The Tao of Social Networking

Having been born in 1971, I am a card carrying member of an elite group of people affectionately called “Generation-X”. I would like to believe that I’m too young to be considered “old” and too old to be considered “young”, but let’s cut the shit here… I’m fucking old. But I do feel us old Generation-X’ers do have a slight technological advantage over other generations in that, our grasp of life before the internet is just as strong as our obsession with it. In broad terms, my children can’t conceive of a corded rotary phone with no voicemail or call waiting any more so than my parents would want to talk to their girlfriends and drinking buddies using only 140 characters. I on the other hand have fond memories of having to dial 0 for the operator to get directions to a restaurant, digging for change in my pocket to use a payphone, using our UHF/VHF television as monitor for my old Radio Shack TRS-80 computer, being in complete awe when we first got AOL and hearing those distinctly technical guttural noises and thinking, “Oh my God! That’s the future squeaking at me!” I also remember when I wanted to talk to someone I had to do it the old fashion way… awkwardly, uncomfortably and unknowingly; I knew nothing about them but the basic information I could ascertain from my immediate five senses… they looked good, they smelled decent enough, the pitch of their could be lower, but fuck it… proceed and say hello or whatever best line happened to be. There was no profile to look at beforehand, no simple visual assessment of how many mutual friends you have or how many friends they have accumulated, there were no graphic shots of their genitalia on display, there was just you and the other person and you just pressed your luck.

DOES IT GET BETTER?

(c) Breeze Vincinz

 

This is going to be my entry into the "It Does Get Better Campaign", despite the fact it might be over with by the time this gets published. Nevertheless, I still wanted to say a little something about gay teen suicides and speak to those teenagers who are questioning their sexuality and are having such a hard time coping with their peers during this time.

I was talking about the "It Does Get Better Campaign" with a friend of mine. I was thinking about the idea of "it getting better". Honestly, I guess I question the idea of it getting "better" and is it a level of delusion that we want to promote. In one aspect I think we definitely should tell teenagers, "You know what, you're a teenager; the world is kind of microscopic at this point. But it is bigger, and it is better." I know when I was a teenager, when I was 15 or 16, my world was just High School and I didn't think anything existed outside of it. My thought was that the people who were fucking with me at 15 or 16 were always going to exist, they were always going to fuck with me and I was never going to get out of that situation. And truth of the matter is, I think this should be a campaign of, "Dude, once you graduate, seriously, you never have to see those fools… ever again in your entire life. " I can tell you, honestly, I am 39 years old, I have not seen those people since I graduated. You hear me? You never have to see them, ever again. I think that alone should give you some inspiration to keep going because once you graduate it's a done deal. So just get through the next couple of years.

ASTROLOGY AND THE SINGLE MAN

(c) Breeze Vincinz

Once upon a time I befriended a clairvoyant. And like all of my relationships, platonic or romantic, its formation was fierce, quick and alcohol laced (well on my part at least, he was a teetotaler). I haven’t spoken to my teetotaler clairvoyant friend in quite some time but he popped up in my head today; the end of what I imagine to have been an extended patch of bad times for the past week or so. My weight loss has plateaued, I got stood up on Valentine’s Day (fuck you Joey!), though there have been a ton of “better” I have unwittingly skidded into the “worse” in the dysfunctional marriage between me and my job, and to top it off I was witness to three, yes THREE (!), separate fights on the bus ride from work… one that I unfortunately was a part of when a zaftig and disheveled young woman loudly proclaimed that I was trying to steal her bag because I, dressed in a turtleneck, jeans, boots, leather jacket and laptop bag, looked homeless and was trying to steal her purse. I blame it on my lack of sleep lately as well as just the accumulation of bullshit going on but I very ashamedly have to admit that… well… I read her for filth. I read her from chimpan-A to chimpan-Z. I called her everything but a child of God. It also didn’t help that this woman, who quite frankly looked like a tousled understudy for the movie “Precious”, was actually gathering sympathy from people on the bus while she pined on in the most dramatic of tones that could have rivaled Loretta Divine in “Colored Girls” about how “Somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff!” All of a sudden I was the male antagonist in every Black female empowerment story, from Mr. in “The Color Purple” to Russell in “Waiting to Exhale” to Basil in “The Women of Brewster Place”. There I was just reading my book… and this chick had the bus believing that I raped my dates and thrown babies out of windows and was trying to steal alla of her stuff…

THE FIFTH ANNUAL TOP TEN BEAUTIFUL MEN LIST

(c) Breeze Vincinz It's that time of year again. The time when every state in the union does it's best Los Angeles impression; the sun is shining, the sky sparkles magnificent hues of blues, the grass beams with an almost fluorescent of green, so bright that no one notices the dog poop… Most major cities are spurred by such natural beauty to host LGBT pride celebrations in which Lesbians, Gay, Bisexuals, Transgenders and their heterosexual counterparts take to the streets in glorious abandon to celebrate the lives, achievements and rock hard abs of our brethren (… and sisteren). Here at the Monthly Breeze we give our own accolades with our very own Beautiful Man List in which we give props to the beautiful men who rarely make it on the Beautiful People lists published by main stream publications (e.g. People, US Weekly). Maybe it has something to do with their lack of fame, or maybe it has something to do with their abundance of melanin and/or cellulite. In either case, we salute each one of you Beautiful Men… whether you are Gay, Straight or the "Tyler Perry" grey in between...

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED

(c) Breeze Vincinz

As a man of size, and a certain amount of body hair, after the initial shock of divulging my homosexual tendencies, the usual follow-up query is whether I'm a Top or a Bottom. I have skirted the answer for so long that many people just assume I'm a Bottom because no self respecting Top would ever shy away from the title. The truth lies somewhere in between. 

As forward thinking as I try to be, I was brought up in the ghetto of 1980's Chicago. The most famous gay men in my generation were RuPaul and Jeffery Dahmer. If the 70's were about "free" love, the 80's were about it's "resale"; either by putting it on glittery display for profit, or feeding it to guilt ridden notions for psychotic satisfaction. In either case, fame was at the end of either fork of that road and I for one did not want to be anywhere near it at the time. In my teenage mind with my Housing Project home life and my Catholic school rearing I was under the strict belief that as far as sex is concerned that anyone who gets penetrated is the submissive one and anyone who penetrates is the dominate one. So in my mind as far as "gay" sex was concerned, I envisioned Jeffery Dahmer fucking RuPaul… and eating him afterwards.

"JUST WRIGHT" TRIES TO GET IT RIGHT

(c) Steven G Fullwood

"A female physical therapist is drafted by an all-star basketball player to help him recover from a career-threatening injury. The two soon fall in love in what is a modern-day Cinderella story."
- Yahoo.com film blurb. 

I went with my bud "R" to see it even as I made fun of it after getting a waft of the stinking trailer. Corn-nee romantic comedy starring black people. Still I see enough bad (white) mainstream films (unintentionally) and apparently have shitloads of disposable income (in my mind) so I parked my yellowed ass at Harlem's Magic Johnson Theater, which has the amenities a self-satisfied critic like myself sometimes needs and desires: black movies and black people. Of the black movies, there are only maybe two per century, primarily written (hahaha!) and directed (bwahahah!) by Tyler fucking Perry. Of the black people, I want to be with my people as they talk their asses all the way through the film, laughing at the funny parts, booing and hissing, and saying things like "Oh no she didn't!" as if they were sitting at home alone in their draws.

BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

(c) Dale Guy Madison

Would a man’s sexual preference in being strictly a bottom or strictly a top be the ‘deal breaker’ in considering a long term relationship with him?

Back in the day, let’s say the late 1970’s, I received a copy of my GAY 101 TEXTBOOK and I flipped to the chapter called: “Pancake Queens.” Old school fags used to call them “Confused Sissies” or “Flip Flop Queens.” It seems there was this unspoken rule that states:

Some of us strictly take dick (BOTTOMS), Some of us strictly throw dick (TOPS) and then some of us are confused who do both (VERSATILE).

There is a delicate balance that cannot be disturbed between Tops & Bottoms. I upset that balance because I refused to be strictly anything.

I was one of the lucky fags. About 10 of my high school buddies all came out of the closet with me in 1976. We were a wonderful support to each other. We had each other to guide us through this magical world of GAY-O-RAMA. What we did not know was that our generation of disco, platform shoes and glitter dust ushered in a revolution that upset the balance of gay nature. We loved giving and receiving. We dressed asexual. We weren’t extremely masculine nor were we AB FAB! You could say we were like Marlo Thomas, “Free to Be… You and ME”:

Every boy in this land grows to be
his own man

In this land, every girl grows to be
her own woman

Take my hand, come with me
where the children are free

Come with me, take my hand
and we'll run

to a land where the river runs free
to a land through the green country
to a land to a shining sea
to a land where the horses run free
to a land where the children are free

and you and me are free to be
and you and me are free to be...
...you and me

I came out the closet in 1976 and although I was young and full of cum, I was not dumb. I quickly purchased a copy of The Joy of Gay Sex. I rationalized that this gay life was the ultimate “best of both worlds”. Where else could you go and have as much sex as you want to and not get anyone pregnant? My Dad had 13 illegitimate kids; the last thing I wanted was to get some girl pregnant. I loved sex, this was the perfect solution! How dare you tell me I can’t use both organs God gave me? I loved dick as much as I loved ass.

The generation before me seemed to think that gay life had to be some reflective version of a heterosexual life. Gay relationships had roles. There was a masculine (TOP) role and a feminine (BOTTOM) role. To me, that did not seem very GAY. I did not want to be locked into a role. You see the TOP role inferred better and BOTTOM role suggested less.

I did not think of myself as less of a man because I choose to give up my manhole. I did not think of myself as better because I was enjoying a tight juicy ass. The multiple options of gay sex made me feel that two men enjoying each other in every versatile way possible was the best sex.

Larry was the first man I was involved with who was an exclusive top. He took that role seriously. Emotionally and sexually, he had to be the one in control. He was older, made more money, liked to take care of me and shower me with gifts. That’s where we had problems. He wanted me to be a quiet, passive lover who stayed in the background. But my personality was too “out there” to settle for being quiet. I loved the gifts and the trips and the Sunday ritual of massaging his scalp with Sulfur 8 ointment. He used to let me go through his closets and select a tie for each of his suits; I would pre-tie each in a Windsor knot so they were ready to pull over his head. He was romantic and sweet and kind to me, as long as I stayed in place. I did those chores for him because I loved him, not because I wanted to be placed in a symbolic role of a “woman serving her man.”

The problem was I could not just stay still in one place and fill that one role. I enjoyed playing the dominant role sexually as well. It was one of the things I relished about gay life. You could be a top one night and flip the script and be a bottom the next. There was no such flipping with Larry. He said I was “confused.” It was our deal breaker.

Don’t call me confused.

I know exactly what I want.

I want your ass, I want your dick.

Your ass…

Your dick…

Your ass…

Your dick...

Your ass round my dick…

Your dick inside my ass…

Don’t you see,

it takes a real man to say:

Drop the masks

and drop ya drawers

Total bottoms bore me

Total tops annoy me

Give me a FLIP FUK

any day

I do u

U do me and as we

fuk we do each other

Fuk U/ Fuk me

Then flip it

Signed,

A 50 something Old School Brotha.

Actor/Author Dale Guy Madison is the author of “Dreamboy: My Life A QVC Host & Other Hits” and is currently publishing the adult fairytale, “Sissy Sammy in the Land Of West Hollywood 90069.”