Zapped

I joined a local gym back in June to work with their trainers (I can use the gym at the college where I work, but there are no trainers other than a few college kids who don’t know that much about training). I’m in a small college/farm town, and this is the only place not an hour away with trainers. There were two—I’ll call them Kathy and Mark. Both very nice, both effective. During my trial period, I found Mark to be particularly effective in adapting exercises to my fitness level, identifying places where I was tight and spending extra time showing me stretching exercises, etc. So when I bought a long-term training package, I chose Mark as my regular trainer. In December, Mark, after some friction with the management, quit. We’d become friendly and gradually I’d shared a lot with him—personal insecurities, body image issues, struggles with addiction, etc. He shared a lot with me—we became friends. And while he is in his early 20s and put together well, I wasn’t attracted to him (somewhat to my surprise). He ended up getting a better job at a gym in another state, and we’ve kept in touch. As his time at my gym was coming to an end, we had lunch together. He vented about some of his frustrations with the management and his colleagues and explained why he was leaving. And he told me that one or more of them (I don’t know if it was a trainer or manager) speculated, back in July when I decided to work regularly with him, that it was because I was gay. He said he replied, “He doesnt want to work with me because he’s gay. He wants to work with me because when he had trouble doing a squat because of knee pain, I stopped everything and showed him how to stretch his quads and the pain went away.” Which is true. He grew up with two moms, so he’s impatient with stereotypes, and he was offended by that. I’ve been pissed since then and haven’t known how to deal with it. I’m working out regularly with Kathy and Mark’s successor, Liz. They are fine—not Mark’s level of expertise, but fine. But I’m still angry. It hasn’t seemed appropriate to talk to the manager or franchise owner to complain about something that wasn’t said to me and which it was (perhaps) unprofessional of Mark to tell me. And it feels a little humiliating/uncomfortable to say something like, “So when Mark got mad at you guys and quit, he told me that back in July someone speculated that I wanted to work out with him because I’m gay.” It’s complaining about gossip. I suppose I could find it funny. Or what the hell—is it internalized homophobia to be offended that someone might speculate an overweight middle aged gay guy (who is married to a much younger guy) night he attacted to the handsome early-twenties trainer? I need to either let this go or get it off my chest. I’d love any feedback you might have to offer.

Early in my college teaching career, I was on a joint trustee/faculty committee for which I wrote a well-organized memo. One of the trustees asked, “If you can write like this, what are you doing in a job that pays so little?” If I had had the body for it, escorting would’ve played much better!

From my viewer's perspective: I am turned on by certain types of muscle-flexing videos, including those where the guy jerks himself off. I am in a relationship (married to a great younger guy) in which we don't have sex with other people, but we are cool with each other watching porn. So for me, I get my muscle-guy fixes (for now) from video, and I haven't found exactly what I'm looking for other than on OnlyFans and, in some cases, Gumroad. If hiring escorts was within my current set of agreements/promises, then I might well save the money for an occasional in-person body workshop session. I'm interested to learn that some guys are doing really well.

BTW, I found the guy in that video REALLY hot and I’d love to know where to find more of him.

The ethics and legality may be overlapping but separate issues. The OnlyFans business model is subscription based, like Netflix--you can view as much content as you want from a particular user as long as you are paying his (in our case, I assume they are all guys) monthly fee. It's obviously set up to make it difficult to download and then view after the subscription has expired. Obviously (to me) it's neither ethical nor legal to download and redistribute, especially for profit. There might be some advantage to the performer(s) to have some of the content made available for free, since OnlyFans doesn't have a preview function. But a performer can post short preview clips elsewhere (YouTube, Tumblr, etc.) and that's how I found it. On the other hand, OnlyFan makes recommendations of other performers, and without previews it's hard to know if I'd be interested or not. I could search the performer's name and look for other content, but that step is something a lot of subscribers aren't going to take, so there will be less impulse purchases. If you have a paid subscription and download to use only for yourself for times when you don't have a good internet connection and can't view the stream, that seems ethical to me if retained only as long as you're paying for the subscription--there's no lost revenue to the performer or the site. It might not be legal, though. Downloading and keeping the content after cancelling the subscription seems neither ethical nor, surely, legal. But then it falls into the "who is going to find out" category, and that's a line I'm sure lots of people cross a lot of the time. In my case, there are a couple of videos that I wanted to rewatch and I kept my subscription in part to be able to rewatch them. Then they suddenly disappeared. So I was thinking it would be great if I had downloaded them--there's a kind of implied promise with this sort of service that the best content isn't going to disappear after (in one case) a few days of being posted. Meanwhile, I messaged the performer who said he was planning to reshoot and repost them. I'm looking forward to that, if not holding my breath!

Bumping because I’d like to know the answer myself.

Thanks from me, too. There’s one guy I’m currently subscribed to and two of his cum shot videos were removed, I assume by him or whoever is posting for him. Good idea to download my favorites.

That's interesting. For me, it's clear that the need for male bonding, including physical contact, and sex are distinct and intertwined. There's that joke that straight men go on a date to have sex, and gay men have sex to get a date. Working out with and around other guys and having straight and gay male friends that I'm open and physically affectionate with does fulfill a need that otherwise I might try to fulfill through a hookup. Took me a while to recognize that sometimes I was hooking up for needs other than hooking up. When I watch wrestling, MMA, etc., it often turns me on and the physical contact is so much like sexual play that it's easy to project that it's sexual for the guys doing it. When we had a wrestling unit in middle school, I was deathly afraid I'd get an erection. But to my surprise it didn't feel sexual at all when we did it. it felt like fighting!

I was married to a great woman for a number of years. She was well aware of and quite supportive of my attraction to men and for a few years we tried a relationship in which I'd have safe, non-attached contact with guys. It worked for a while, especially for me, as I allowed myself to enjoy it and not feel guilty. After a while, she realized it wasn't really working for her. We eventually got divorced while remaining close friends, and we've each remarried wonderful men. It's "natural" for some of us to want to marry a woman and have kids (definitely not natural for everyone, and certainly not for most of us here). I really enjoyed being married to a woman, and being part of the whole traditional (well, maybe for us it wasn't entirely traditional) family culture. Had same-sex marriage and same-sex couples raising kids been as big and accepted part of the culture in 1985 (when I got married) as it is now, maybe things would have been different. But maybe not! My inner life and sexuality? It's complicated. Kyle, you were quite clear--you love having sex with women AND being with muscular men (and I'm deducing/projecting that you either jerk off while exploring/watching or the other guy jerks you off while you feel his muscles, both of which I've enjoyed with muscle studs). You may find a woman who is cool with that. Life is interesting. Years ago I met another married guy in the small town where I live who wanted to explore his attraction to men. His wife encouraged it, especially because she had a thing going with another woman. He, sad but not surprisingly (especially 20+ years ago) was so conflicted he couldn't make it work for himself. We met once. A month--a month!--later he called me to say he couldn't see me anymore because "our relationship is taking up too much time and I need to be with my kids." Well, it was his obsessing about the possibility of a relationship that took up the time--we'd spent maybe an hour together, once. He's never, ever, made eye contact with me or returned a smile in the years since. (In a small town you can't help but run into just about everyone from time to time in the supermarket or, when our kids were kids, school functions, etc.). I always thought his wife would have had an easier time if he'd just found a guy to have sex with and accepted himself. There's another guy I know who seems happily married in many ways. Loves his wife, kids, and grandkids. He used to hit on me all the time, until I married a guy and told him we were monogamous. He says he and his wife hadn't had sex in many years, and that she says she doesn't like it (which is not surprising, knowing him). She looks the other way, and they have an older-generation don't ask, don't tell sort of thing going. Not optimal, but couples find their own ways of adjusting to realities. You, Kyle, may well find your desires and comfort level evolve overt time, which is also quite "natural!" And I agree with everyone who has said there's no need to label yourself. Letting go of labels is freeing. You are who you are.

There hasn't been a thread on poppers for a year or so (that I can find), and I didn't see in that one that anyone recommended an online source to buy poppers. If, like me, you use poppers on occasion, and you have a reliable online source, I'd be glad for information. I live pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Thanks in advance!

Which cam site did you find him on?

My (Asian) husband is 26 and looks like a teenager, and some guys photograph younger than they look in real life. I would definitely check the ID!

There are guys who will fuck and suck with a hokup, but not kiss, because it's too intimate.

Definitely. I have a nice belly and otherwise am not too bad to look at. My now 20-year-old friend in NY texts me occasionally wanting me to come visit, and my 22-year-old wants to get married. Sigh. It does get better, lol! My kids, who are almost-21 and 23, are not thrilled with the idea of a 22-year-old potential stepfather! So there are challenges.

The vast majority of guys in their late teens and twenties may be into guys their own age, but there is a nice subset of the age group with a thing for older guys. I'm 53. Winter/spring on 2011 I was living in NYC, and hooked up (for free, mind you) with a number of guys from 19--early 30s. Last fall I began a relationship with a guy then 21, now 22, and we are still together. (He's a short, slender guy from China who looks like he might be 16 or 17. Remarkably big cock, too.) So I don't feel "dead" yet, by any means!