Today’s Bisexual Thoughts: 21 April 24 @ 1052 Hours

My brain seems to be stuck on being nearly deliriously happy that I didn’t become bisexual as an adult. I’ve learned over all this time that bisexuality can land on someone “out of nowhere” or what they call bisexual latency wakes up after being dormant for x-amount of time and says, “Okay – time for you to be bisexual!”

There was a time when I thought that being bisexual was confusing as anything I was aware of but I got to see guys who got bitten by the bisexuality bug – and why they didn’t isn’t important at this moment – who found themselves immediately in over their heads because their thoughts and feelings were seriously clashing with our socioreligious norms and being aware of the angst against homosexual men and, here of late, bisexual men which, from where I’m sitting, is the same old shit from way back in the day and all that really happened is they changed the “title” of the angst, tossed in some uniquely bisexual concerns and now there are a lot of men coming into their bisexuality at this point in their lives and having to deal with all of this shit and… so many are barely treading water because while the aforementioned crap makes it hard for a guy to accept that he’s bisexual, so many guys are buying into the more homoromantic aspects of bisexuality and, yeah, like bi guys are gay guys.

I didn’t have to deal with that crap. My biggest concern was not getting caught having sex with a guy, followed by some guy I did it with being a blabbermouth and telling everyone he knew what we did and, sheesh, now they’re all up in my grill and asking questions that aren’t any of their damned business and, no: I am not gay and I don’t know what makes you think that I am.

Oh, it’s because I have sex with guys and, excuse me, but did you miss the part where I love the shit out of the ladies and pussy? Obviously, you have selective hearing but I learned to understand the why of this because we knew about gay dudes; we didn’t know shit about guys who went both ways and if we did, well, maybe now you can understand why it’s said that bisexuality is just being on your way to being gay and it still irks the shit out of me that my “gay side” is the only part of my bisexuality that a lot of people pay attention to – and all because of the great angst toward homosexuals and homosexual men in particular.

By the time I got to be an adult, society hadn’t learned anything of value about sexuality other than ranting and raving against homosexual men and women, which had some of these folks pitching a bitch about straight people and, oh, yeah, bisexuals, too, and I would come to think that my being bisexual often confused gay folks because like so much of society and the world at large, people were either straight or they were gay and here I am essentially telling someone that I’m both – and they were unable to imagine this being true but who are you going to believe? Me… or society’s lying ass?

Prior to all of this – and it goes back to the halcyon days of being in high school – the only concern I had was being misidentified as being gay and not only being subjected to what I saw as a bunch of really stupid questions, but I had to be on guard about real homophobes wanting to “teach me a lesson about being gay and how real men are supposed to be” and, in their ignorance, they couldn’t understand that, yes, I have sex like a gay dude – but I’m not a gay dude and if you don’t believe me, go ask your sister or, sometimes, yeah, go ask your girlfriend if she thinks I’m gay.

Of course, back then, it was deemed to be seriously impossible that a gay dude would want to be sexually intimate with a female and, yeah, even I believed it until, many years later, I met a gay dude who admitted enjoying getting some pussy, you know, not that it was something he did all of the time. Even as early as the beginning of junior high school, I was learning so much about homophobia and the ongoing social angst toward homosexual men and how it was impacting all kinds of social interactions and, yeah, including the sexual ones and it was all fascinating to me to find myself immersed in this while not really being a part of it because I knew I wasn’t gay. By the time I got out of junior high school, I not only knew who I was a person, I knew what I was and got all settled into my bisexuality by… not paying attention to all of the dumb shit that everyone else still believed in.

And being “floored” to learn that (1) bisexuality has always been with us and (2) we – the world – still hadn’t learned anything from our sexual history except to foment and promote hatred and even violence toward anyone who wasn’t straight and the continued belief that if you weren’t straight, you had to be gay.

And finding out that there were gay dudes who didn’t like me because I wasn’t gay. So now, bisexuals were getting “da bizness” from both sides of the track and it’s just humans behaving badly as usual and nothing to see here and nothing to really be worried about because, growing into adulthood, I had a lot of things going on that were more important than paying attention to some bullshit that I knew wasn’t true.

I… tend to feel some kind of way to see adult males who are just now coming into their bisexuality and falling victim to both the old bullshit and the new and fresher piles of bullshit being laid down ever since that damned article by the New York Times put out that “confirmed” that bisexuality was very real. Well, duh – do you think? There was already a lot of shit that bi guys (in particular) had to deal with and this revelation just brough more bullshit and the providers of the bullshit going out of their way to make everyone believe that straight folks were the source of this new hatred… and that’s not entirely true as I learned that some gay folks still had some bones to pick with bisexuals and still about bisexuals not being homosexuals. The LGB community had geared up and making in-roads toward forcing society to treat homosexuals like everyone is treated, i.e., straight folks and this was all good until the LGBTQ+ community was heard to say that bisexuals don’t belong in the community because we have a straight privilege and, as such, we didn’t share the problems that lesbians and gays were still facing.

Except we were… in stereo. I’m sitting back in the cut and watching, with my jaw on the floor, people making up shit about what they think bisexuality is and how it’s supposed to be and attempting to erase bisexuality and not unlike society’s been trying to erase homosexuality all of this time and they’ve failed to do so and I wonder what makes society think that they can erase bisexuality… with words? Just because you think bisexuality isn’t real doesn’t mean that it isn’t. I understood this but I see the impact of this… insanity on bisexuals today and, yeah, I’m seriously glad that I didn’t have to deal with this bullshit when I became bisexual.

I see bi guys fussing and worrying about shit that makes no sense to me, like knowing damned well that you’re bisexual and insisting that the definition doesn’t apply to you or, as I’ve been saying, trying to convince others – and maybe even yourself – that you’re not the duck you’ve been quacking like or otherwise losing their ever-loving minds buying into the nonsense being distributed via social media that, upon further review, only serves to make being bisexual a hell of a lot more confusing that it already was – and seeing so many guys making being bisexual harder on themselves than is reasonable or even necessary.

It’s like this. If you’re bisexual, you like boys and girls for sex, love, and/or relationships but those three things aren’t as mutually inclusive as we’ve been led to believe but that’s the very simple and basic way to describe bisexuality… until you hear how everyone else is describing it and putting their own spin on it and… what the fuck is going on? I have sat back and watched the dynamics of male bisexuality undergo major changes, most of them good, some of them that fall into the WTF category. Now you were either a top or a bottom, but you’d better not be an effeminate bottom which was just a continuation of the great hatred of effeminate gay men and, yeah, especially the more flamboyant ones who just flaunted their homosexuality in everyone’s face – and society wasn’t feeling it then or now.

Today, tops are wondering where all these submissive bottoms came from and the submissive bottoms are wondering why there are no tops who wants to top them – and my private thought that, um, if you weren’t acting like a woman, maybe more tops would top you since tops like their men… to act like men when taking the dick. It is not to say that sub bottoms aren’t men because they are but there’s a glut of sub bottoms that have been emerging and tops, well, they don’t seem to know what to do about them but I’ve also heard some tops say that they like their bottoms to be submissive… and in ways that I know I’d never be or do and as I keep picking my jaw up off the floor and, oh, yeah, I’m not a bottom; it seems that my being versatile – I can top and bottom – is like a dying breed although there seems to be a reemergence of guys looking for guys who are willing to flip flop and… there is so much shit in the game that it’s no wonder so many bi guys today are having problems trying to wrap their head around it.

I grew up in a time where if you were bisexual, you just wanted to have sex with a guy and… that was it because anything else – being in a relationship – was way too gay. Yeah, I found out first-hand that it isn’t but casual sex ruled the roost but not only has that changed but there’s a lot of fear attached to casual sex that takes things totally out of context and there are so many bi guys who believe that casual sex is the great evil and that the only safe sex is having a FWB relationship with a guy. When I saw this… move to normalize bisexuality, I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or not and, years after I noticed this, I’m still not sure if it’s a good thing or that it isn’t although when you take note of the gazillion of bi guys whining and complaining about not being able to find a man to have sex with, I’m thinking that this current mindset isn’t doing male bisexuality a lot of good because it seems to me that this “generation” of bisexual men don’t seem to understand that the way to get a FWB is… to have sex with guys until you find the guy who, in essence, wants to be your boyfriend or, to take the sting out of that, wants to be your suck and/or fuck buddy but with some strings attached.

And I continue to sit back and observe all of this taking place while scratching my head a lot. The number of bi guys I’ve seen who are also scratching their heads because they can’t make any sense out of the current raft of bullshit floating down the river and seeing it having more of a deleterious effect on these “modern bisexual” than it does on OG guys like me because I’m not the only bi dude from way back in the day who’s scratching their head and wondering what the dooflicky fuck is going on here… and some of them are asking me and… damned if I know.

I see it; I recognize it; I almost see the sense of it but it’s bisexuality the way a “changing society” wants it to be which, in my opinion, not the way bisexuality can be since, growing up back in the day, we didn’t have anyone trying to tell us how to be bisexual – other than don’t have sex with boys – and I don’t pretend to understand why a bi guy would be willing to let society dictate how he is to be bisexual and mandating relationship sex – and as it always has mandated and, well, think about that one because I have and… it doesn’t make sense since even I know that you don’t have to be in a relationship with anyone in order to have sex with them: You just have to want to and if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

Not only is this following the heteronormative way of doing things, guys are sitting on their asses and waiting for a ready-made FWB to drop into their laps. Even I knew from back in the day that if you wanted/needed a fuck or suck buddy, um, you had to interview guys for the job and I don’t mean just talking to them. You did your due diligence on the guy, slept with him, and if it was good enough for both of you, yeah, sure, not going to mind getting together again because it’s convenient and if you already have a buddy, you don’t need to get out there and look – and work – for another one.

It’s not that I think having an FWB is a bad thing; I just think it’s unrealistic that there are bi guys who want one but don’t want to do the work it takes to get one and because the way to do it, in their eyes, is just too dangerous and… what the fuck? Trying to have sex with anyone is inherently dangerous and always has been but it’s like I’ve been telling guys: Amazon doesn’t have FWBs; unless you’re stupidly lucky, an FWB isn’t just going to drop into your lap and he’s already perfect for you. Yeah, the apps available are a pain in the ass (and not the good kind) and guys have so much stranger danger these days that to suggest that they go hang out where guys hang out and get the lay of the land and see if you can get lucky is anathema to some (but not all) guys and… you still can’t get something for nothing.

There is still no such thing a free lunch even when it comes to bisexuality and that quest to get some dick or as I tell my protege, you gotta bring ass to get ass because, clearly, if you don’t, guess what you won’t be doing other than sitting on the toilet and beating your meat fantasizing about having sex with a guy? And some of the fantasies I’ve observed kinda makes my skin crawl – and I’ve seen and done some stuff that I still think of as being outrageous – but the difference here is that I did them and not just sat on my ass with my dick in my hand and daydreaming about it… and appearing to be scared shitless to get out there and actually do it.

More later – it’s time for playoff hockey!

 

Living With… Stuff: 17 April 24

Yep, still living with it!

Things with my throat are still iffy and it makes eating somewhat of a trial-and-error thing since my throat ain’t feeling acidic stuff, like tomato-based foods and, oh, yeah – lemonade. Gives me chills just thinking about that last one and more so when I had a dragonfruit/pomegranate drink the other day that I didn’t know had lemonade in it… until I took that second sip.

The first sip was tangy and not really all that sweet; the second sip had my throat on fire and I could taste the lemonade beneath the other two flavors and… fuck. I still drank the whole thing and I paid for it, but that dragonfruit/pomegranate pairing is actually pretty tasty.

Live and learn… and read the whole description. I’ve got an MRI coming up to see what the fuck is going on with my right shoulder and connected stuff; the orthopedist seems to think that maybe radiation zapped some nerves and caused some muscular atrophy and, yeah, it’s possible but just one more thing I gotta deal with in this post-treatment phase of, hopefully, kicking cancer’s ass.

When I had my stroke in 2006, it left me with neuropathy on my right side and from head to toes and it’s been a bitch dealing with the sensations that feel like pain and really wants to fuck with me when it’s cold because the neuropathy makes me think, say, that my right hand is freezing when, in truth, it isn’t; my left side is saying, “Dude, it’s not cold and your hand is nice and warm – stop bugging!” but there are too many times when my right side feels cold and convinces my left side that it’s cold – and all I can really do is laugh at how that works – but neuropathy is no laughing matter on the whole of things because there’s nothing that can be done about it other than taking medications that, at best, manage to take the edge off of the 24/7 pain.

Chemo was “nice” enough to give me neuropathy on my left side and it may or may not be permanent, which isn’t making me a happy camper because I feel the effects of neuropathy more… in my feet, which makes sense since they’re the farthest away from my brain. So, when I go to bed – and the time of year doesn’t make a difference – it’s bad enough that I have one foot that is trying to convince the rest of me that it’s freezing cold – now I have both feet doing it but when I touch my feet, both of them are nice a warm and I can find the pulse in my ankles so other than the neuropathy, everything’s fine.

Enter… the weighted blanket. I was on Amazon and ordering some more Carnation Instant Breakfast when my eye happened to catch a blurb about a weighted blanket and the blankets I was using, well, they weren’t really keeping me as warm as they used to but they’re old, been washed a lot, so I need a new blanket and… what’s the deal with a weighted blanket? I read that they can keep you warm or cool (yeah, not really but stay tuned on this one) and if you get one, you should get one that’s from 5 to 12% of your body weight and I said, “Fuck it – I’m gonna get one to see if (a) it keeps me warm (or cool) and (b) if it really helps you sleep better.”

So I got one and I got one that’s 12% of my body weight – go big or go home, right? – which means my weighted blanket weighs 20 pounds. I will admit, at this point, that I screwed the pooch with this blanket: It’s too short for me although weighted blankets, for some reason, are a little shorter than a normal blanket but I’m pulling the blanket up to cover more of the top of me and… I could see my feet so I wound up getting a new blanket that’s long enough to cover my feet and especially when I’m stretched out. Now the fun part: Moving a 20-pound blanket around and one that wants to keep sliding off my side of the bed.

With my older blankets, I could use my feet to pull them back up where they’re supposed to be… and that’s not as easy with a blanket that really does weigh 20 pounds. The blankets have pockets that are “filled” with glass beads and, yep, I can feel the little beads and, yep, they make moving the blanket around… interesting. And since misery loves company, I got my lady one, too – just sharing the love and all that. My poor feet… gets warmer faster with the weighted blanket but, man, moving it around is like wrestling with a small child… and it feels “weirdly comfortable” to have this weight on you and you’re sleeping and I’ve found myself being so comfortable that when I start to wake up, I… don’t want to get out of bed because the blanket is also quite comfortable although the blanket I replaced my first blanket with, well, it’s “fuzzy,” and I’m not sure if it’s the blanket or just the weird weather in our apartment but it does keep me warm… and then, it gets too warm and now I’m playing “wax on, wax off” with a 20-pound blanket.

I can verify that a weighted blanket will keep you warm but the part that says it can keep you cool? I don’t know about that part but what I do know is that the parts of me that are the most affected by neuropathy… seem to be quite happy with the weighted blanket. My lady and I both agree that “wrestling” with our weighted blankets is giving us some exercise to go along with being able to sleep comfortably and, for me, not feeling like I’m freezing when I’m not really cold, well, not until I manage to get from under the blanket and now, I’m in the cooler air of the room.

I’m sure there’s some science at work that makes sleeping under a weighted blanket a good thing to do and, normally, my inner science nerd would want to know all about it but, nah, not really and not this time; all I need to know is that I can be warm and comfortable under its weight and I do get some exercise when I need to pull it up or just moving it to make my side of the bed. To look at these blankets, they don’t look like they weigh as much as they do – and they do make them that weigh more than 20 pounds and come in all the sizes except California King – but who knows – someone probably makes one that size. I can’t imagine what it would be like to sleep under a blanket weighing 25 pounds or more when doing so under one that weighs 20 pounds is interesting enough.

Whether it’s going to keep being beneficial to me or not remains to be seen; what I do know is that I don’t have to worry about kicking the blanket off of me and onto the floor because kicking it around… ain’t that easy.

 

Today’s Bisexual Thoughts: 12 April 24 @ 1112 Hours

One of my many pet peeves that I’ll admit to is seeing guys who experimented – fooled around – with a male friend and blows it off like it didn’t mean anything, act like it never happened, or otherwise minimizes something that can be important in a guy’s development if they happen to wind up fooling around with another guy because not all guys experience this prior to adulthood.

Did I fool around with my male friends and other guys? Oh, hell, yeah, I did, and it was serious for most of us. Adult Me looks back to those very heady days and can see that having sex with a friend was not just experimenting but a form of bonding or friends becoming more than friends. I could also see that need to… be a part of the crowd and how different the gestalt was for those of us who were in the crowd and for those who were on the outside looking in as well as how clannish we could be as well as displaying an uncool human behavior: If you’re not like us, you’re against us.

Guys who didn’t want to have sex with any of us, well, you don’t have to leave but you can’t stay here. It wasn’t like they weren’t cool dudes to hang out with because most of them were but when dicks got hard, they’d get into the wind and no matter how much you tried to convince them that, really, it’s not as bad as you think it is but, okay, run away while we go somewhere and do it to each other. With our tribe, rejecting someone who wasn’t like us rarely got violent – and unlike what could happen with the other tribes that we weren’t aware of until our tribe – our Band of Horny Brothers – was formed and got up and running like the wind.

The truth is that fooling around like this just wasn’t for everyone and a lot of guys who tried it not only didn’t like it but went away with some degree of trauma and usually because whoever tried to do them didn’t care whether or not any of it was bothering them and, thankfully, we didn’t have any guys like that in our tribe – but we knew those asshats from other tribes who’d try to invade us and impose their will upon us. Some guys weren’t so much traumatized because of the sex but because they just couldn’t do it and now they weren’t going to be a part of the crowd and, no, not like they had to be but even Adult Me recognized that need to be accepted by friends and others even if it was quite wise to not let a potential friend know that you liked having sex with boys.

Now, for me, l wouldn’t say being a founding member of The Band of Horny Brothers was typical because we were kinda out there and when I say that we all went batshit crazy having the sex, I’m not kidding and it was very much like a contagious infection because most guys who tried it went crazy with it and right along with the rest of us. As I was allowed to roam the city, I’d encounter other tribes that was like ours but with some differences and I would sometimes run into a guy who wanted to be a part of his local tribe but they, well, they didn’t want him – but he wanted to have sex with a guy and, yeah, right time, right place and I felt that the guy’s local tribe was stupid not to admit him because his desire to have sex with a guy was usually pretty powerful and made having sex with them one hell of an experience.

One of the things about experimenting was that, of course, we weren’t supposed to do it; wasn’t supposed to know anything about sex and don’t you dare play with that thing (or place) between your legs! One of the contradictions was that if you were experimenting, if you weren’t ordered to cease and desist immediately if not sooner, well, dammit, you’d better give that shit up before you’re an adult! Many of the Band of Horny Brothers dutifully gave it up or they got that cease-and-desist order and it was going to suck to be you if you disobeyed it.

Chasing girls and trying to get the pussy is what we were expected to do – and even I was deep into the chase and learning more about socially interacting with girls but, yeah, you know it – if I couldn’t have sex with a girl, it wasn’t that big of a deal because there were always guys looking to get a blowjob or to sink their boner in my ass – and willing to give one and take my boner in their butt. The guys who walked away would often express regret for walking away and acted like they couldn’t get back into the game – but you kinda understood what growing up meant and once you walked away from something, there was no going back and more so when you had parents hammering home the male gender role and its responsibilities and how it all worked with women (don’t you dare keep calling them girls!) and we dutifully did what we were supposed to… without giving up our desire for a hard dick because while we were supposed to give it up, um, what if you didn’t want to?

If a guy fooled around, it was either a little or a lot and the details varied from doing the “show me yours” thing that could lead to another guy touching your prick at the least or stroking it to make it hard and, boy, did that ever feel good. Or it was right to sucking dick, and sometimes right to attempts at anal sex, most of which didn’t go all that well, yeah, it hurt like a motherfucker and let’s not do that again, okay? Some guys could lean more toward the romantic aspects – but not like gay dudes were and, besides, gay dudes were the Great Evil and even the Band of Horny Brothers knew that we weren’t gay because we weren’t like the one gay guy among us; he not only loved to have sex, but he was into cuddling and kissing and it’s how I learned that… I didn’t really like cuddling and kissing with guys.

What I was learning was that experimentation covered a lot of stuff and everyone’s experience was different, affected them differently, and who knew that this could be so complicated? I would read an article about how boys experimenting with each other was allowed because it prepared them for being able to have sex with a female and, yeah, I could see how that could work except you also learned – and very damned quickly – that females, well, you had to do a lot of work to (a) get them to have sex with you and (b) make them very happy.

Getting into the adult years and encountering guys who would admit that, yeah, they fooled around back in the day… but it didn’t mean anything and I’m wondering, “What do you mean it didn’t mean anything?” while they were loudly professing their love of females – and like they had better be doing lest they get singled out as being a faggot. I’d run into guys who fooled around but because they were busting a nut at the time, it didn’t mean anything and/or it just didn’t happen and… maybe it was just me but this sounded like a lot of serious denial because how can you do something and then say that it didn’t happen?

Well, I had plenty of opportunities to find out why and the stigma and abject hatred of homosexuals was directly responsible for this kind of denial – but what I also was finding out was that guys who fooled around back in the day were more like to… come back to the party than the guys who didn’t fool around back then – and those guys would often find it hard to get into the sex – at first or, for some, not at all.

I had a dislike for guys who did fool around and acted like they didn’t. It didn’t mean anything to them but, ahem, here they are asking me if I’ve ever had sex with a guy and it was clear to me that he’s asking because he wants to have sex with me and I admit to kicking the “denial dudes” to the curb because I felt insulted; oh, it didn’t mean anything when you and your boy were doing each other like there was no tomorrow but you denied that it ever happened – but you want me to blow you? To me, it was a matter of principle and it took some doing on my part to stop dissing dudes for something that, really, wasn’t their fault – it was the fault in the way we were being told what it means to be male and a man so, yeah, if you fooled around back in the day and now you’re all grown up, you categorically deny that you did – and enjoyed – something a lot of guys did and more so when gay dudes still didn’t have the best reputation in the world.

It just irks me to see guys saying that, yeah, they fooled around back in the day and immediately minimize the whole experience – and here they are in a forum for bisexuals and looking for cocks to suck and, I felt, unaware that the reason why they want to play with a dick is because they did so back in the day and, again, compared to guys who legitimately did not fool around but they’ve managed to get bitten by the bug just the same.

I had run into a guy who convinced me that if we were to go to his place and blow each other, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. We’re talking before the fact – and I’m using what I’m hearing to decide one way or the other – and he says that he always wanted to suck a guy’s cock but never had the chance. Well, we get to his place, the clothes come off and he made me feel like I’d been attached to a machine designed to suck dick! Come to find out that he lied to me about not having the chance to suck cock before and he had, in fact, fooled around for years with his best friend and… I felt some kind of way about that. I shouldn’t have and more so when I knew that guys will say anything they have to in order to get you naked and have their way with you.

He was magnificent; his fooling around experiences with his best friend made him that way and I asked him, “Why deny it?” and he immediately said, “I didn’t want you to think I was a faggot…” and it really wasn’t the first time I’d heard a guy say this in reference to him denying that he fooled around and liked it.

It just makes no sense to have fooled around and then act like it didn’t mean anything or, worse, like it never happened. I understand why guys do this and, again, it’s not really their fault but the fault of how we’re raised and being told that guys who like to have sex with other guys are homos, fairies, so on and so forth when the truth was no, not all guys who are into sex with guys are gay.

It’s the year of our Lord, 2024, and there are still guys who fooled around back in their youth and categorically deny it in some way or another… but are making a lot of noise about wanting to get a hard dick in their mouth or their ass and, as far as I understand it, because they already know what it’s like and they liked it when they fooled around and they obviously want to keep on liking it. Curious guys are different; chances are they never fooled around but they knew guys who did and some probably got to see it firsthand – but didn’t join in but, yeah, what’s it like? There’s nothing for them to deny other than their curiosity about something they shouldn’t be curious about but a lot of curious guys will admit that they’re curious and they’d love to be able to take care of that if they can find the right guy and all that good stuff – and I learned that some guys are so curious about it that they’ve learned all they could learn about having the sex so when they finally get to lose their cherry, holy shit – you’d think that they’d been doing it all long!

You never discount how curiosity can drive someone… and if you fooled around back in the day, it’s okay to say that you did and if you liked it or not. I’d often talk to guys who’d admit that, yeah, they fooled around but they didn’t like it – but they kept having sex with guys and they were not being forced or coerced into having sex and… what the fuck? Come to find out that, yeah, duh, they fooled around and kept fooling around because they did like it but that imposed guilt that so many guys find difficult to deal with and is also responsible for them denying that they tried it and liked it.

I’m negotiating with a guy, and he asks me if I ever fooled around when I was younger and I said, “Yeah, and like it was nobody’s business!” He asks me how I could admit to it, and I say, “Why would I deny it when I know what I did and how much I loved doing it then and now? It was one of the major highlights of my life and for me to deny it means I’m lying to myself and why would I do that?”

He tells me that if we do this, it wouldn’t really be his first time because he experimented in his youth, too – but tried to convince me that he didn’t enjoy it and I just said, “Stop lying about it or this conversation is over.” Why did he lie? All the “usual stuff” about being afraid of being gay, what would others think or say about him if he told them that he did it and liked doing it.

“I don’t see the point in lying about it when you’re talking to a guy about doing the one thing you lied about,” I said. “It makes me wonder if you’re really sincere and if you’re lying about this, what else could you be lying about?” I was a good minute away from declaring this deal broken when he asked if I’d give him a chance to prove that he’s being for-real and sincere and, really, I not only felt that I’d be remiss not to give him that chance, I was horny as fuck to suck a dick so he got his chance.

“You might want to reconsider lying about what you did back in the day when you’re trying to get some dick from a guy now,” I said after we were done with each other. “You can’t act like it didn’t happen when you know that it did and if you liked it then, you liked it and if you didn’t, not only did you not like it, but it makes it unlikely that you’d want to do it again.”

I would learn that some guys hated it but wanted to go for it again because they had something to prove to themselves or as one guy said, “Just because I didn’t like it then doesn’t mean that I’m not going to like it now…”

Just one of my pet peeves. If you fooled around, then you did. If you liked it, then you did and while you might not be of a mind to admit this to someone else, don’t lie to yourself about it and more so when, somewhere down the road, the urge to rejoin the party might show up and the guys you now want to engage with aren’t gonna be mad at you if you experimented back in the day and you just might be preferred over a guy who didn’t fool around.

End of any day, it’s a pet peeve of mine and one I know I shouldn’t have but I never said I was perfect because I fooled around big time back in the day and I’m glad that I did and I’d never lie about it – but it doesn’t mean that other men have reason to and… it’s not their fault that they feel guilt and shame over having fooled around with something that none of us were supposed to fool around with… while it was also expected that we would.

More about that one some other time…

 

Living With… Stuff: 09 April 24

Met with my oncologist’s PA yesterday and she’s happy with my progress and after looking in my mouth and palpitating my neck (her hands were cold!) there’s some redness in my mouth that’s expected and she can’t feel anything in my neck that doesn’t belong there. They’ve scheduled me for the blood work and scans that I’m hoping and praying reveals that I’m cancer-free.

Later in the day, I had a video call with my palliative doctor and we talked about possible solutions to the pain in my feet due to neuropathy; the transdermal patch I’m currently wearing doesn’t seem to be doing a whole lot and I don’t feel like “investing” in the next highest dose and he agrees that if it’s not feeling better at the current dosage, the next highest won’t make much of a difference.

He did toss out the methadone option again and one that I’m trying to avoid because I’ve basically “just” gotten back on my feet (and literally) and anything stronger like methadone or, gasp, .50mcg of transdermal fentanyl would likely get the job done… by making me so stoned that I don’t know I’m in pain and essentially taking me back off my feet and unable to do much of anything. Been there, didn’t like it, and it’ll be a measure of last resort if the pain in my feet escalates to the point where I really can’t take it anymore.

So to avoid any withdrawal symptoms, he’s stepping me down to the .5 mcg patch even though we’re both of a mind that I could take this patch off and not experience any withdrawal symptoms that I couldn’t deal with – you should try coming down off of fentanyl so the patch can’t possibly be that bad. Now we get to the latest thing:

I’ve been tasting something acidic in my mouth that’s been setting my mouth – and, specifically, the right side of my tongue – on fire and I mean that shit hurts like nothing I’ve experienced so far. I have suspected it’s part of the reason why I have the magic mouthwash that has an antacid in it and the “acid” is a byproduct of my throat healing from the ass-kicking that it got from radiation. It makes sense given the PA did say there was still some redness at the back of my mouth/throat and it’s possible that my saliva hasn’t mysteriously turned seriously acidic but that’s how my poor brain is interpreting what I’m tasting.

She – the PA – said that it’s likely that the nerves in my tongue are healing, hence the pain I’m feeling and while I can take a shot of magic mouthwash for a bit of temporary relief, it’s yet another of those things I’ve experienced along this journey where there’s not a whole lot that can be done about it – and I just have to grin and bear it and… fuck, refill the script for more magic mouthwash – better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

We talked about my appetite which, as far as I was concerned, was quite good – except for when I couldn’t taste anything – but now that I can taste, I have incentive to eat and I’m doing my best to pack it away as best I can or until I manage to piss my throat off, which invariably happens. Been writing down what I’m eating, how much I’ve eaten, and the calories consumed – and I decided to create an Excel spreadsheet to do this and so some fancy formulas and other stuff I learned to do with Excel. I have the tools, might as well put them to use.

I still have an issue tasting salt, something the PA said makes me a little weird because other patients dealing with this loss of taste report that they can taste salty stuff but not sweet stuff – and I can taste sweet stuff just fine. And I’m reminded that as my sense of taste recovers, things might taste weird to me, like I had some sauteed spinach with garlic that… didn’t taste like sauteed spinach with garlic and the reason why it didn’t was it didn’t have any salt; a tiny dash of salt on it made it taste better but until I can really taste salt, I should not be adding it to ,whatever I’m eating lest I piss off my blood pressure which has been doing just fine with only a very low dose of medication.

So many post-treatment appointments to keep track of and my lady’s been handling them for me although I need to opt for redundancy and put them into my phone’s calendar as well since we’ll go to an appointment and someone will ask what’s a good day for my next appointment and… there’s nothing in my phone so, yeah, gotta do something about that.

And keep a copy of my current meds on my phone, too, since they love to ask me if there are any changes to them; I know there isn’t anything new but it would help to be able to pull it up on my phone. I have to put a call into the ENT’s office to let him know that the course of steroids he gave me for the fluid in my left ear… hasn’t done anything, which means he’s gonna want to put tubes in my ear or maybe both of them and, yeah, I’m so looking forward to that.

Not. All of this keeps reminding me that having cancer, while not a good thing to find out, isn’t the hard part: It’s all the stuff you gotta do and go through when being treated for it – and even after all the treatments are over and done with. It’s also why I am hoping and praying that the cancer is gone and stays gone… because I don’t think I can handle having to go through all of this again.

Which means that if I have to, I’m going to because not doing it doesn’t make sense and if I don’t like going through stuff now, I’m really not going to like it if we have to reinvent the wheel on this – I just gotta do it and at this point in time, I don’t want to have to do this again. This is about settling in for the long haul – the five-year plan the team has committed themselves to in order to deal with me and in whatever way is needed – and I’m committed to hanging in there with them.

I have some weird shit going on with my right shoulder and collarbone area that might be due to radiation-caused nerve damage that may have cause muscle atrophy in that area; getting a scan to take a better look and I need to talk to the radiation folks to see what they have to say about it; the PA took a look and she’d be interested in what the scan I’m getting has to reveal although she seems sure that it’s not something that chemo caused and, sadly, I’m not much help because what I know is that it wasn’t like this before I went into the hospital.

So, we will see whatever there is to see with all of this stuff. One thing at a time, one day at a time…

 

Today’s Bisexual Thoughts: 03 April 24 @ 0859 Hours

I thought of a title for a book I could write about bisexuality: “Bisexuality Made Easy!”

Page One, Chapter One reads, “You like boys.”

Page Two, Chapter Two reads, “You like girls.”

Page Three, Chapter Three reads, “For sex.”

Page Four, Chapter Four reads, “For emotional content/relationships”

Page Five, Chapter Five reads, “Or all of the above.”

Page Six, Chapter Six ends the book and says, “Have fun with it and don’t make it weird!”

Anything else is overthinking it. Gilding the lily writ large. I wonder if I could get away with charging $9.99 for this groundbreaking tome? Nah, probably not, huh? But when you strip away all the riffing and drama, those six pages pretty much defines bisexuality, and you will note that I did not include the “G” word due to it being irrelevant or what does that have to do with the price of rice in China?

What fucks it up is that there’s the definition for bisexuality and then there’s what everybody thinks it should be and in their own somewhat humble opinion; I’ve explained bisexuality to some using those six “pages,” only for them to tell me that I’m wrong – and here comes their version of what they think it means and, hmm, I don’t know but maybe I have a better take on this since I’m bisexual – but I could be wrong and I’ve been told that I’m wrong and, well, you see what the problem is, don’t you?

The moment you start to think that bisexuality isn’t those six pages, you’ve screwed the pooch. Yes, you get bitten by the bug and you will have to figure out what the fuck just happened and then do your best to make sense of it and you’d think that those six pages would be self-explanatory – and they are – but humans, sheesh, if something a be fucked up, we can royally fuck it up and then stand hard on our right to have an opinion… even if that opinion is way off in left field somewhere.

I’m still kinda tripping over a forum member preaching to me about pansexuality and how (1) it’s not the same as bisexuality because of the “G” word and (2) pansexuals are more likely to be more into their feelings and their inner girl, which is very conducive to making out with a guy… when the question was, simply, do you like to make out? I ripped him a new one… because I could and because it’s stuff like this that makes bisexuality appear to be so damned confusing and at the end of his ass-ripping, he fell back onto his right to have an opinion and I agreed that he does… but not when his opinion detracts from a specific topic – and one that he did not speak to except to push his pansexual agenda out there for all to see.

His “mistake” is that I saw it and, I tried not to say anything – I really did – but the more he’s pushing his agenda out there, I had to. I just had to because there are/were a lot of other members reading this particular post and taking in all of this guy’s misinformation – and all because it’s what he thinks but not what it really is.

Six pages to make bisexuality easy to understand. Now, how you go about strutting your bisexual stuff can be a multi-volume affair and this is the part of the show where bisexuals tend to diverge from our points of commonality – those six pages and I wouldn’t dare try to write that book because if we can complicate the shit out of something, that’s what we’re going to do.

Like homey did a bit of a backhanded bash on bi guys by saying that bisexual men only want to have the sex and aren’t interested in making out – and they’re more likely to sleep with just any old person, get their rocks off, and leave them hanging in the wind and unfulfilled – but pansexuals don’t do this, they’re all into making out, letting their inner girl out to play and romanticizing the fuck out of two guys having sex – because he had the right to express an opinion that has no basis in fact or truth.

It’s what he thought… but not what he knows; it’s the way he wants to engage with men, and he takes a dim view of any many who doesn’t want to make out with him and there’s no excuse for not making out with him and… my fellow forum member needs some coffee to smell.

I’ve made out with guys. I don’t necessarily like it, but I know how to do it because, um, I know how to make out with the ladies. What I know from experience is that a lot of guys don’t want to be bothered with making out; they don’t have the time to make out; they really do just want to hit it and go on about the rest of their day and I’ve been seeing that bottoms… are not fans of men who don’t want to lay it on them and like we’d lay it on a woman but, in a way, that makes sense… because men aren’t women – and it remind me that said member tried to lecture me on men and women who are born with all of the genitalia… but I kinda digress a little.

Okay. One of the things you learn about having sex with girls is that if you don’t get them warmed up, you’re probably going to be in a heap of trouble. One of the things you learn about having sex with guys – and one of the things the girls don’t like about us – is that we can go from 0 to 60 in the space of a few eyeblinks or in the exact moment our dick starts to get hard. Now, I’m not saying that men, by some kind of default, have to be warmed up like the ladies do – and sometimes, they don’t want to be bothered with making out – but you fuck the whole thing up when, in your opinion, you believe that men have to make out with each other… because that’s what you want a guy to do to you.

Or, ha, ha, like this one guy I was about to get with and he’s rubbing my thighs and I’m asking him what the hell was he doing, and he said, “I’m trying to get you wet!” and… I lost my shit and if you think about this, you might understand why I did.

I’ll wait.

Those six pages explains bisexuality in the simplest way imaginable… and no one would buy a book that only has six, simple pages… because, in their minds, it can’t be that simple. I kinda know this because, all those years ago, I had the thought that, nah, it can’t be that simple… can it? Took me a lot of years of thinking and overthinking it for me to see that, yeah – it is that simple and everything else gets lost in the details. What has me giggling to myself right now is the thought that I can go onto the forum and write a post about bisexuality made easy, write those six things… and then sit back and watch how many people are going to jump in with their own opinions of those six hard facts.

They’ll come back with what they think it is or what they think it should be – but I might get someone who’d agree that, yep, that pretty much explains it in a nutshell and the devil is, indeed, in the details covering what you will and won’t do and all that other happy stuff. Someone is almost guaranteed to mention gender, maybe go on a riff about being non-binary and someone might even mention that there’s more than one sex to go along with more than one gender and… if you just read that and are either rolling your eyes or reaching for the Tylenol, I don’t blame you and, yeah, sure, they’re entitled to their opinion – but not when their opinion is wrong and definitely not when their opinion misleads someone else.

Those six things are not my opinion. They are facts and, again, cannot be expressed any simply than how I wrote them. Someone will chime in and strongly suggest that those six things are just my opinion and all because they don’t agree that they’re facts of the matter – and here comes their take on it and now… it’s all about them, isn’t it?

I bring all of this up because so many people get stuck on stupid about bisexuality and wind up making it harder than it needs to be but, yeah, it’s those six pages. I keep saying that it’s not rocket science because it isn’t; you like boys and girls for sex, emotional connections, and/or a relationship and, yep, all of the above.

How you go about doing it is something else. This is where you can nitpick the shit out of what floats your boat and offer up your opinion about the best position to suck cock/eat pussy in or maybe go off on a tangent on a question about bi guys by regaling the membership with how your wife likes big dicks and threesomes. Or, like that guy, you really think you can get a guy wet by rubbing his thigh – and did you figure out why I lost my shit?

Do you need more time? Take all the time you need!

I need more coffee. Those six pages explains bisexuality simply; anything else is overthinking it and putting shit into a game that already has enough shit in it and all because you have a right to express an opinion even when said opinion… is what you think and not what you know and, no, they are not the same things but if you read those six things and found yourself thinking about what you think bisexuality is – and it’s more than those six things, hmm – gotcha, didn’t I?

More coffee. Need it now.

 

The Daily Prompt: 01 April 24

Daily writing prompt

What are your morning rituals? What does the first hour of your day look like?

View all responses

Hmm, that would be me stumbling out of bed and trying to find something to put on my feet so I can haul ass to the bathroom and pretty much running on autopilot when opening the blinds, turning on lights and the TV in the back room so that I can try to catch the day’s weather as I address the sleepy-looking guy in the mirror.

Get the water the right temperature so I can flush my feeding tube; some intense staring at my neck and throat area for any signs that the radiation treatments I underwent are trying to leave me any surprises. Wash. Put on my daytime “makeup,” which is either some cooling and soothing Cera Ve, the oilier Eucerin or the Vaseline-like stickiness of Aquaphor.

Stumble back to the bedroom to get dressed – and in a onesie if I don’t have any appointments; grab glasses, iPhone, iPad, put slippers on then on to the dresser to get the day’s medication – and all without waking my lady up.

Stumble out to the living room to put my stuff down and into the kitchen to put my bottle of water back in fridge and… coffee time. It’s taken me a half an hour to get to this point (and less time if I have an appointment); armed with coffee and a Carnation Instant Breakfast, I go into the back room and take a seat at my desk to wake up the desktop and get to checking for updates and reading the overnight emails before opening a browser to see what might be interesting in the news – then off to check the forums for anything of interest…

Then opening WordPress to read new stuff and to do some scribbling. That pretty much takes care of the first hour and it’s the same thing every day but, of course, every day is different; today, I didn’t stumble to the bathroom but kinda limped to it because my right ankle decided it wanted to fuck with me – and then I open the blinds to look outside and, yep, okay, it’s raining – that explains a few things. It’s the first of the month so I add paying my bills to my computer stuff.

Kinda/sorta pay attention to The Weather Channel; sometimes just sit in the quiet of the early morning – and sometimes wondering why I’m back to getting up to wake the chickens again – and maybe spend a few moments contemplating my navel. Crack open the Instant Breakfast; take medication… and, yeah, why do they make vitamin pills that damned big?

I remember back when I retired and talking to one of my cousins about having retired and she asked me what was I going to do now that I didn’t have to go to work – but, at the time, I was looking for another job and had gotten one but… the stroke fucked all that up. Anyway, I told her my “retirement plan” of doing a lot of nothing and she frowned and suggested that I should volunteer to teach youngsters and older folks computer skills so that they can function in the technological world, and it wasn’t a bad idea except for two things.

The first is I don’t like to teach and the second was I felt that would be too much like working – and I just retired from working. Then the stroke happened and the one thing that stuck in my head was my neurologist telling me to avoid stress at every turn and at all costs… and I was seriously down for that so I’m not of a mind to do anything that’s going to raise my stress levels.

I don’t remember who I was talking to, but they had asked me what I do all day and my answer was, “A whole lot of nothing!” which had them giving me a funny look. “I watch TV, read, do stuff on the computer, play games on my Xbox and in between, mess with my lady and more so when she “doesn’t like” me messing with her – but it’s my job, we both know it, and it’s a lot of fun.

Whoever I was talking to wanted to scold me for not engaging in productive activities and I said, “Like what? I’m doing exactly what I wanted to do -what I planned to do – when I retired… and don’t you have to go to work?”

So many first hours of the day; so many of them the same as the day before but not really because the differences can be subtle or rather overt. I sometimes catch myself being on autopilot in that first hour, which is pretty funny most of the time; sometimes the routine gets disrupted because I’ve done something “out of sequence,” like I’ve grabbed a straw for my liquid breakfast before I’ve taken it out of the fridge, which can be rather eye-rolling because routine isn’t supposed to deviate like that… is it?

And all throughout that first hour, I am thankful and grateful to be able to go through another first hour of the day.

 

Today’s Bisexual Thoughts: 31 March 24 @ 0925 Hours

And, speaking of swallowing, a flash memory of a moment sucking a guy’s dick and… he’s talking to me or he’s talking to himself – I’m not sure of what he’s doing as he chants about sucking his big dick and how he’s going to shoot his hot jizz and, yeah, suck my big dick…

And his dick isn’t that big and is, to my estimation, a bit below the established average but he’s got a big cock knob and I had to keep him from trying to shove it down my throat – I could feel it trying to get lodged in my throat and that’s not my idea of fun… but neither is trying not to laugh while trying to suck cock.

I’d heard guys say all kinds of things while I was sucking their dick so you’d think that (1) I’d be used to it or (2) I wouldn’t pay any attention to it and like that one time I was sucking a guy, took him all the way down and… he blurted out that he was in love with me and just before he popped his cock. But this guy is doing a whole running dialog or monologue, and I still don’t know if he’s trying to talk dirty to me or he’s talking to himself and pushing his own buttons – and if he’s trying to talk dirty to me, it’s not working and I’m still trying not to laugh and it’s impossible not to hear him since he’s not exactly whispering these ‘sweet nothings’ to me, himself, or the room at large.

“Are you going to make me cum?” I hear him ask – and now I know he’s talking to me and I’m a little miffed because he’s expecting an answer and I don’t want to stop what I’m doing to answer him so I look up, make eye contact with him, nod my head and take him as deep as that big knob is going to allow me to and go back to what I’m doing… until he asks me why I’m going to make him cum.

“Because I want you to; because you want to; because this is what you do when you blow a guy,” I say, really miffed because I had to stop what I was doing to answer his question and I know he wanted an answer because he kept… tapping me on my head to get my attention and he almost got it in a way he wasn’t going to like but, okay, be nice and the sooner you answer him, the sooner you can get back to making him cum.

“Oh, that makes sense,” he says – and goes back to… talking about suck his huge cock and it feels so good and who’s a bad and dirty boy and… is he talking to me or to himself? I don’t know and I’m now at the point where I don’t really care; I want his cum and I’m going to get it from him by hook or by crook and by any means necessary… because I’m not doing this because I don’t have anything better to do. I wet a finger and push it right into his ass until it can’t go in him any more.

“Oh! Oh!” he cries out and this was the ticket; his cock immediately swells in my mouth and he’s blasting cum like crazy – I can feel it in my mouth as his prick throbs and spasms and I can feel it through my finger that’s buried in his butt, too, and the muscles there clamping down hard enough to make my finger hurt. He’s babbling incoherently as his dick continues to pump… yeah, his warm jizz into my mouth so I can swallow it.

“It is good? Is it good?”

I hear him asking this and I don’t know if he’s asking me if I think his cum tastes good – and I think it’s okay but nothing to write home about – but, no, apparently, he’s asking himself if it’s good and he’s answering himself by repeating, “Yeah, it’s damned good!” over and over and I want to laugh so bad it isn’t funny but, at the moment, I’m not of a mind to let go of his prick because he hasn’t exactly gone totally soft in my mouth and, for me, that’s a “sign” for me to keep sucking him so that he will eventually go soft…

But he suddenly pulls away from me; I look up at him and he’s got that look on his face that suggests that I just tried to murder him and I smile inwardly to know that I owned him but the extra icing on the cake was him asking me, “What was I talking about while you were blowing me?”

What… you don’t know? I allow that, yes, he was talking; I also allow that I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or to himself and I tell a partial fib: I was too busy sucking him to really pay attention to what, if anything, he was saying; I do not want to tell him that he had me on the edge of uncontrollable laughter with all the stuff he was saying… to me or himself.

And why, oh, why do guys like this wind up on my cocksucking radar? Oh, I remember the guy I was sucking and as I did him, he’s… praying for forgiveness. He started the moment I closed my mouth around him and, for a moment, I thought I was hearing things when I heard him say, “Father, hear my prayer…”

And I can’t forget all the guys I’ve sucked who’ve said, “Yeah, daddy, suck my dick!” and I wasn’t sure if they were talking to me – and calling me daddy – or, um, okay, another guy with daddy issues or is he just babbling to himself?

And why are these guys trying to carry a conversation with me when my mouth is full of their dick and I’m unable – and quite unwilling – to answer; really, if you just wanted to talk, we could have done that without getting our dicks out. And I still believe that you haven’t heard a damned thing until you hear a guy praying to God for forgiveness as he’s thrusting into your mouth and flooding it with cum.

You just haven’t. Okay, back to the other guy. He’s blowing me and… talking around my dick in his mouth and, once again, I don’t know if he’s talking to me or if he’s talking to himself and getting psyched up to blow me; I can barely hear what he’s saying but I can feel his mouth moving and vibrating in a way that tells me that, uh-huh, he’s talking and I’m distracted and thinking that being able to have a conversation with a dick in your mouth is… impressive.

He stops sucking me to ask me if he’s doing it right and, up until that moment, he was doing it very right and I feel my eyes roll all by themselves; I want to grab him by the hair and shove my dick into his mouth and out of the back of his neck but I tell him that he is doing it right and, um, suck my big dick. That seemed to be the encouragement he needed because he… went berserk on my dick and while occasionally saying – to me or to himself – that, yeah, he’s sucking that big cock; he’s got a hand under my ass and trying to use that one hand to shove me into his mouth – while using his other hand to keep me from going deep into his mouth… so he can talk about sucking my big cock and how good it is and because I can see him, I can see the looks on his face and… I want to laugh and I can’t seem to help it – but I don’t do it because, duh, it would be very bad form to start laughing while you’re getting your dick sucked.

He finally stops talking and gets back to his berserker rage on my dick; one hand is fondling my balls and he’s got two fingers in my ass and I’m on the edge of oblivion as I stare into the abyss – and he kicks my ass into it so I can get a better look at the abyss – and so it can look back at me as I fall into its murky depths. I’m cumming so hard that it hurts, the pulses unusually strong and having two fingers in my ass isn’t helping (but it really is).

I’m spent. Worn out from what it took for me to suck him off and then having my ass kicked when he sucked me and me wondering about some stuff when he again asks if he was talking and, if so, what was he talking about?

I could have told him since it wasn’t like I was going to forget any of this. I chose not to answer him… with words; I just pushed him back onto his back and went to sucking his dick again and hearing him ask, “What are you doing?”

God… you just gotta love moments like this. So much better than sucking a guy and he’s calling me all kinds of bitches and whores and trying to convince me that his dick is God’s gift to everyone and trying to be all macho… and whatever the fuck that means. I get him off again and he talked the whole time and I just tuned him out and worked on getting all of his dick down and despite the size of his knob and, well, let’s say that I made better progress the second time but I failed to conquer the challenge his knob presented… but the failure was easy to accept as I heard him calling for his mother to help him when he started to cum…

And like she was going to save him. I almost laugh to think that, yeah, maybe she would barge in to save her baby boy from having his prick ravaged for a second time but that’s not likely to happen… as far as I know. Nuts busted for a second time and we’re in the shower together and in preparation of going our separate ways. We’re… talking about this and that and he says to me that he remembers what he was talking about the first time I blew him and that, no, he wasn’t talking to me – he was talking to himself because he couldn’t believe that a guy wanted to suck his dick and he was… carried away by the moment.

I just nod as I reach around to wash my back; there’s not a lot I want to say about this because I know if I do, I’m going to start laughing and he’s going to ask why I’m laughing and… I don’t want to ruin this moment for either of us by answering his question. He knows he was doing it and he’s “properly embarrassed” by his lust-fueled utterings. I was… amused by them; sucking him off was, if nothing else, entertaining and I shouldn’t be bothered by him talking to me, asking questions, and wanting me to answer them and, really, I’ve heard “worse” coming out of a guy’s mouth when I have his prick in my mouth and doing my best to focus on getting him to pop his cork…

Without having to worry about laughing; or wondering about how odd it is to be doing something that’s unholy and immoral and praying to God for His forgiveness while the unholy and immoral act is in progress – and then screaming out for Jesus to help him when homey unloaded a hot of goo into my mouth. Or being surprised at anything that might come out of a guy’s mouth when I’m sucking his dick and, yeah, how hard it is to swallow when it’s being made difficult to do.

 

Living With… Stuff: 31 March 24

I get that the radiation pretty much “destroyed” my throat and to the point where it’s hard for me to eat and drink and as I recently wrote, I need to eat and drink and I’m having to make myself do this even though it feels like my throat is being ripped out.

It got so bad that… I refilled my prescription for some magic mouthwash and in the hopes that, given where I’m feeling most of the pain now, the lidocaine in the mix will get in there and provide enough relief so I can “gorge” myself to get my weight up, add calories to the tally, and to fill up on something that isn’t Osmolite or trying to gulp down Ensure with “max protein” and it just fucking sucks to have your throat hurting like this and there’s nothing you can do about it.

The frustration I continue to feel being told that I need to eat; I need to drink water, Ensure, Boost, protein-laden smoothies and I get it but where the rub comes in is… being able to swallow stuff. I have to fight through the discomfort when taking my daily medications although they could probably be ground up, mixed with water, and taken via my feeding tube (and like they were doing when I was in the hospital) but… that’s a lot of prep work and I’m not sure how the gel capsule of magnesium gets into the mix so, yeah, it’s down the hatch with the meds and grimacing because the smallest pill I take feels like the biggest one I take as I wince and swallow and find myself breathing like a rented mule plowing the north forty… because swallowing is a lot of work and, yeah, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

And it needs to hurry the fuck up and get better. I’m already thinking about how to up my caloric intake when it’s time for me to have lunch and, hopefully, I’m right about what I’m thinking about as far as ease of swallowing goes – I already know that it’s going to taste good, and I remain grateful to be able to taste stuff – but tasting it is only part of the process:

I still have to swallow it. It can be so bad that it’s almost had me in tears; pawing and rubbing at my throat and as if that’s going to help things; taking careful sips of water because that’s one of the things was told to do to help with being able to swallow and while this doesn’t ever take away the pain of swallowing, um, it does make it feel a little better at times.

I bit the bullet (but didn’t try to swallow it, heh, heh) and refilled the magic mouthwash prescription and, again, with the hopes that the lidocaine is going to numb my throat – but also because I have that nasty-tasting acidic taste in my mouth – yeah, it’s back and clearly related to the damage done to my throat – and the magic mouthwash has a component to deal with this as well as… Benadryl. I had to take two shots of the mouthwash yesterday just to be able to finish my dinner and I was so busy thinking and dealing with how bad my throat was feeling that I forgot this stuff has Benadryl in it and… it knocked me dead on my ass for maybe an hour or so.

I mean, I left the dinner table, sat down on the sofa, and was out like a light five minutes later. I woke up with a familiar fuzziness and one I experienced getting chemo; Benadryl was given to head off any possible reactions to the chemo drugs and every time they hit me with it… nap time. And, apparently, my magic mouthwash can put me down as well – and then I’m a little pissy with myself because, um, duh, I already went through one bottle of this stuff and should have remembered what the Benadryl would do.

I’m doing my best not to raise my BP over the whole thing. I know what I need to do and I’m going to do the best I can to do it but, damn, it hurts like a motherfucker and a few of its cousins. The thought crossed my mind to go “all liquid” for my meals and via my feeding tube because, um, that’s one of the reasons why I still have it but it’s on me to be able to swallow… stuff and when just the act of swallowing itself has me getting that look on my face and… I just sigh and resolve to suck it up with my big boy panties pinned on.

And, yeah, I’m writing about swallowing and how uncomfortable it is, and my mind is also deep in the gutter about… swallowing. Let your own minds join me in the gutter on this okay and it’s one of the things that allows me to smile as I deal with this because, um, well, you know, right? And let it make you smile, too!

Weird stuff about this. I can eat potato chips and my favor Chili Cheese Fritos and swallowing isn’t that painful; if it’s soft like an Entenmann’s mini pound cake, I can swallow that without a lot of pain, too – and I could eat those by the truckload because that’s how good they taste. Swallow saliva? Ouch. Water? Ouch. Spaghetti? Okay, that went down easy; the meat-laden gravy? Ouch and holy shit ouch and even after getting the meat down in as small pieces as I can get it and, yeah, back in the gutter and… while I find all of this curious, it still becomes a major point of frustration because there’s nothing, I can do other than to wait for the damage to my throat to heal once and for all…

And whenever that might happen. It is greatly interfering with a primary goal: Eat so I can regain the weight I’ve lost. Recalling how many times my RO – radiation oncologist – was telling my lady to feed me good foods with lots of protein (yep – still in the gutter in the background) – and that’s all well and good… if I’m able to swallow it and it’s not like I can’t – it’s that I can’t do it without experiencing some nearly indescribable pain.

I have to work through it. I have to push through it. It’s not easy to put out of my mind because I’m always swallowing – and grateful that my saliva isn’t thick anymore (knock on wood) but I’ve caught myself not swallowing because, subconsciously, I know that swallowing my own saliva is going to cause some pain – usually a little but sometimes a lot if I have that acidic taste in my mouth – and, hence, the magic mouthwash and its antacid component.

I was thinking about doing the baking soda thing (and as I was told to, by the way) but when I did that, it raised my blood pressure and that’s a deal breaker and more so when I wasn’t on any BP medications – and the docs on my team not getting that I didn’t have to swallow the mixture for it to affect my BP – it got absorbed by my mouth and all by itself – no swallowing needed. I loved that, “Oh, yeah…” look they got on their faces when I mentioned this but you gotta know that if I was thinking about baking soda, the acidic nature of whatever’s going on in my mouth and throat was really bothering me and enough for me to get on the phone, call in the refill for the script, go get it and hope that I can get enough of its numbing effect so I can eat and add to my caloric intake and add to the “let’s get fat!” portion of the program.

Some big time sighing. I keep being told that my body will be slow to heal without the food it needs to create the energy needed to do the healing and it’s not like I don’t know this and it’s almost like no one is listening to me when I say that if I can’t taste it -and can’t swallow it – then I’m not encouraged to eat – and going all Osmolite is possible but it’s not the same as being able to eat and more so when I’m encouraged to snack in between meals and… we have now circled back to the beginning, haven’t we?

Well, okay – they are listening to me but the only thing they can do or say is to nod their understanding of my dilemma… and tell me that I have to eat and to do the best I can. Easy for them to say and to do and I just kinda roll my eyes, gird my loins, and… swallow to the best of my ability and no matter how badly it hurts.

I share this not to be riffing about it all that much but as… information if you are unfortunate enough to develop a cancer of your throat and neck because this is stuff you’ll have to look forward to post-treatments and I think it helps to hear it from someone who’s been through it – or is going through it and it is no joke, well, um, it isn’t if your mind isn’t in the gutter about swallowing and I can’t get my mind out of the gutter which, overall, really means that in other areas, I’m doing fine and dandy… except for this swallowing thing.

No such critter as too much information…

 

Night Musings: Must Be the Music

Yeah, writing about my night musings during the daytime…

I’m fighting sleep by looking through the music I have in Apple Music and seeing… my past in the music; being able to remember when a particular song came out on an album or a 45, what I was doing and what was going on around me.

Not for the first time, I see how… varied my taste in music has become; I’ve got music that ranges from Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra to some rap/hip-hop pieces that I like the beat to more than anything else and including some… country and western tunes from Brooks and Dunn that, as it turns out, is more like pop than C&W except for the occasional twang heard… but my musical likes are “all over the place” and my collection is heavy with R&B and Jazz.

I have songs in my library that I thought I’d never hear again; I grudgingly got to liking Apple Music because I wanted to fuck with the service and see if they really did have the music I’d want to listen to and, as it turns out, yeah, fuck – they do and if they don’t have it now, they’ll have it later and as I’ve seen so many times already.

I’m aided by the fact that I’m a musician and I have music running around in my head all of the time so it’s not unusual for me to hear the music in my head and it reminds me of a song that I haven’t heard since I was 16 and… I wonder if Apple has it? Oh, there it is! Damn it – I haven’t stumped the service for a long time and I’ve failed to do so in this instance. Click on it and it starts to play and… I remember.

Where I was; what I was doing; the sign of the times and back in a time where a song meant something and not just a bunch of words thrown together because they kinda/sorta rhyme and, for most of such music, there was no such animal as sampling or any of the technology we use today to produce music, which is still endearing to me since I had to learn how to play; I had to be taught the various disciplines that allow me to make music…

And to appreciate the music I listen to. Offhand, I can’t tell you how many songs are currently in my library; one of the things that pissed me off about Apple Music is when they took all of the music I had on my computer and stuck it in their fucking cloud – and there was so much music that I had ripped from CDs that didn’t make it into the cloud. I still have the CDs; I have a computer with a CD/DVD drive and, I think, a hard drive with enough space for me to rip every CD I have and, truthfully, that was the project I had been setting myself up to do when… Apple put my music in the cloud and excluded a lot of the music that resided on my hard drive…

And music that spanned almost the entirety of my life. From Bach to Boyz II Men and then some. I’m fighting sleep and I need to take my tired ass to bed but I’m… captivated by the music listed on the screen before me; I have the urge to get to WordPress so I can write down what I’m thinking and feeling but, nah, fuck it – I’m tired and I can do this in the morning and off to bed I go… with John “Cougar” Mellencamp’s “Wild Night” playing inside my head.

I found the song on Apple Music; what had me scratching my head was not knowing what made me think of the song to begin with – I hadn’t heard it since I fucked up and broke the single CD of the song… almost twenty years ago but now here it is and it’s making me crazy because I can hear the song in my head but my old ass is having a hard time remembering Mellencamp’s name. I stop thinking about this; the song is on repeat in my head and… I’m looking at an email I got when my brain said, “John “Cougar” Mellencamp!”

Ding, ding! Added the song to my library; clicked on it to play and I’m dancing sitting down and grooving to the beat that got my attention on the song in the first place – and the musician inside me remembers teaching myself the drum and bass parts… on my kit and with my bass guitar and making those around me cray-cray as I get deep into the music that lives inside of me and that I still keep adding to.

This got me to thinking about Mrs. Fever’s September Song blog that she does in September (duh), and I smile thinking that I hope she reads this because I know that she knows what this is like. And, oh, yeah, the title of this blog… is also the title of a song from back in the day…

 

Living With… Stuff: 30 March 24

One of the many things I noticed when I… was aware of the world around me was that my hair was coming out.

No eyebrows or eyelashes; facial, body, and yes, pubic hair all gone and like I’d never had any. Even with being afflicted with male pattern baldness, the rest of the hair on my head was somewhat curly but what I could feel coming off of my head – and what I could see – was straight. I dimly remembered being told that chemo would, more than likely, make my hair fall out but I had some other stuff that required my attention other than my apparent lack of hair.

Oh, I wanted to get out of that bed and stumble to the bathroom so I could look at myself in the mirror but I couldn’t; the bed was alarmed and I had a lot of stuff hooked up to me; it wouldn’t be until a few days before I was finally discharged that I was able to sneak out of that damned bed and go look at myself in the mirror…

I looked like a hot mess, which matched the way I was feeling. No hair on me anywhere and now I could see the trach that was in my throat and not just feel it although it did me some good to be able to put a finger over the cannula… so I could talk to people.

Post-discharge and I’m getting into the weekly chemo treatments, and I’ve gotten used to – and am amused by – my lack of hair. I’m not sweating it but I just thought it was funny as hell for me to be as smooth as a baby’s butt… everywhere. I remember reading, in one of the many packets I got about chemotherapy, that eventually, my hair will grow back but, um, it might not be the same color, texture, etc., as it was before chemo ghosted my hair.

A lot of my hair started coming in white and straight and… in patches. Just enough “peach fuzz” for me to see that, yeah, my hair is trying to make a comeback but between the chemo and then daily radiation treatments, my hair is getting its ass kicked but, again, there are more important things to be concerned about.

My lady is having a fun good time calling me “Patches” because my facial hair isn’t growing back the way it was before all of this happened. I have… porkchop sideburns and I haven’t had them on my face since 1972; my moustache is only growing in on 3/4th of my lip; the rather nice VanDyke beard that’s been my trademark since I started shaving… is only represented by nine hairs huddling together pitifully – and now I have six straight, white eyebrows that want to stick out like signal flags.

Thanks to the radiation, no hair is growing on my neck, which is kinda okay with me since shaving my neck has always been a problem until I just changed the way I shaved and all that good stuff. I’m not supposed to shave that area… and I’m not going to but I don’t recall it being said that I can’t get rid of the crazy hair on my face and, sheesh, rid myself of the straight hair growing on my head.

It is to note at this point that the hair under my arms and pubes is/was the last hair to decide to grow back, not that I’m mad about that but along with some other observations, looking for the hair under my right arm is what got me wondering… what the hell happened to my right shoulder? It doesn’t exactly hurt but it doesn’t look the way it did before I was hospitalized and appears to have been… dislocated? I can only speculate on what might have happened – and if anything really did happen – and I know – assume – there’s no point in asking anyone on my team if they know what happened because chances are they’re not going to tell me and when I did mention it, all I got was confused looks that said, “Um, I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

I have an appointment to see an orthopedist about my shoulder next week; this is… disturbing because you can look at me and tell that something’s not right with my right shoulder – but it was something that I didn’t notice until I’d been home for almost a week – but, then again, I had other things to focus on like getting resettled in at home.

I had taken my clippers and buzzed the hair on my head and the patches on my face; I’m not an overly vain kind of guy but having my hair looking the way it did was driving me crazy so it had to go. Then the following days staring into the mirror every morning and seeing how slowly my wayward hair is to grow back in – until it finally makes it back and… my lady’s laughing at me and all I can do is shake my head about it because there’s nothing I can do…

Except grab the clippers and get to work. Grabbed my razor and oak/Bourbon scented shave cream (oh, my, that stuff smells so good!) and got to shaving; this is kinda foreign to me in that… I had to figure out how to shave the stubble of my moustache left behind after the clippers mowed through it. I’m twisting my mouth and face this way and that way and how do guys that shave their ‘stache do this every damned day?

I’m careful to stay away from my neck; the water’s icy cold as I go to clean the remnants of the shave cream from my face; I look at my reflection in the mirror and, yeah, I know this guy… but I kinda don’t because I’m not used to seeing myself without my moustache – but I am vain enough that I’m not going to keep walking around with 3/4’s of a moustache on my upper lip.

Oh, hell, no…

I’m looking through the hair I took off of my head and there’s more white/grey to be seen than before all of this went down and it’s tripping me out because every last bit of it… is straight. Not a curl to be found anywhere. Yet another one of those things I’ve been experiencing where it’s one thing to be told that something is going to happen and then it does and being told about it before the fact doesn’t quite prepare you for the reality of the moment but all I can really do is either frown a lot… or laugh right along with my lady.

Perhaps one of these days, my facial hair will grow back in and be nice and full as it used to be before chemotherapy did a number on my hair, but I also have to accept that, as I was told, it might not grow back in the way it was before; this is just one of those post-treatment things I’m dealing with like getting caught up on my other doctor appointments that being hospitalized kicked to the curb and trying to get settled in to the five years my team is going to spend making sure that I get to be cancer free and stay that way.

I’m laughing because, at one point, I was… content to just let my hair grow back in any old way it wanted to because as nice as it is to have hair on my head and face, it’s not that important… but looking in the mirror every morning, seeing the straight strands of white/grey hair on my head, in my eyebrows (two in my eyelashes that wasn’t there before); the patchiness of my ‘stache and what’s left of what used to be my beard and sideburns and… hell, no, I gotta do something about this.

I think that at this point in things, it’s just as important to look good as it is to feel good because it lets me know that I’m kinda/sorta doing okay and that I am making progress slowly but surely… so why not avoid looking like an old-ass werewolf if you can? One morning, I tried to brush my hair down; trying to comb it was an effort in futility and it wanted to stick out from my scalp… and that straight-assed shit was laughing at my brush; oh, the hair would brush down and… spring right back up and like I never brushed it.

I’d gotten up early yesterday morning and ahead of my appointment with the orthopedist about my ankle and with the express purpose of ridding myself of the weird-assed hair on my face and head and if that makes me vain, so be it. I was going to let my face go with just being buzzed but I’m looking in the mirror and I see… stubble and, worse, I can feel it as I rub a hand across my face and… I grab my razor from where it’s stuck to the mirror, grab that good smelling Cremo shave cream and… trying to remember how to put it on my face.

This is both funny and a little disconcerting, but I recognize that I hadn’t shaved… since before my birthday and I really did momentarily forget how to put the shaving cream on (it doesn’t lather) and then, oops, I’m only putting it on certain spots on my face and then the whole upper lip thing and… I’m okay with being vain, not okay with looking like a crazy person with facial hair growing weirdly and incompletely and… it is what it is.

As it’s said, it’s not always the big things but the small things that can make the difference. Even though my throat wants to act like a fool again – and after it was getting better – it was nice to look in the mirror this morning and not see crazy hair on my head and face and even for a moment, taking my mind off of my throat. It’s going to take time, I know, and I’m in it for the long haul… but I’m not gonna put up with the weird hair.

Nope. I’m just gonna be vain. “Patches” is being retired until further notice.