Last night was just insane, meaning Multilingual Monday got skipped. Boo me, I know. But hey, what better way to make up for it, than posting pictures of men I find hot? ^_-

( Okay, the pics are a bit too big, so click to see some cuties instead. )

Where I live, and where I work, I have to explain a lot of things about my life, and answer a lot of questions. Many here have never MET an openly gay man, and all the questions pop up...

"Well how did you know you liked guys??"
"How long have you been gay?"

And whether or not you believe it, I happen to be very aware of the fact that even as a child I was, well, very very gay. There's no two ways about it -- even as I look as pictures of myself as a child, I have to wonder: how did my parents NOT know? Was the power of denial TRULY that strong?

I remember being drawn to the men that I find attractive now, but I can't say it was because of attraction. Really, I can't explain WHAT it was, but there was something ... INTERESTING ... that was there that I couldn't explain, but now, twenty plus years later, it all makes perfect sense.

I mean, how many seven year olds fixate on Sebastian Cabot??

From an old vintage beer ad hanging up in Alexander's Steakhouse in Peoria. Though this sun carticature is presumably getting irate with a man off-frame drinking a beer, upon first glance I asked Carl: "What's up with the sun? Did it have a stroke???" ^^;;;


My work has such high standards. The towel dispenser in the men's bathroom broke, so rather than replace the unit, they took the whole thing out and then balanced a giant roll of paper towels first on the partition between the urinal and the sink, and then in the hole where the dispenser used to be. When neither of these seemed satisfactory enough, someone took a coathanger and rigged it to hang the towels roughly where the dispenser was. wow.


I've been emptying pics off of my (very crappy) cell phone, and one was this, from the Peoria airport in April. I was waiting for my flight to Chicago (to get to Toronto) and this cute hefty bearded daddybearish gent was reading, waiting for his flight. I suck at being a photo ninja, and the equipment's obviously not up to snuff either ;_;

A coworker asked me to scan a picture of her son visiting Santa at the mall, and I agreed. Of course, what's the first thing I think of when scanning the pic?

"Wow, Santa's HOT." Yeah, I'm a dirty old man minus a few decades. :: laugh ::

So tonight started off with going to Mark L.'s birthday party and ended up with us carless and in police custody.

( Wait, what??? )

Carl and I went to Steak 'n Shake for a quick bite, and after we got seated we noticed a man across the room. He was adorable -- a little taller than myself, hefty, nice beard ... and wearing pajama bottoms.

"... is it late enough to be in your PJs???" I asked Carl.
"I'm sure it is SOMEWHERE, yes."

So Cute Pajama Man gets up to go to the bathroom, and comes out a few minutes later without buttoning his fly up, and this was immediately noticed by Carl.

"Oh my, did you see that?? His fly was completely undone. I saw a 'turtle'!" he said while doing his trademark cackle.

The rest of the meal went without incident (or eye candy), and we went to pay the bill. The lady doing drive-thru started to ring us up and started to eye the both of us.

"My son would adore the BOTH of you!" she remarked.
"... excuse me???"
"He's one, and he LOVES facial hair, so he'd love just tugging at both of your beards!"

She continued on about her son's beard fixation (including with Santa!) before finishing ringing us up, and I couldn't help but give Carl some uncomfortable looks. I mean, wow, this totally sounds like the beginnings of a fetish. ^^;;;

Recently I was getting into a discussion on Bear411 about stupid things we've done in our past. I admit, in my younger days I'd made some incredibly stupid decisions. Pull up a chair and let me tell you about one:

His name was Ron, and we worked at the same groocery store in a small suburb to the south of Chicago. I had just turned nineteen years old, and was very aware of what I found attractive in a man, and that -- at the time at least -- was Ron. About 6'6", with a nice goatee, wide shoulders, a cuddly build, and a hot ass, I caught myself gawking at this young hefty cub.

He soon after quit, and I heard through mutual friends that he'd started working at a gas station not so far away, and that he'd been known to have been intimate with men since high school. My heart practically skipped beats, knowing that this was my chance!! That night, I stopped into the gas station, and we shot the shit.

I hung around, looking at random items, trying to build up courage. And then I heard him walk past me and go, "... did ... did you need something?" God, stupid, stupid, stupid! I was so obvious!! My heart rate, from the moment I heard his voice, shot up about 100 beats per minute. I gulped as I felt the sweat pour down my brow and my hands shaking the copy of Weekly World News I wasn't even really reading.

"L ... listen, Ron ... I ..." I stuttered, knowing how big of an idiot I must have seemed. Just say it, I thought to myself! Say it!!

"Listen, I think you're really hot."
"... Really now," he said, not really reasponding. "Well you never mentioned it before. Weren't you dating some girl?"
Ah yes, the famous "I'm not brave enough to be out yet" PRONOUN game. "Yeah, that was a guy."
"Oh, I see," he said, as he put something on a shelf and walked away, going towards the auto garage connected to the gas station.

There was silence. There was almost no response. And that lack of a response caused me to panic, further aggravating the doubts slamming inside my mind that this was a bad idea, like a man in a straitjacket slams against padded walls.

Then I heard his voice, from the garage. "Roger, could you come here a second?"

My heartbeat could be felt throughout my entire body, as I walked slowly to the garage, the sound of my footsteps resonating throughout the empty gas station.

And that's when I saw him unbuttons his jeans. "I don't normally do this, but fuck it, let's give this a go," he said. A wave of ecstasy flooded me as I saw his blue briefs once his jeans parted. I walked over, my hands rubbing the silhouette of his cock, begging to be released. My hands roamed his stomach, covered in blonde fur, and soon my fingers traced his waistband, pulling his briefs down. Out popped what was, up to that point, the biggest dick I had ever seen. Not only was it thick like the rest of this furry beast in front of me, but was a little more than nine inches in length.

My small hands tugged on the swollen member, my thumb tracing the contour of his foreskin. I was in utter awe. "... you have a nice dick," I managed to blurt out. He smiled and, in his deep voice, he responded, "Thanks ... what's your dick like?"
"Well," I responded, "guys have told me I have a big dick."
"Well let's see it then."
I all too eagerly dropped my drawers, and my semi-hardon was exposed. His beefy paw gave it a few tugs. "Well I suppose it would be big," he said. "... you know, for someone your size."

Wow, that kind of stung back then! My dick and its supposed size had been a source of pride for my very brief time as a sexually active man, and just like that, it had been taken away.

"So, yeah, if you want this you better make it quick," he said in a gruff tone, shaking his cock towards me. I shook off my disappointment and irritation and started choking his dick down. Despite my anger, I enjoyed sucking his meat down, my tongue exploring his foreskin, my hands rhythmically running down his thick shaft, the taste of his precum invading my taste buds.

Suddenly a sound was heard from outside, and I could feel Ron's body jerk. "Shit. Hide!" I didn't know what to do, so I yanked my pants up and went behind a stack of tires. I could hear Ron's heavy foosteps against the floor as they ran into the gas station, and I stayed behind the tires, hearing nothing, seeing nothing.

Time continued to pass, and I stayed hidden. It got to the point where I couldn't even tell how much time had passed. Was I supposed to stay hidden? Was there some signal that I could come out? Was it a customer? Another empolyee? Maybe I could just leave?? I went with that last gut feeling, and walked away from the tires, walking towards garage exit opposite the gas station, and that's when I saw Ron's face. His eyes were first that of surprise, and then of anger. I ran out and walked home, not getting home until almost three in the morning.

The next day all I could think of was what had transpired. I was filled with a myriad of emotions: lust, confusion, guilt, anger. I pulled the white pages out from my pantry, and looked up Ron's number. I dialed him up, and his voice was one of initial surprise. I confessed I had a good time, and that I'd love to do that again.

"... and I'm sorry I had to leave. I didn't know what else to do," I admitted.
"That was my BOSS in there," Ron said, the anger in his voice being enough to stop me cold. "I could have gotten fired you little FUCK."
"I ... I didn't know, I'm sorry!!"
"Listen asshole, you ever tell ANYONE what happened, I'll fucking KILL YOU, you HEAR me???"

He slammed his receiver down, and the line went silent. My face paled, and it felt like my heart stopped. Just what had I gotten myself into?

Later that afternoon, I laid on the couch, staring up at the ceiling, replaying the last day's worth of events, beating myself over every single detail. All I could think, was how I was so stupid to have put myself in such a situation, and that had I handled things differently, I might have had at least a friend and not someone so scared of my outing him that he'd beat my ass. Eventually he calmed down, but Ron remained distant from me, and in a couiple of ways I can't blame him. I suppose, if anything, I can say that I learned better.

Surely everyone has a "damn I was an idiot" story like this, right?

So I was tagged by chibi_masshuu, who picked seven interests and asked me to elaborate. If you want, you can comment and I'll pick seven of YOURS, but you don't really HAVE to -- I'm not that kind of meme doer person. :: laugh ::

( The explanations ... )

I picked up various magazines and the like during Yom Kippur services, and in the inside front cover of one of the magazines was an advertisement for the Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent to the Red Cross, and the gent above was in the collage of pictures of MDA workers.

Holy hell. Yes, please!

So a while ago I was flipping through a copy of Sha'ar leMaxtil, and the above man's picture caught my attention. "Rawr," I thought, "he's hot!"

This is Israeli Knesset member Avigdor Liberman and, though I may PHYSICALLY find him attractive, I don't think very highly of him. He's quite extreme in his views and seems repulsively anti-Arab. Yet I can't deny that I possessed an initial physical attraction to him and, yeah, I'd grudge fuck him.

Has anyone experienced this -- a physical lust for someone who you otherwise find repulsive? :: laugh ::

A wonderful video from two hot men, on wearing a fundoshi. Personally I think this is hot, but fur + muscle + fundoshi = boner. :: laugh ::

So today I got to try out the Nintendo DS game Touch de Tanoshimu Hyakunin Isshu: DS Shigureden, which is a DS game based on the classic Uta Karuta card game that I've mentioned ad nauseum here. Basically the concept is the same: parts of 100 possible ancient Japanese poems are read off, and the matching "picture card" needs to be clicked. There are several play modes, one of which gives you computer opponents to play against. The second of which is the gentleman above, Semimaru.

I miust say, Semimaru is delicious. Who knew I'd find something dealing with Uta Karuta to be EROTIC?? :: laugh ::

So I'm finally back from my weekend up in Chicago which coincided with IML and Bear Pride. I had, admittedly, decided early on not to register after last year's fiasco (where I got a runaround after having missed the scant registration pick-up times and didn't get my badge until Monday morning), and money's been QUITE tight these last couple of weeks, with a few unforseen expenses here and there. I suppose, then, that it was a blessing in disguise that I was then coaxed into working on Friday -- initially my day off -- as it would have given me another day to try to plan for (and as it so happens, just Saturday through Monday left me a broke bitch :: laugh ::), and instead I opted to go with mad_geek on Saturday morning ...

So this means that most of the official events weren't ones that I attended. Instead, I opted to go to jdawg1974 and Brian's housewarming party on Saturday (where a drunk guy tried to gut punch me and then told me I was hot because I "look Polish" (????)), and got to spend time with guys I almost never see (like muckefuck, Dutes, Aitor, musicbearmn and his hubby, etc.) and, while it wasn't the crazy "everyone in the bear world" party like last year's block party, but there were still plenty of guys who made appearances, and it was a great time. You know, outside of the gut punching ^^;;;; I mean, where else can you inquire about the existence of an Italian word for "felching"?

Sunday I got to meet the handsome kumazuki for Ethiopian food (something I never get in Peoria), and man ... he's a sweet sweet man, and there were times during our conversation where Scott and I would chat in Japanese or discuss kanji or Arabic spelling and I kept thinking: God I love this. I so seldomly get to have this kind of conversation with anyone!! Granted, Scott uses Kyoutouben but no one's perfect. :: laugh :: Did I mention he's sexy as hell?? :: laugh :: I wanted to do the dance that night but realized it would cost $45 as someone not registered, and ... yeah, somehow Ethiopian food won over dancing with bears. :: laugh ::

So a friend of mine said, "Hey, I see you were in town not too long ago."
"Erm, yeah, for Bear Night. How did you know?"
"Because you're in Gay Chicago."

And sure enough, here I am, along with meteron and wooferstl.