A Holiday Homily from Brooklyn Jack
I wish all of you dudes (and our resident horny chick La Farfalla) a great holiday season -- and I hope that each and every one of you finds time for some delicious wanking to go with your fruitcake and 'nog. My feeling is that no deity worth worshipping would frown on the spectacle of us tiny little humans experiencing a little genital joy, so go ahead and MASTURBATE THOSE FUCKIN' HAIRY ERECTIONS and don't worry too much about what the Baby Jesus would think.
Speaking of the Baby Jesus, I went to Mass with my Catholic mom the other day for the first time since my sister's wedding five years ago. I'm still as contentedly atheistic as ever, but recently I've begun to mellow in my unbelief and to cherish certain aspects of that old bogeyman Organized Religion, even though I don't believe in the deity whose authority supposedly backs the utterances of human theologians. For me, going to a Catholic Mass -- or attending a Jewish shul, which I haven't done yet but am now investigating -- is a bit like when the members of my high school Latin Club would dress up as goddesses and demi-gods and pagan heroes to act out a scene from, say, Vergil's Aeniad. One didn't have to literally believe that Aeneas made his journey from Troy to become a "founding father" of Rome, or that Minerva, goddess of wisdom, actually existed and favored Aeneas, in order to understand that these figures represented certain ideals; certain virtues that were dear to Vergil's Roman audience.
So, in that spirit, I can go to Mass and say to my neighbors in the pews "May the peace of Jesus be with you," and feel not a bit uncomfortable or untrue to my own convictions, even though I don't believe there is a God for Jesus to have been born the Son of. Because I value the "peace of Jesus'' part. Likewise, I recommend to all of you that there's something to be gained by approaching contemporary religion in the same spirit, even if you're not religious yourself, and even though we, as men who love men, often get treated badly by a certain category of "God-fearing souls." If you find yourself the recipient of unsolicited religious well-wishing, then, Brooklyn Jack urges you to holler back with "God Bless You Too," whether you believe in an invisible omnipotent sky-entity or not.
Now, speaking of "men who love men," one of this site's goals from the outset was to make guys understand how artificial are the boundaries between men of different orientations:
As I have gradually come to realize in the past couple of years, thanks to some eye-opening (and very hot) chats with men who identify as mainly straight, adult male sexuality really does exist on a continuum -- the whole ''Kinsey scale'' concept, where 0 is 100% hetero, 6 is 100% homo, 3 means you're 50/50 bi -- is essentially correct. The results so far of the Brooklyn Jack Readers Orientation Poll confirm that a significant part of my audience identify as ''bi'' or ''curious straight.'' So I've been trying to come up with an umbrella term for all guys who are so into their own dicks that they get off on other guys' dicks, too.
Queer I scratched off the list immediately -- while it has often been proposed as an inclusive term that would cover those who are bisexual or "exploring," in practice it is much too associated with earnest left-wing student activism for my tastes.
(Exhibit A: Q.U.I.T., which stands for "Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism" -- a real group, but a bizarre concept, to my way of thinking, because while it's commendable that they would want to stand up for innocent Palestinians who are being used as proxies in an Arab/Israeli war, the simple fact is that there are annual gay pride parades in Tel Aviv, while Muslim Arab cultures, in Palestine and elsewhere, tend to be harshly intolerant of homosexuality)
I also thought of MSM, "Men who have Sex with Men," the term used by epidemiologists when tracking STDs. Well, apart from the association with disease, the trouble with ''MSM'' is that it puts so much emphasis on having sex, even though (a) many of my gay and bi readers appreciate deep emotional interaction with other men, in addition to sex; and (b) my straight-identified readers, and bi-married readers, aren't necessarily looking to engage in the act -- they simply love to fantasize about it.
So... maybe MLM, for "Men who Love Men"? Well, love is good, and it's good for men to love other men, but not all Brooklyn Jack readers want to love men in the same way -- some might prefer to love guys as friends only, and leave the sexual expression of male/male love for fantasy, while others want the sex and the friendly affection too.
Hmmm. How about MEM, signifying "Men with Erections for Men"? Note that this means nothing more or less than "Guys give me a hard-on sometimes." There's no implication about what you might want to do with the woody you've gotten after seeing another dude's package in the gym shower; there's no suggestion that the boner is indicative of an officially-defined Sexual Orientation; MEM just acknowledges that the boner is there.
Anyway, if you have thoughts on the subject of An Umbrella Term For Guys Into Male/Male Masturbation, share your feedback on the Yahoo group.
Finally, I wanted to share a letter I got from a reader yesterday. Thank you so much, buddy -- it means a lot whenever someone so clearly gets my message:
Hey, Rob--You've crossed my path on the Web several times until I finally went to your blog and learned a little about you. As a result, you introduced me to a few other sites, and now I notice you all the time.
So this is just a holiday message to say thanks for all you share with the rest of us.
I'm in Texas, which is okay with me (or at least Austin is), but sadly too far away to be able to make your acquaintance in person. We seem to have a lot of preferences in common, which would make it a pleasure just to chat with you sometime, if nothing else.
I'm much older than you -- 56, in fact -- and reached my prime before AIDS, which gave me a chance to try everything without the sword of Damocles hanging over my head, like it does for guys nowadays. I think it's especially difficult for gay men to come to terms with their own preferences, since they have to learn to deal with that part of society that condemns anything they feel drawn to as well as a certain amount of conformism among gay men, who have excellent reasons for wanting to share feelings of solidarity. I too have felt the pull toward thinking that sex has to be oral or anal, or it's just not sex.
But I have gradually come to understand that, much as I enjoy the fantasy of anal sex and watching it in porn, in actuality fucking is not for me. And for the most part, neither is oral. I had a blowjob last week, in fact, and the only way I could finish was with my hand. I do think that if I were in a close relationship with another guy, I would want us to leave all avenues to each other's pleasure open, so I'm not saying I'll never suck or fuck again. But right now I'm a single man, so my obligation at the moment is entirely to myself.
I find my greatest pleasure with another man in just sharing with him the pleasure I take in my own body, paradoxical as that may sound. My sexual life with myself is my most private and precious possession, and sharing that with another person in an exposed and vulnerable way is about as intimate as it gets, I think.
Letting him watch me stroke myself to the edge and then see me as a totally sexual being, so different from the proper guy at work that everyone likes and respects, is important for my feeling of wholeness. And spinning off each other's energy, on the rare occasions when that happens, to spiral into a higher state of sexuality, where you feel blissfully at one with everybody and everything, almost as if you are putting the whole damn mess of the world right single-handedly (so to speak), that's about the only religious experience I will ever have, or need.
So here's to you, and to me, and to all the guys like us who are unashamed masturbators who would never have found each other without the incredible Internet.
Yes. Amen, HAIL PENIS!, and God Bless You All.
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