The Garab Chronicles

Mommy, What's a Garab? (My Almost Boyfriend, Part 6)

There are rules to the one-night stand, and they’re different from those that apply to the online hookup, and completely separate from the principles that guide the randomly acquired blowjob often made possible by alcohol, vacant bathrooms, or the occasional passenger seat of a moving (or parked) sedan, but only if the windows are tinted, unless the aforementioned alcohol is involved, in which case all bets are off and it’s a free for all. I can only speak to the first two scenarios, because, all judgment aside, even I’m not slutty enough to speak to the last…or so I ventured to tell myself until a flood of memories washed over me like a filthy thought I’ll take the high road on now but will probably spell out in explicit detail later lest I betray the low standard I’ve made my benchmark.  

Fortunately, though for whom I know not, I majored in slutty, so I can enlighten those more sexually repressed than myself and provide nostalgic fodder for the whores who’ve gone before me. That said, I’d have benefited from a welcome bit of luck had Magnificock, the Bastard Prude, signed up for the same course load (yes, I just said load) at Me University that I had the compulsive sense to enroll in. Sadly, he only got a doctorate in Assholery, with a double minor in Looking Cute While Being Dickish, and Cardio-Butchery.

The Stand  

The one-night stand is nature’s way of ensuring that the vast majority of human beings don’t resort to serial cannibalism and unchecked acts of domestic genocide. While self-love is important, and intimate knowledge of one’s own ins, outs, and crevices is likely to increase the mutual satisfaction brought on by getting down, it remains, solely, love of the self, and it does, in the end, take two to coitus, or three or four if you’re into groups. Me-touchy is a wonderful way to get to know one’s own body, build up stamina, discover the things that turn us on, and gauge whether we are ready to communicate our deepest desires to our potential lovers, or wisely banish them to the privacy of a small room one might share with, say, a laptop computer and a pair of headphones while a fan blasts on high for the sake of neighborly decency and fear of Nancy Grace. But in the end, it’s all practice, kinda like a snack that holds you over for that really big meal, during which you plan on gorging like your protein-starved ancestors did after a long hunt, or like me on an average Wednesday.

Most of us go about our days toiling in relative anonymity, yearning for a loving touch that might quickly turn into a brief carnal embrace ending in an orgasm that won’t require us to do laundry, and not lasting so long as to render us too exhausted to order a pizza. This is especially true of those of us who are either single, or have had the good, bitter fortune to be in a loving and committed relationship for so long that the prospect of trying a new type of crust on a delicious pie covered in bubbling cheesy goodness is more appetizing than the headache-inducing gaze of our beloved. Somewhere in between is that nauseating segment of the population that is just so in love that they can’t get enough of one another – like me and Magniff at the three-to-twelve week mark in our relationship, post-first-sexual-intercourse-to-completion-experience, if we managed to get that far. There’s also the statistical anomaly of couples that genuinely adore one another outside the prodding confines of a court-supervised self-help program, though a chemical imbalance may be at play and such cases serve merely to fulfill the necessary margin of error.

Enter the one-night stand, though standing is rarely involved if you’re not in a broom closet or propped on an apple box because, in your desperation, you’ve selected a partner who’s either too height-gifted, or too height-challenged to properly sixty-nine without having to resort to props or a reference episode of “Queer As Folk”.

Say you’re at a party, tastefully dressed in your ex-boyfriend’s favorite shirt, which you managed to hang on to after your Chernobyl meltdown of a relationship, because it always looked better on you anyway, and you’re finally at the point where you feel good enough about your body to flirt with his best friend, who you’d rather have dated in the first place. You’re two hours and only one cocktail in, despite the open bar, because you know how sloppy you can get now that your co-dependant crutch, who was only good at cutting you off in social situations and micro-managing you to within an inch of your sanity but damn was he a good lay in a pinch, isn’t around anymore. You’re feeling confident and available and grounded, and all that therapy is finally, FINALLY paying off, and you’re about ready to pounce on el best friendo del douchey, now that he’s standing all by himself looking a little confused because, unlike you, he didn’t stop at one cocktail.

You take a step towards your shoulda-been boyfriend, Carne Fresca, and you realize something: This can never work. This guy is your ex-boyfriend’s best friend in the whole wide world. He already knows the size of your endowment, your favorite positions, and the deepest, darkest secrets from your past that you foolishly confided in the cold bastard you used to show up with to these god-forsaken gatherings in the first place. The second you talk to him, he’ll be speed-texting your ex, and you’ll feel all the shame and humiliation of the breakup you thought you’d recovered from all over again and have to book an emergency session with your shrink after recovering from the hangover you’ll have to endure after you unleash yourself on what’s left of the open bar and end up throwing yourself at the bar tender, who you knew was gonna dump you when he remembered that he wasn’t into dudes.

No, in a situation like this, you have one option, and one option only if you have even the slightest glimmer of a chance to salvage your dignity and mend your wounded self-esteem: You have to bang the best friend. Carne Fresca is, after all, half-wasted easy pickings at this point in the evening. Besides, the guilt this man-whore would feel for adding poor vulnerable you to his list of conquests would almost certainly prevent him from disclosing to your ex, who would surely fly into a jealous rage and want you back just a little, that you’re way better in bed than he ever said you were. Therefore, to ensure that your ex discovers his besty’s betrayal, to your smug satisfaction, you would make sure that after you were done, you would stuff your trademark red Andrew Christian square-cut boxers - the ones with your name written on the tag in permanent marker – between his cushions on the side of the couch you know your ex likes to sit when they get together to play X-Box Live.* You may have to feign searching for said underwear on the way out the door to enshrine your perceived innocence in the whole episode, but in your heart, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing what a cold, calculating pig (or pigette) you really are.

The Lay

Now, the online hookup, unlike the one-night stand, requires none of the emotional attachment or logistical planning that usually just blows up in your face anyway. You’re a decent human being, and the last thing you ever want to do is knowingly cause someone else harm or psychological distress. You read Eckhart Tolle before you rest your head at night, not the latest translation of “The Art of War”. You might even have considered teaching yoga to supplement your income while enriching the lives of the masses, and dropped the two Grand that you’ll never recoup getting a teaching certificate in being bendy, which you already were in the first place. But you’re single and you’re tired of waiting for the love of your life to a) be born, b) find you, and c) sweep you into a life of comfortable bliss where you too might become an annoying statistical anomaly that all those cynics out there who’ve never tasted your good fortune are bound to relegate to a margin of error in some made-up survey that serves only to soothe their houses of self-made misery.

For thee, gentle soul, the Almighty fashioned the online mating game. You’ll need a smart phone (with built-in camera), a laptop computer (with built-in web cam), porn for inspiration, a high-speed internet connection, a Skype account, porn to pass the time waiting for strangers to reply to your online ad, multiple email addresses to ensure discretion while emailing the strangers that do respond to your online ad photos of your anatomy, and an abundance of free time and energy. You’ll also need a healthy sense of humor, the emotional hide of a rhinoceros, dumb luck, and a jockstrap. If you have blond hair, blue eyes, washboard abs, access to a tanning facility, and a freakishly large penis, your chances of success are markedly enhanced, though only if you can play 18-20 on TV, which means you’re actually 25.

If you’re 25 and up, your prospects begin to diminish, and you have to reconcile yourself with bending the truth about your age, or, if you’re 64.5% of the guys I’ve encountered in the anonymous desert of cyberspace, about your age, your relationship status, your level of sobriety, and your fitness to stand before a judge in open court and declare yourself sane without risk of committing perjury. Please note that lying about your age during your mid-to-late twenties, while adorable, requires a liver that remained intact through your early twenties and can therefore aid you in your quest to present a more desirable version of yourself to people you might be sexually attracted to but would never dream of engaging in actual conversation. Again, a freakishly large penis doesn’t hurt.

If you hit 30, you’re fucked; discontinue use immediately and revert to the section above, where you’ll find infinitly more opportunities for dignity with people you know, even if you hate their guts and wish them dead, rather than subjecting yourself to the horny whimsical preferences of people you don’t know but will surely come to hate and wish dead. Once you’ve hit that Saturn Return, lying won’t help you. Consider the following conversation taking place on a computer screen near you:

 Dave27: So bro, you wanna do this?

 Str8boy19eightysomething: you look hot. Ok…more pics?

 Dave27: I sent you 12! Anything else will require a film crew!

 Str8boy19eightysomething: lol you want this or not bud?

 Dave27: (yet another picture, this one with different lighting)

 Str8boy19eightysomething: Nice…you smooth, bro?

 Dave27: little fuzz, no forest.

 Str8boy19eightysomething: sorry man, i like em smooth all over. Probly from bangin chicks for so long when I was straight. L8.

 Skype: Str8boy19eightysomething has logged off (Skype logoff/rejection sound).

 Dave27: fml

I know, ladies, I know. I hate the misogynist son of a heifer too. May his dreams be nightmares plagued by visions of Nair and the lingering scent of burnt hair and singed flesh.

Now imagine a world where, for the briefest of moments, Str8boy19eightysomething’s last statement might have turned you on, before you considered, with growing fury, that even if you had a freakishly large penis, the only way you’d actually end up using it was to deploy its flaccid weight to beat the anonymous bastard to death with it.

Lies won’t help you anymore. Your balls have dropped, and now you yearn for something true, and a little less douchey. Your patience for abject stupidity, internalized homophobia, latent racism, overt ageism, and unattractive people has involuntarily ejected you from a game you were only too happy to play a few long months that turned into a few short years ago. You’re done now, and you’re stuck blowing people that you actually meet in person. Sure, you may relapse here and there, and find yourself wasting a perfectly good evening when you could have been watching “Charmed” chatting with a dingleberry that passes for a man. But, like a fine wine that hasn’t turned to vinegar, you’ve grown more robust with age, and you now know when to hold em, and when to shake em off and flush em.

There is one thing that the anonymous online hookup, and the semi-anonymous one-night stand have in common. Both end with the sound of a guy zipping up. The zip up will tell you everything, from the depth of the guy’s capacity for dishonesty, to his level of self-hatred, to the urgency of his need to get somewhere where he can block you on Facebook. If he zips up before either of you has ejaculated, you can be certain that he will block you on Facebook.

The one other thing that all hookups have in common is that during post-production you would never, ever treat someone you actually cared about the way that most guys do after they’ve gotten their rocks off with a stranger. Rolling over and passing out says “I like you, and I trust you enough to lie next to you, naked. Can we please cuddle?” Putting your pants on within thirty seconds of screaming the Almighty’s name and darting out while mumbling something about what a nice time you had and how excited you are about doing it again sometime says “I just used you for sex and I didn’t catch your name but I might be wearing one of your socks.”

I know these things, because I invested in my hard-won education. If Magnificock had done the same, maybe he would have been less of a shithead…

*You may have to modify your strategy if you don’t date dorks.

The Blow Job (Part 3)

**The Blow Job is an ongoing series that I started writing in 2008. You can read Part 1 HERE, and Part 2 HERE**

BJ didn’t need any turning. Nothing I could ever do or say was ever going to convince this straight, sports-loving, vagina-chasing frat survivor to love cock any more than he already did, and it would turn out that he loved it at least as much as I craved it, though coy as he was, I eventually learned that he worshiped the mighty penis more often and with more religious fervor than I could have ever aspired to, even in the most sordid of my debauched dreams. BJ was homo by stealth, a gay ninja that struck when least expected, or whenever he started talking about working out or men’s boots.

I’d grown up repressed enough to take it as a compliment when, upon learning that I was an unrepentant homosexual, middle-aged women out shopping with their mothers commented that I didn’t look gay. I’d had co-workers loudly proclaim that they’d never have guessed that I loved, loved, LOVED kissing boys and all their boy parts, right before they swore they had the perfect guy they’d like to set me up with because he was single and nobody could tell that he was gay either. If I knew then what years of heartache and therapy have since taught me, I’d have broken out in obscure show tunes and used the words fierce, divine, and work (pronounced “werk”, while holding the e) at every opportunity, and for no reason at all, except to make sure that everyone, be they clergy or muscle queen, would never mistake me for a breeder – not that there’s anything wrong with that sort of thing.

No wonder I couldn’t get a fucking date to save my life and my sex life for the entirety of my early 20’s consisted of intimate knowledge of my left hand and the video rental counter at Circus of Books. When gay guys tell me how proud they are that they’re not part of the gay scene, my inner drag queen, Moesha LeFuree, wants to remind them that it’s not like they can write themselves out. You’re in, whether you like it or lie about it, and BJ liked to lie about it, until you got to know whatever version of him he wanted to show you on any given day.

The first time I got to peel BJ’s onion of multiple personality disorder, I was minding my own business while casually eavesdropping on his conversation with his co-workers at the café of drowning sorrow. I’d already been at his counter for hours, sketching and trying to come down off an unusually stubborn sugar high. I finally gave up and decided to take my weary body home upon remembering that I hadn’t touched myself since lunchtime, but as I got up to leave, BJ stopped me.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he snapped.

“Um, home,” I shrugged.

“No you’re not. Sit down.” BJ commanded, sliding another piece of pie before me.

I never took BJ for a dom top, but I remember thinking to myself that from then on, when I saw a Craigslist ad for a take charge, DL, str8 young jock, it was probably the mating call of the guy serving me cake.

I did as I was told, and diligently consumed the refashioned sticks of butter on my plate, but I didn’t dare to eat too quickly, lest BJ force me to devour something else. I had limits, dammit, even if they were solely physical and had nothing to do with class or good taste. Before I knew it, BJ and his co-workers were closing up shop, because, as it turns out, time flies when you’re on a sugar high to oblivion. BJ locked the front door and turned away the last of his would-be customers, and I thought that surely this was my moment to vacate the seat that had grown frail under the weight of my expanding over-indulgent ass.

I ventured a glance in BJ’s direction. I had learned from the little bit of BDSM porn I’d watched with uncomfortable intrigue, because three rentals at Circus of Books meant that the fourth one was free, that once roles were established, they were not to be altered until a scene ended in an orgasm couplet, the first taken and the second granted. I was clearly not the dominant one on this night; I was too tired and too high – BJ knew what he was doing and wielded his chocolate syrup bottle like that seasoned drug pusher I saw on The Wire before he got whacked for snitching on the Barksdale crew. I was in no state to tell anyone what to do, and I was discovering that I kinda liked taking orders.

I moved my left foot.

“What’re you doing?” yelled Master BJ.

“Nothing, sir. Sorry, sir. I moved my foot with intent to exit café without permission, sir. I apologize, sir.”

BJ looked at me for a long time. I think he might have been puzzled.

“Some of us are going to Fubar,” he finally offered. “Wanna come?”

“Fubar?” Did a straight guy that I was just playing out an S&M fantasy with only in my head mere seconds ago just say “Fubar”? Was this a joke? Was BJ really that evil? Did he really mean that he, a straight guy, predisposed by evolution to gravitate to the female chest for sexual sustenance, liked to kick back after a long night of drawing espresso and cutting pie by driving over the hill to fucking Fubar?!

Please me a moment to ‘splain: Fubar during my mid-twenties was not only a gay bar on the outskirts of the geographical epicenter of all things gay in Los Angeles, it was the gayest of gay bars the Divine Mother had ever conceived of, and that likely during a hallucinogenic trip while lounging in a sling and holding a fruity martini, probably dubbed the Ethel Merman. Straight women went to Fubar, but only when dragged there by their single gay friends who had every intention of ditching them the second they worked up the nerve to talk to somebody who’d give them the time of day, or out of pure anthropological curiosity (read: they got tired of looking for unmarried, emotionally available heterosexual men in LA and figured they’d see some actual penis that didn’t cost them twenty minutes of vapid conversation, albeit on a go-go boy who may or may not be getting fingered by a random bar patron for a twenty dollar tip). I came to love the place, naturally, but it wasn’t ever going to be a place where actual straight guys ever went to on purpose if they hadn’t lost a bet. Hell, there were moments when even I felt uncomfortable in that bar, like when the really coked up queens figured it’d be cute to go number two in the urinal inside one of only two bathrooms in that den of iniquity, neither one of which purported to offer anyone the slightest shred of privacy, let alone dignity.

But these were all adventures that I, nay we, had yet to embark on. For now, I knew only of the great Fu’s reputation, and I’d only ever visited the place that would become BJ and I’s home away from café twice, and even one of those was on an ill-attended karaoke night that to this day I dare not speak of. Besides, BJ was still straight as far as I was concerned. The only useful thing I learned in college is that guys I’m interested in of questionable sexual orientation are not actually gay until they either say so explicitly while confessing their undying love, or mumble it while my penis, preferably engorged, is in their mouth, though I tend not to give too much weight to the latter because, though generally accepted in extreme cases, confessions obtained under duress are frowned upon under international law.

“So, are ya coming or what?” asked BJ of a vacant stare that betrayed none of the existential maelstrom raging behind my bulging eyeballs. I think drool might have made the mysterious journey from my mouth to my lower chin, but we’d had some rain that month so I could have always explained it away as residual environmental moisture and changed the subject while BJ got lost counting syllables.

“Yeah”.

And so it was that BJ became my first gay besty, but not before he made me work for it…