the guy wants that and will enjoy it. The fact of the matter is that if both parties don't go into these kinds of conflicts with their eyes open and the focus on a beneficial outcome, someone inevitably gets hurt. Either the recipient of this provocation initiates an action that has catastrophic physical or emotional consequences on the other party, or nothing happens, in which case the injured party ends up being the one who was provoked.

And while a good lawyer could easily make a case that these women were simply expressing their discontent with their relationships with me, no guy with a drop of testosterone in his veins could argue that the behavior I witnessed from both of them over extended periods was in fact a covert invitation to smack them into next week, and a lot of guys would probably have supported me in responding to it with a forced-sex scenario, which, in the raw male mind, at least allows the woman the opportunity to enjoy herself. (In point of fact, it actually does in some cases, but only if the woman is consciously aware of what's going on between the two of them.)

Repressing the urge to commit an act of violence when you're being provoked on a near-constant basis is just unbelievably frustrating and draining, and it's my hope that with a few more years of cultural consciousness-raising on the issue of emotional battery that we'll all be able to recognize this more easily in the future. It certainly wasn't something I was going to tolerate to the point of eating myself alive with bitterness.

But at the same time, both of them had erotic appetites to match mine. I was over thirty before I had a girlfriend of any kind, and I had been led to believe that I was going to have severe performance problems once I did find someone willing to risk being naked with me in the same room. I found I had exactly the opposite problem: I could keep it up for hours on end if I kept myself relaxed and if blueballs didn't force the issue before I was ready. And I know they had similar neglect issues to my own, because their appetites in this area were a match for my own. Neither relationship lasted, primarily because of awareness incompatibilities. I knew where I was at with this aspect of my life, and I took the attitude of making the best of a bad situation (and it is a bad situation...I feel the same need for passion as any other guy, and as poorly as I generally handle it, I suffer for its lack.). My girlfriends both chose to duck the issue altogether until or unless they could find other ways to "heal" these aspects of their characters, a choice that I just couldn't live with. An appropriate analogy might be to say that I chose to live in the desert and deal with starvation rather live in a grocery store and always be hungry.

After all, babies aren't just oriented toward the erotic...they're also quite autosexual. And as long as I have one working hand, I'm not going to go that hungry.

I could say a lot more on this subject, but I've chosen to reserve a more thorough discussion of eros versus passion for an essay devoted specifically to this subject which I hope to have posted some time in early fall of '05, so it may be available by the time you read this.

"Not gay...not confused about my gender identity...not a woman; that much I hope was already clear...just immatu...er, infan...um, childlike. Yeah, that's the ticket...childlike."

Suffice it to say that this is the explanation for so many of the "queer"/"gay"/"effeminate"/"fruity" choices I've made in the design and content of this section, and to a lesser extent the rest of the site as well. Not gay...not confused about my gender identity...not a woman; that much I hope was already clear...just immatu...er, infan...um, childlike. Yeah, that's the ticket...childlike. Sure. Innat cute? Dunnat make ya panties wet? Dunnat make ya wanna just rip yer clothes off right now and climb all over me like a...oh, I dunno...like a...you know what I mean. Childlike. Yeah. Chicks love that, don't they. Suuuure.(6)

Truth to tell, some chicks do love that. I just wish more of them were able to admit it in this day and age. It seems, though, that that will have to wait for another time. What the sixties did for sexual freedom and adolescent expression and the "inner child" movement did for childlike expression, another as-yet-embryonic movement will be needed before the idea of infantile expression becomes acceptable to the mainstream in western culture(7). By the time that happens, I may be as wrinkled and helpless as a newborn...but I don't think that'll be seen as "sexy". Ah, my bad timing...but this does give me an opportunity to try out one of my trademark line of renaissance-loser pickup lines.

Hey babe...I'm ahead of my time, so if you sleep with me now, you can be back before you got here.

(One of these days, that line is going to work.)

And guys, seriously...if you've got any kind of notion about setting me right in the macho or military sense of the word, just keep a couple of things in mind. Firstly, no one's forcing you to be here on this website, so if you find this offensive or uncomfortable, you're always free to leave. Secondly, don't expect a thank-you note for the sentiment. I happen to be reasonably comfortable with who and what I am, and realistic about who and what I can be. The "good sense" to keep my private life to myself and "be a man" isn't something that can be beaten into me...although that wasn't always the case. Thirdly, keep in mind that babies, being relatively passionless as they are, don't pose much of a threat in any kind of competitive situation. So it's not like I'm taking anything away from you. And fourthly, and perhaps most important if you still think it's worth a shot to see if I can't be "set right", be aware that while fists and feet may be effective persuasion tools over the short term, I find lawyers to be far more effective over the long term. And I'm just woman enough to pull that trigger.

I've had a lot of people tell me over the years that I've gotten myself into more trouble explaining my way out of situations than I'd have had if I'd just allowed people to believe what they wanted to believe, true or not.

No!...ya really think?

Oh, and before I forget...JT, go fuck yourself.(8)

1. Before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, this remark can be taken two ways - as an epithet, or as an expression of camaraderie (as in "Hey, my nigger!" from one black to another or in "Hey jerkoff!" as a sarcastic greeting to a close friend or family member), and I've purposely made its intended meaning ambiguous. Seriously, I am most gratified to be living in a time in which we can't automatically assume that shouting "Hey queer!" at someone is an unfriendly greeting...but a part of me remains outraged that there's any trace of stigma still attached to remarks like that. We still need expressions such as "Hey fuckwad!" and "You bastard!", or we'd have no way of clearly indicating our disdain for particular individuals, but when the expression denotes a particular group or type, such as "nigger", "Jew", "Polack", "Paki", "fag" or "cripple", I believe it'll be a watermark of human development when these once-derogatory terms become slang as ordinary and emotionally-neutral as referring to money as "cash". Are you idiots clear on this? >>Back>>

2. I'm not dramatizing in the least. Every last one of us have serious gluteal sag to the point of having "old-guy crease" by age fifteen...but I'll spare you the photographic evidence for now. >>Back>>

3. Seriously, they can't be. Pardon me for diving for cover under the nearest stereotype, but it's my strong belief that stereotypes are usually valid generalities if they're handled fairly, and only become harmful when they're taken to the point of caricature or deprecation. And this is neither. Your average guy doesn't like to read as much as your average girl. So what? Don't dis it...deal with it. >>Back>>

4. I purposely added "...that had ever given me wood" since, truthfully, not all my sexual fantasies involved girls. I had been aware since puberty that sexual orientation was a continuum, and I've assumed pretty much since my mid-teens that I must have at least some homosexual leanings, so from time to time I would try fantasizing about men just to see if I responded with an erection. Never happened. But maybe I just never met the right guy, or got close enough to a "right guy" to develop a physical attraction. I may be missing something, and perhaps new research will someday quash the myth that nearly all men are at least partly bisexual, but until that happens I'll find it hard to believe that I could be as totally heterosexual as my history would suggest. >>Back>>

5. For whatever it's worth, this is precisely why "deviants" do what they do...it's an attempt to neutralize the negative impact of the early experience which triggered the deviance. And given enough time and exposure to the same experience stage-managed with enough genuine empathy and understanding, the negative programming of this kind of early trauma can in fact be unraveled and eliminated. No shit...when these "sickos" find a mistress able to really feel and project a sense of empathy and goodwill even while they're applying the lash or ridiculing the guy's effeminacy, they actually do come away from the session a little less "sick". And sure, there are more effective ways to deal with these problems, but if you're stuck with the amount and intensity of trapped rage and passion that so many guys (and girls) "into" infantilism have stored up, a weekly beating and humiliation from a mistress who knows the score can in fact be therapeutic enough to keep such a person out of an asylum...or worse. >>Back>>

6. It's right on the tip of your tongue, isn't it? Jon Lovitz...Saturday Night Live...that's the ticket. >>Back>>

7. Sound far-fetched? I guarantee that a movement with that particular emotional/developmental "flavor" will in fact emerge within no more than twenty years...I absolutely guarantee it. >>Back>>

8. Even that could be taken two ways. Autoerotic passion can defuse a lot of penned-up aggression. See? I'm not offended...in fact, I'm actually offering JT some useful advice. I just hope he takes it that way. >>Back>>