Whippoorwill

t Tiit Helimets, danseur

The late porn star Al Parker had a surgical foreskin restoration. I just looked up his last video, Overload, Falcon Studios 1992, and the trailer shows shots of the "after." I knew Al at the time...it looked and worked just fine, but the pain during recovery was excruciating. IMO, it looked and worked just fine before the surgery also. From the Al Paker Wikipedia entry: "Parker was one of the interview subjects of Dr. Dean Edell, who reported a surgical procedure that sought to restore Parker's foreskin from his at-birth circumcision.[10] The surgery was performed by Dr. Ira Sharlip, a urologist. The report was broadcast on television."

i noted that a few weeks ago Bjorn Andresen died at age 70. He was the blonde teenage actor (on the right in photo) who played Tadzio, the lissome highly sexualized youth in (openly gay) Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice, based on the novella by the same name penned by (bisexual pedophile) Thomas Mann. This naturally bring my mind back to Venice, Italy, often called La Serenissima. Serene, my foot. It is no accident that Venice is known variously as the City of Love (move over Paris) and the Queen of the Adriatic. Casanova, Ernest Hemingway, and other authors far and wide have sung of Venice's seething sexuality. In my experience Venice is full of queens of the Adriatic. I was first there when I was 20, going across Europe with a backpack, and trying hard to avoid all the feelings that kept welling up about my peers and their cocks. My goal was to not jerk off all summer. Enter Venice...and..."the best laid plans of men," and all that. My friends and I were staying in a cheap pensione, with "shower down the hall." As it happened, there was a window in the shower, looking out on a small light well, chest height up. As I was showering one afternoon, there was a youth in the building across the light well also showering...a blonde northern Italian, maybe my age. Our eyes locked on each other, and soon we were both jerking off, imagining our lips interlocking and our penises rubbing together. Wham. Bam. Pow. So much for my summer resolution. One of my favorite Venice destinations is the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, housed in an 18th c. unfinished palazzo. This was the home of Peggy, and a series of artist husbands and lovers, and is now a museum that is home to her extensive collection of modern art. When you disembark from the vaporetto, you are greeted by a bronze statue, Angel of the City, of a man on horseback with his prominent erection begging you to grab it. (There is a similar one in the Getty Center in LA). The artist was Marino Marini, one of Peggy's many lovers, who was "artist in residence" in Peggy's bed for a while. Angel my foot. The story is that the phallus was originally removable (to function as Peggy's dildo when Marino couldn't get it up?) but it kept getting stolen so he had to weld it in. Peggy bragged that she had slept with over 1,000 men. Gay guys take note: we don't have a monopoly on that delightful hobby. The only piece of furniture in the museum is, tellingly, Peggy's bed...the headboard designed by another lover, Alexander Calder. It may be said that the history of modern art was written on this bed. Peggy was perhaps inspired by the once-popular Venetian practice of cicsbeo, where young women married older wealthy men, and by agreement, kept a young male stud close at hand for sexual services for the woman. Except in her case, she was the money, not some elderly cuckhold. Venice is a tight-knit renaissance-18th c. agglomeration of buildings and islands of no particular geometry, leaving corners and crannies just made for casual hookups. Knowing this, Venetian sidewalks are better lit at night than any other city I have visited. One night, some decades ago, I was prowling the city looking for a blowjob. And finally I found it...the cranny where some enterprising queen had unscrewed the light bulb. And indeed, when I arrived, he was lurking there waiting for his next victim. I was one happy victim. For all the seething sexuality of the city, there are no overt gay bars much less sex clubs, although of course the more stylish hotel bars attract birds of a feather. At some point, I was given (by a fuck buddy) a now-lost sex travel guide written by two gay Americans who had a van they traveled the world in, screwing locals day and night. The book pointed me to a public toilet just off the Rialto Bridge. This is the area of a busy public market and throngs of locals and tourists. Indeed, there is a proper public toilet nearby. But for the cognoscenti, there is (or at least was) a filthy (you're standing in urine) toilet literally attached to the side of a church, at which a jerk off, if not a blowjob, was virtually guaranteed. I loved that it was hiding in full view, and attached to a church to boot. Of course, we have since learned that were there are priests there is a lot of gay sex going on. But back to Death in Venice. It takes place in the Lido, one of the outer Venetian islands reachable by vaporetto. In the story (novella, movie, and opera all by the same name) an elderly German composer (played by Dirk Bogard, who himself was gay and living with a lover) is smitten with the youthful somewhat flirtatious Tadzio, which leads to the elder's throwing caution to the wind and ultimately dying from the plague. A couple of decades ago I had my own Lido Death in Venice experience. No, I didn't die of the plague, but I went to the Lido both to take in the rays and to cruise the nearby woods (as noted in that gay sex travel guide). On the beach there was a remarkable scene...seven or eight teenaged Tadzio's, in the skimpiest of Speedos, playing, dancing, wrestling, and literally dry humping each other on the beach for all to see. I snapped a bunch of pictures, lest no one ever believe such a sight. (Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I threw out all my sex pictures in a fit of housecleaning at the start of the Covid lockdown.) I was however unsuccessful in luring any of them into the woods. They undoubtedly were going to one of their houses to fuck each other's brains out. If I were them, I wouldn't have paid any attention to me either. The next morning, I took one last cruise around the city before I left. Not a block from my hotel, I saws a magnificent specimen, tall, dark, handsome, black curly hair, wearing a tight body shirt and revealing pants advertising his significant bulge. We took one look at each other, and he signaled me to come down an alley and into his workplace, a clothing warehouse. We instantly tore each other's clothes off, and my god did he have the dick of death. There among the racks of women's frocks, he fucked me mercilessly, and I limped out one happy camper. This was years ago, but it is one of those experiences I will never forget. Yes, Venice, Queen of the Adriatic...a city of fond memories that continue to inspire the occasional jerk off.

If you check Karl Kang’s Instagram you will see that Karl and Kuay are besties.

Agree. IMO, they don’t come any better than Karl Kang. DM me is you want to discuss more.

When I grew up in the 1950s, not only was nudity the practice in the locker room and showers, but all swimming at the YMCA was nude…separate days for men and women. In those days, swim suits were wool with cotton belts. The cloth shed and gummed up the primitive filtration systems. So swimsuits were forbidden in the pool. No one thought anything of it. People grew up in large families with only one bathroom, so everyone grew up seeing siblings and parents naked. Kids from the country grew up swimming naked at the swimming hole. High schools and college dorms had separate sex facilities but it was always gang showers. Anyone who demurred would have been mocked mercilessly. Somehow the religious fanatics succeeded in convincing the current generations that the human body is sinful. I find that attitude sick.

I usually find the masseur’s hot cock in my hand does the trick.

Absolutely, go for it next time.

Not sure where you are flying from, but a transcontinental flight and difference of several time zones would suggest you might be ready to pass out after some play time and an orgasm. Do you really want to pass out, dead to the world, with a virtual stranger in your hotel room?....2hrs max.

71 out of 90

Yeah, don't make it weird, it doesn't need to be. San Francisco, my hometown, is a small place, and over the years my regular masseurs and I inevitably bump into each other. Give a nod of recognition, or say hi and move on, as you would with any other acquaintance. Neither you nor he have exclusive rights to the gym. You don't embarrass him, he doesn't embarrass you. Easy. Don't overthink it.

Graham Patrick Martin

Taylor Zakhim Perez and Nicholas Galitzine

Regarding the proper positioning on the toilet for easiest evacuation...I lived in the Middle East for two years, when pretty much all there was were squat toilets...basically a ceramic tile hole in the floor, with foot pads on either side. It took some months for the intestine to rearrange itself in order to achieve complete evacuation. And likewise, upon returning to the US, to rearrange itself for sit down toilets. The joke among expats was "When you get back to the States you'll be leaving footprints on the toilet seat for a couple of months,." And it was true.

T-Rooms are a sacred place...over thousands of years, many of us had our first gay experiences with a stranger there. Before gay was "in", before the internet, before porn was readily available, when you were too young to be in a bar...T-rooms opened a whole new world we had been unknowingly searching for our entire lives. They were a revelation, a source of first gay friends, a sex education manual. etc. Don't knock the practice.

Slightly off topic, but I have getting PT and the therapist wears rubber gloves and a mask. I hate it because he is a very cute 20-something year old hunk, and just my type. I can't figure if he is gay or straight. I see him through my HMO at no charge, and he is doing wonders with my issue. We are both fully clothed and doing nothing in the nether regions, but I really hate the barrier to touch. I have concluded he really needs to get the bejesus fucked out of him so he's not so germaphobic. Unfortunately, that won't happen with me.

I was mentioning this thread to some young(er) (early 60s couple) friends who had recently been to a pool party, hosted by an older couple they slightly know. Now in my day, pool party = orgy. I asked how it was...and the answer was "Lots of handsy old guys, and a sprinkling of young bucks who obviously wanted to be there. We're so glad that these guys are still going for it...the flesh may sometimes be weak but the spirit was there." Thank goodness there are still holdouts from the purity police.

It's called reading the room. Gay bars, baths, clubs, etc. are places to be with other gay men...that's why they exist, that's why we go there. What each of us are looking for at any moment in any venue, we generally signal with our body language, our dress, our eyes, etc. It takes being alert to what we are signaling to others, and what they are signaling to us. Mistakes are made...but take it as a learning experience, both ways.

On my first European trip, in 1964, almost all hotels, in all countries, kept your passport the first night. Always made me nervous.

42 +/-

My first visit to the then-Soviet Union was during Perestroika, when the country was beginning to open up. I was on a month-long cultural exchange, and the first quick stop was one night in Moscow. I was bunking with a gay (platonic) friend from the U.S., and during our training had met several other gay guys in the group. Having grown up during the Cold War, I/we imagined all kinds of terrible things about the country, including a dangerous homophobia. (Even my mother had warned me about picking up tricks there!) Imagine our surprise when we arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport and up walks our tour manager Dimitri, who was blasting out gay vibes in all directions. Could this really be? (Indeed he was a screaming queen, and later followed me back to the States, but that is another story). We got signed into our hotel, giving up our passports, and several of us went to check out the Bolshoi Ballet. We were in luck...Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake was playing that night and there were tickets available. We got seats in one of the mid-level balconies, where the whole stage was in full view, if a bit far away. It was magnificent. During the intermission, we wandered to the lobby and were amazed to find not only a bar serving champagne and other alcoholic delights, but an elaborate dessert buffet laid out...and...all free (or I should say, included in the admission ticket price). I imbibed a couple of coupes of champagne and a sampling of beautiful petits fours. Before heading back to my seat, I thought it prudent to stop in the Gent's, and what a surprise awaited! There were all kinds of fun and games going on at the urinals. As a new face in town/American, a bevy of young gentlemen descended on me. I couldn't believe it, but even visions of my exile to Siberia didn't stop me from grabbing a luscious uncut cock in each hand as another guy went down on me. It was either so crowded in there, or straights were just obliviously going about their business, or this particular mens' room was the designated orgy zone, but no one batted an eye. Eventually two guys, a gay couple, invited be back to their dacha for the night. This was too much for even me...would I be murdered in bed, or arrested by the KGB, sent to Siberia, or kidnapped and never make it back to my hotel in time for the next day's flight to the provinces? In one of the few times I ever exhibited such good judgement, I declined, despite continuing advances. If it hadn't been during my first few hours in the country, I would have gone for it...the USSR turned out to be filled with gay guys ignoring their government just as much as we ignore ours when it comes to dick. But alas, it took a few days of getting the lay of the land, and confiding with Dimitri, to be my usual slut, there in the land of the hammer and sickle.

I am fortunate enough to live in San Francisco, so no need to import boys from elsewhere. When I am in Honolulu I typically meet traveling boys from Los Angeles, who also travel to San Francisco on occasion. I always think about doing a reprise with them in S.F., but tend not to because my local squeese(s) keep(s) me busy. Ah, enjoying this plentitude of riches.

Many of us say we want to live only while we are healthy, active, have our marbles, etc...and that we will know when it's time to go, and will let go. Would that we will be so lucky. Having seen many friends die of AIDS in the '80s and '90s, and now of the diseases of old age, if you want to control whether or not you have a good death, you have to die before you are ready. That is, stop eating and drinking, stop taking your meds, or actively kill yourself while you still are lucid enough and well enough to do so. I have seen people, after a lifetime of saying, let me die when it's time, hang on for months or years because they no longer have the mental acuity or physical strength to do the deed. If you are taken to an emergency room, their remit is to save you, no questions asked. They don't ask for your Advance Health Care Directive. If you are in a Senior Living Center, every time you sneeze, you're surrounded by a phalanx of medical professionals intent on keeping you alive. If you are asked if you want treatment, chances are you will say "yes" even though in your former right mind the answer would have been "no." States that have end of life option laws are a great help, but even then...in California where I live, you have to request the drug twice, 48 hrs apart, then make the request in writing, then sign a consent to the pharmacy, then get someone to get the drug from the pharmacy, then take it yourself. Many people lose the ability to complete all the steps, and end up lingering for weeks or months. My only question is, will I have the mental strength to do myself in before it is physically necessary? I hope so.

A major reason many people (like us) use hotel rooms is for "illicit" sex of one kind or another. Everyone knows and no one cares as long as your screams of ecstasy don't disturb the neighbors or you pull the chandelier out of the ceiling hanging on it. Oh yes, for the sake of the maid, strip the bed and wrap the sheets around the towels and leave on the floor...the maid knows what that means.

It's good to know that there's nothing new about debauchery The Sublime Sewer Club - The Gay & Lesbian Review GLREVIEW.ORG