Once A Day

Click here for a cool article about the benefits of sex over abstinence. (Thanks for the link, girlfag!)

Dental care! Whoddathunk? Y'know the only 'active ingredient' in toothpaste is the Flouride, which is also present in your drinking water if you live in a city. For the most part, there is no medical benefit that we receive from toothpaste. Seminal fluid, on the other hand, apparently whitens and brightens and fights tooth decay!

When I was a gawky teenager (ever notice how teenagers are soooo self conscious that they have no idea how to respond when you say 'hi' to them?), my family doctor, who had brought me into the world, told me to masturbate once a day for good prostate health. Some of the more uptight people I've shared this with (my Ex definitely among them) freaked out about this, impugning lechery to the good doctor. Uh uh. Medical science backs him up!

I was thinking this morning that sex seems to be so much more of an Event here in the hinterlands. In NYC, I had the opportunity for a blowjob at least every time I went to my gym. (I usually would pass; for the most part, they were Chelsea boys). But as far as I know, public sex sites have been shut down here in Beautiful Bucks County. So... y'know... you've got to go to a bar, and chat somebody up, and buy him a drink, and make conversation, and pop the question, then follow him in your car back to his place, and meet his dog/roommate/mother, and make more conversation, and then go up to the bedroom... Makes mastrubation look so good by comparison, huh?

Maybe I should check out the bathhouse in Philadelphia. I've never been much of a bathhouse kinda guy. This is based largely on aesthetic, not moral, considerations. And I had a really bad bathhouse experience in Tampa, Florida. I didn't see anybody I liked, and then I did. I sidled up to him and we started talking.

"How's it going?" I asked.
"It's going great, Dude," he answered, "The niggers are down three for three."
I think my response was something along the lines of, "I beg your pardon?"
He elaborated: "That basketball player has AIDS; those cops that beat down that nigger in LA got off, and (I can't remember the third item culled from then-current events that he found to be cause for celebration). He was referring with the first two to Magic Johnson and to the Rodney King verdict.
So, what was I going to do? Sitting there in our towels engage him in a discussion of racism? Call him on it and risk his irrationality and rage? Draw comparisons between racism and heterosexism in the hopes that he'd see the light?
It wasn't one of my proudest moments. I said something like, "I think that's really sick" and the words, "Some of my best friends..." might have crossed my lips as I padded off towards my room to dress and leave.

When I was in college, I would visit an adult book store with glory holes in Reading, Pennsylvania. And when I moved to Philadelphia, I would spend money I didn't have to go to the Sansom Street Theater, not an art house, rather, a venue for pornographic films with a dark room behind the screen.

Later, I discovered Judy Garland Park, down along the Schuykill River.

But nothing in the world compares to the towpath along the Delaware Canal in New Hope. Oh. My. God. It was great. Except for the mosquitoes. Picture 17-year-old me, tall and lanky, wearing a t-shirt with an A in a circle and an earring featuring a little silver man hanging by his foot from the hoop, zeroing in on some guy who probably had a wife and kids at home wondering what was taking him so long to run to Wawa and get cigarets and asking, "Do you have anything you could tie me up with?"

That's what I was after: getting tied up. That and receiving unreciprocated blowjobs. And I found it with a good deal of frequency.

I remember this big friendly dog of a man who was a fireman. A loveable lunk. I think the towpath represented the sum total of his sex life. I once went home with an older gentleman who lived right off the canal, and was sort of startled to see his bedroom chock-full of beaded ball gowns: he was one of the more notable drag queens of New Hope.

And of course, there was the infamous night when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a guy wearing chaps, a harness, and a leather vest, wandering down the towpath. I was on him like white on rice. He was into it, and kept talking about what great hands I had. We went back to his place, and he made his purpose clear: he wanted me to stick one of my great hands up his ass. I complied. He was great about the whole thing, providing me with a latex glove and talking me through it. And our efforts met with success! It was the first time he was able to take a fist, and it was the first time--needless to say--that I had fisted anyone.

I could have used a chat afterwards about fisting. That would have done a lot to relax me. At the time, it felt like no two people in the history of copulation had ever done anything quite like that, and what kind of freaks were we? And it's not like I could raise those concerns with the school nurse or an understanding teacher or my pastor or Dear Abby.

But, alas, the towpath is now lit by kleeg lights, and when I've been in New Hope during the nighttime hours, it's been pretty much deserted save for a few heterosexual tourists, taking a walk in 1800 watt light bright enough for surgery before retiring to whatever bed-and-breakfast they were staying at.

One should not have to work so hard to find a warm body on a cold night. Or a hot night. Or a rainy afternoon for that matter.

I guess the internet has largely replaced the public parks of yore. But that's really not anonymous sex, and it's not public. Public, anonymous sex. That's what I could use a dose of. A.Y.O.R.

All I'm trying to do is reduce my chances of prostate cancer and cavities. Is that so wrong?

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