“I certainly shan’t hold my hand, when I can get anything in it by reaching it out…” —A Christmas Carol, Stave Four;
Books show us a world, and perhaps friends, we might otherwise never reach out for. Well, here we are, with some after-thoughts in no special order but which occurred to me while putting all this together:
Fifty-two: that's all I have from my notes of long ago. I realize it stops abruptly but I didn’t have any more to work with.
And I get that all this might be a little boring at times. But I didn’t set out to make a novel (I’m not that good a writer) but to document my experiences and thoughts about it. I even thought briefly about doing this as a graphic novel, even hinting the idea to an illustrator friend who hasn’t the time. But I’m not an illustrator; and to become one, to draw even stick figures as consistently as XKCD, I’d have to get a lot better, really good a lot better, so text only will have to do.
You see, my original list, which I kept from 1986 to the middle of 2001, has 124 names. I didn’t stop having sex in 2001, of course, I just stopped writing down the names. This book includes a write-up of sex with only the first 52 on this list—not like a deck of cards—but because, according to the computer file’s date-time stamp, in the late 1990s, I typed the basic notes while I could still remember enough details, and then stopped. Not sure why I stopped. I guess I just moved on. But if I hadn’t written any notes at all back then, I’d have no clear memories of those times whatsoever and you wouldn’t be reading this. Now, thirty years later, even I have to take my own word for what I was doing back then. (And, OK, 54 if you count Nurse Bear's partner, and Travis's boyfriend, perhaps better terming the notches as episodes.)
You may have noticed that I ramped it up after I started wearing contact lenses at the end of 1991. In 1991 I had three different sex partners, which averaged to one new encounter every four months. But after getting contacts (or whatever happened to me then), I had sex with about 15 different men each year, which averages to roughly a new sex partner about once every three weeks—and that’s not counting repeats. Maybe a brand-new sex encounter every three weeks isn’t a lot for some, especially in these days of PrEP and social media, but it sure was for me back then.
No, I don’t keep a list anymore! But I do still have the original piece of paper with the names written in a code I made up (in case anyone ever found it). And now, the latter 72 names on my list are just names. For all but a few exceptions, I can’t remember anything about what we did, where we were, or even the faces of those men.
I can remember a few scattered moments from encounters with those other 72, but not enough to re-create the encounter. For example, there was the bear from the Yukon (yes, that Yukon) who came to visit me after we met through Bear411 and who hadn’t been with anyone in months and who went absolutely eye-rolling bonkers when I merely slipped one hand down his pants. Or the bear couple who took me home, then under better lighting discovered I was wearing mascara and accused me of being a fake (I suppose they were technically correct). Or at the old Rawhide bar in New York, the extremely cute, young bear cub screwing up his courage to touch my chest and chat me up just as a violent fight broke out in the bar around us. And so, on and on, with similar, flashes of memories from adventures with men attempted, succeeded, or failed.
Assuming there’s room for more and just for the (my) fun of it, these are a few of my more memorable sex experiences in the years long after the encounters in this book:
- in a canoe in Maine.
- jerking off a friend while he was driving on the highway—just keep your eyes on the road!
- in an outdoor shower with bear cub who picked me up on the beach.
- at a party with a guy and finding nothing in the kitchen to use as jerk-off lube except rancid Crisco (it worked).
- on a sailboat in the Caribbean.
- with a Catholic priest in his rectory apartment.
- at home with a young hottie who wolf-whistled repeatedly at me from his car (c’mon, who could refuse that?)
- at home with an older hottie I picked up in Bed, Bath and Beyond (the ploy: asking for towel recommendations).
- in Philadelphia, bound and gagged an entire weekend as a hard-core BDSM bottom in his basement dungeon.
- with a coworker playing tie-up in my own basement dungeon.
- ten minutes after arriving at a gay campground, with a guy who stalked me into the communal showers and slipped his dick up my ass.
- next morning, same campground, with a guy who blew me so energetically, he triggered his own gag reflex and vomited all over my cumming cock. Yes, ew.
- with a guy at his house who had a newspaper photo taped to his refrigerator, of me hanging off a float in a DC gay pride parade.
- with a role-playing “pizza delivery guy” who wanted to be “forcibly” tied down, then “forced” to cum. (I chewed a slice of pizza I smeared on his naked chest as he “struggled.”)
- with an unbelievably adorable and cuddly former Broadway dancer (with the body to show for it) who raised horses.
- after I walked up to a motorcycle guy I had admired for years, and just planted a kiss in front of his biker friends (ya gotta be bold, people!).
- with a mustachioed Frenchman in a gay Palm Springs hotel.
- many more “anonymous” blow jobs or jerkoffs in dark bars, dances, bathhouses, and resorts. (I never had sex in a restroom or a public park, however.)
- with men I met through Bear411, Bear magazine personals, Craig’s List, Silverdaddies, Scruff, Recon, Bateworld, and Whappz (but never Grindr, A4A, or Sniffies; I do have some standards).
- but NOT with a guy who wanted me to, I kid you not, squat over his face and shit in his mouth as he jerked off. No, but thanks. I politely got dressed and left. (I suppose it wouldn’t have killed me to oblige but if I had, you can bet there would have been no good-bye kiss.)
So, yes, I went on having sex, though maybe with a little less fervency as the years passed, but perhaps more creatively—the list above.
Who, you are still asking, am I? I’m a gay white male, tall, generally slim, and of course with a beard and mustache. More than a few men have called me good looking or kissed my hand. (I never knew gay hand kissing was a thing.) Whatever the compliment, I smile demurely like Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca and say, “You’re very kind.”
Occasionally, when I was still wrestling with “it’s not me,” I fretted also that I might never have children, that my bloodline would end with me. I pictured being at a gathering of all the men of my paternal line, going back thousands of generations to even Africa, looking at me and saying, “That’s it??” It was a powerful wish and feeling but one I worked through without a lot of difficulty—I’m not really that special—and that was that.
In the late ‘90s—well after the encounters in this book—I found a bunch of new friends in DC, apart from friends I met through Adventuring. A group of bears, mostly about my age, had been meeting for a few years each Friday after work for drinks and dinner, and one day a friend invited me along. It was for me the start of a regular bear happy hour, and these guys turned out to be funny, happy, smart, and some of the finest people I will ever know. I was grateful for their friendship and camaraderie, and grateful that on Fridays, I no longer had to figure out what to do after work.
Over the next few years, more and more guys found us and started coming. Eventually the Friday happy hours got so well attended that the group broke into two and went to another bar. The original group I started with pretty much stayed together, remaining a group of friends who simply met Fridays after work. But one enterprising newbie branded the other, spun-off group as the DC bear happy hour, with advertising, merchandise, a web site, and so on. (Years later, others in the branded group to whom I talked were surprised to learn the bear happy hour group had its origins much further back, in the mid-90s.) I’m still friends with the guys I first met, in the original group, and still enjoying the cocktails I learned to love—forever favorite: a rye Manhattan, up and stirred.
Also around this time, I met a bear who was visiting DC and we dated for several years. It was a long-distance relationship and we made dates out of meeting for trips together, for example, going to Aspen Gay Ski Week. But since neither of us wanted to move, we eventually called it off and lost touch. He found a lover-partner-person and they moved in together, and I remained single.
But after a few years, their relationship ended, and by chance and out of curiosity, around that time, I just happened to look him up on social media and discovered he was single again. So, I wrote a quick “remember me?” postcard to the address I had (still saving old contact lists), and we got back together. After a few years of long-distance dating enabled by long-distance telework plus his warm requests for me to “be the one” and calling me “partner,” I moved there, despite my thoughts of his inconsistency and dishonesty (read: secret sex partners). It ended, he preferring to find a life through quick hook-ups on social media; but worse, mocking me (claiming “guilt” yet refusing to show any emotion, denying that his PC “friend” whom I thought was also my friend was picking sides, shunning me, and goading my now-ex into an icy chill); and keeping a “scorecard” of secret criteria that I didn’t meet—here’s just one: I wore cargo shorts. Hard to believe anyone could turn mean and choose to just discard a relationship instead of working on it.
But hey, I tried, and perhaps longer than I should have given the respect for him I was losing, once again learning painful lessons about trust and loyalty as someone I loved secretly changed the locks on me. Indeed, one of his former, other long-term lovers, offering sympathy, later told me that he “never did understand what motivated him.”
Time passes. I’ve continued to explore BDSM. There was a walled-off corner in my basement I used as dungeon play space, and outfitted it with chains, wrist and ankle cuffs, candles, and other accoutrement. (I could so give a seminar on how to equip a dungeon at The Home Depot.) I enjoyed it for many years and given the parade of the eager men I, shall we say, entertained, I was apparently quite good at providing such services. But even that was a while ago and I gave all that up.
Furthermore, I don’t stay out late anymore, hunting for men. Those old days of hanging out at the Eagle or the dances are long gone. Yet I still hope, perhaps stupidly now, for something—someone—in a loving, long-lasting, and most of all, trustworthy home.
It shouldn’t take much math to figure out I started having sex later than most―and started to come out for real even later than that. I used to be embarrassed at being a late bloomer, but I’ve come to look at it this way: If I’d been having sex in high school or college, in the late 1970s and early 80s, with the same acceleration as in my 1990s, I could very likely be dead of AIDS. Far from feeling smug, I’m humbled and grateful to be alive when so many others are not. I count my blessings. For once, Edna Mode, fortune favored the un-prepared.
Re-reading and editing these events was very powerful for me. Some of the time I distinctly felt as if I was back that age again, horny and lonely and trying to find my life, all over again. I so much want to say it was cathartic and healing, but it was also disorienting and even frightening, which I was not expecting.
Also, I began to note with some discomfort that this was all stacking up like a classic of serial promiscuity: seducing the next willing stranger (and now, hoping the past doesn’t hold my future). However, these descriptions of my sexual encounters are not balanced by equal descriptions of weeks or months of feeling lonely or frustrated or dating someone and enjoying the time, especially before I began to understand and accept not just my orientation but also my feelings… and to calm down. In fact, as I got older, I began to desire stability over endless searching. Agriculture over hunter-gathering. I want to grow old in peace with someone to care about. I don’t seek anyone’s approval.
I didn’t recount very much about the times I somehow let go of a wonderful man, someone who was decent and seemed genuinely interested in me. (And I’m not the only one, still seeing others turn away from good people because of a perceived imperfection or question ever so slightly off kilter.) I was young. I was careless. I was un-self-aware (probably still am). In the early 90s, I even attended a seminar held by DC’s Whitman-Walker about men dating men—much of it lost on me.
I think about the ones to whom I didn’t really give a fair chance for something good and long lasting, but should have. Ones who maybe had love to give but I couldn’t see it. Ones with whom I might have built a lasting relationship for my life—maybe I was afraid of the way I love you.
I was lucky to not merely have had sex but some very good sex. Sometimes I found out something good or bad about myself, or about other men, or about gay culture. Sometimes I met men who knew me better than I knew myself. I’ve had (and I’m sure I caused) my share of hurts, lost a piece of my heart, or occasionally found a friend.
More often as not, I had sex with someone but neither of us was interested in a repeat. Once I dated a man who later found a relationship with a friend I introduced—or so I thought, because I was not invited to an eventual gathering of all his past “dowager empresses.” Well.
Still, to paraphrase Queen Elizabeth, I don’t look back on these times with undiluted pleasure. More and more I see also the mistakes and the carelessness; not seeing my story as only a jovial one. I would tell my past self to think more and just “be” more, and be patient. But whatever I think now, I have to live with it—there’s a lesson.
I was a little torn about numbering each encounter in this book for fear it would make it all look even more like frantic scorekeeping, which I wasn’t doing (apart from simply keeping a list, or the overall notch metaphor which is mainly an attempt at humor). But I decided to go with the numbering after all because it helps reflect the passing parade better than just a series of names.
To close a loop: According to a 2018 study in Australia, about 20 percent of men in the study had a penis with some curve and about a third of those had a curve or bend of 30 degrees or more. A curve can be there naturally or have a specific etiology, like scar tissue. OK, then.
So, what meaning might I myself glean from these encounters of long ago? I'm not sure though I reflected on it a great deal as I assembled these pages. I know I grew up a lot in those years and strove to accept myself, for good or bad, to gaze deliberately at both the good and bad, what things to keep or fix in myself. But I've always tried to peel away the onion layers of myself in search of the real me beneath the artifice. That's not much of an insight, I know. (I loved Philosophy 101 in college, but I was never much of a philosopher.) Maybe, at the very least, I grew from scrutinizing to recognizing. Still, it’s difficult to understand your experience while you’re experiencing it, to see who you are in real time.
Recognizing—once, late at night, I stopped in at a crêpe place in DC for a snack before heading home. The guy on the griddle was nice a looking Latino, and we made eye contact a couple of times. But he turned to his work as I went outside to eat, and I forgot about it. However, after a few minutes he wandered outside, perhaps on his break. He walked over and indicated if he could sit down, and as he sat, asked me in halting and noticeably hesitant English if I was gay.
I wouldn’t normally respond much to such a personal question from a stranger, but he struck me as sincere. I got the distinct feeling he was trying to reach out to someone but was nervous about being seen (I know the feeling). I answered yes to his question, and we chatted, still haltingly, for a moment before he had to get back to work. As he turned to leave, I handed him my phone number and said to call me, we could talk. I never heard from him and wondered if he ever found what he was looking for.
Being out, as a state of being separate from coming out, can be very powerful. Once, after a pride parade, a friend and I went to a hotel (and non-gay) bar for a cocktail before heading home. Two other, younger guys came in also, and we four started talking. It became apparent these other two were straight men but had gone to the parade also, just because they wanted to see it. It also became apparent that they didn’t care if we were gay or straight: My friend and I were just two other guys also having a drink. Suddenly the feeling of being “OK” hit me again, like the time I came out in my office. But this time, however, I was overwhelmed by the feeling of being accepted and respected by these two strangers as whatever I was, and I had to turn away for a moment, quietly crying.
I don’t feel this book’s sexual encounters of mine are anything to be embarrassed about. OK, I got crabs once; I got gonorrhea once (in my urethra; presumably from someone's mouth since I never fucked without a condom)—I’m hardly alone. If nothing else, I tried to be kind and honest even if I was thoughtless at times. And I’m not defending my history. One-night stands and anonymous encounters are and will always be common among people of all types, not just gay men. Call me promiscuous if you’re fond of throwing that particular stone (or if you’re secretly jealous, ha), but don’t forget that all you really know is what I provided of these few curated moments out of my otherwise unfabulous social life. In other words, don’t pin your college doctoral hopes on me.
But if you’re that determined to get all “you’re a bad person” judgmental on data this skimpy and anecdotal, then maybe thinking isn’t your forte. I’ve always practiced safe sex and now PrEP. There are many men, gay or straight or someplace in between, more carefree or promiscuous as well as many less so, but all making hopefully sane if not good choices. I’m not “the one” but I am one of the many. You probably know many, too, even if you don’t know it.
Finally, if you’re reading this and you’re new to all this gay stuff like I was once, or otherwise not sure about what you’re “supposed” to do, I have one piece of advice (besides not listening to Republicans and other ignorati):
Just get up and WALK AWAY if you’re uncomfortable.
By that seemingly facile statement, I mean, know that you do not have to do anything with anyone that you’re not ready to do. Do not let anyone manipulate you. For example:
I guess don’t need to spell this out any further, but I feel “WALK AWAY” is a good way to end.
Author Barbara Kingsolver said, “Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.” Works for me.
And if you liked this memoir, thanks! You’re very kind—did I say?
(By the way, this entire blog is also a book. Search for "Notches BJ Moore" on Amazon.)
Bonus Feature: My Mom’s Baked Chicken As mentioned in "Notch 51: Oliver."
Preheat oven to 375F, center rack. If co-baking potatoes, put them in now as oven preheats.
Crush a long row of “Saltines” crackers into coarse crumbs (exactly how much depends on the number of chicken parts, but you’ll want a lot). Pat dry each chicken piece (breasts, thighs, drumsticks), and liberally coat each piece with beaten egg. Roll or cover each chicken piece in lots of crumbs, arrange in a lightly oiled metal baking pan.
Sprinkle garlic powder, black pepper, and paprika on each piece to taste. Mix any leftover crumbs with any leftover egg and spread over the chicken pieces, dust the new crumbs also with the spices. Cover with tin foil.
Optional: put in refrigerator until ready to bake.
Bake 45 minutes (an hour for large pieces). Cut open a thick piece to check the juices run clear (or use a meat thermometer according to directions). Uncover for the last ten minutes to brown the tops.
Serve with buttered baked potato, green salad, and the object of your desire. Sprinkle any extra browned crumbs on the salad.
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