A Bad Man in a Bad Place

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Usually when I write these meandering things I give you a warning that the unsexy is about to follow. Below are many deeply unsexy things. They’re true things, but deeply unsexy. It appears that I remain in an Hubristic Correction. I’ve been in one since at least August 7, but it may be even longer. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the term, an Hubristic Correction is what happens when I evince too much hubris, and generally when things start going very well and I start telling people how well things are going. The universe rolls up a newspaper and smacks me in the nose like I’m a bad puppy. It’s been happening to me lately, and it’s started to affect my mood. Here’s a rundown of things that have been going wrong, hoping that in naming them they lose some of their power. Some of this is naming, and some is venting, and some is call for advice. I have pretty great readers, not only in the comments, but many of you have taken to IMing and emailing me. If ever you thought of doing so, now’s a good time. Below is a rundown of what’s on my mind right now.

• The place where I was working part time let me know today that they wouldn’t be able to put me on the project that I thought I was going to be on. This means bad things for my finances. I’ve been loathe to put ads up on this site until now, but I think I’m going to have to start. If anyone wants to place ads on here, particularly guys in the pickup community, I’ll be happy to take ads directly. If anyone has suggestions of ways I can make money that are legal (I’m not about to go doing sex work, for instance) I’m open to the idea. I clean up nicely if anyone needs a companion or a tour guide in New York City.
• It’s now more than a week since I last heard from the Sous Chef. Calls, Texts, and an Email have gone unanswered. There’s a possibility that it’s something normal and I’m just overreacting, like she’s gone off to somewhere without cell phone service and no computers, but I don’t know. It’s made me both sad and worried - not even a “don’t ever call me again you bastard.” Just total radio silence. Kind of weird. To quote a phrase - “Dear lady, I would love to walk with you, on a beach, somewhere, for just five minutes. How strange, to have come so far, and to want so little.”
• I haven’t kissed anyone, much less done anything else, since the Sous Chef left. Haven’t been in the mood. Been missing her kiss. Met a handful of kissable women but the instinct to lean in and do that, even when drunk, hasn’t been there.
• There is a prequel to this blog, a book that I’ve been working on on and off for years. I know it won’t turn anything back quickly, but if anyone wants to take a look at it and help me whip it into shape, you can see the true backstory of how I went for Nice Boy to Bad Man.
• The Developer emailed me out of the blue and I had a minor freakout about it. Turns out she wanted to set me up on a blind date. I told her I’d be thrilled to go, but I’d just been laid off and that the Sous Chef had just broken up with me. Presumably, that’s not sexy enough for her friend, I never heard again.
• It hasn’t been a terrible summer, just a terrible end to the summer. The Weather’s nice, though.
• I recently witnessed someone say to Legs that he was a lesbian trapped in a man’s body, which was genius in its heyday of 1995. I countered that I’m a gay man trapped in a straight man’s body, and everyone laughed, and agreed. I thought I was brilliant until I saw the same reference in an earlier entry on a prior site of mine in 1999. Somehow I’m not Metro, just a gay-straight man. Strange.
• Since Muxtape went down I lost the ability to make “Bad Man - The Muxtape.” Just found one of the songs I’d forgotten - the end of the relationship with The EvilOne - “Just to prove my love for you” by David Allen Coe. The Developer - “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad” by Moby. The Liberal - “One of these things first” by Nick Drake. SouthernBelle - “Darling Nikki” - Prince.
• I just saw a fight on Madison St in Chinatown. Ten people throwing down. It’s midday. Fights like that always get me down.
• I know that whining doesn’t help (and you don’t come here for the whining) but those of you that come here for the inner process of one man’s head will understand that sometimes bad shit happens and you need to process it. This is how I do that.
• I noticed recently that there remains a post online that tears into me. It’s been up for a few years now. I’m surprised it never got taken down, since I thought that I’d made peace with the author. Another reminder that there’s persistence of information on this here Internet. (No, I’m not going to link to it, nor identify its author. The author knows who they are, I’m sure.) This all leads back to the studies I did earlier in the year on outing and pseudonymity and identity. Again, not good.
• I tell people that I’m a nerd, because it’s true, I am. My frames of reference are often comic books, classical history, and science fiction shows. One of the panels that’s always stuck with me is a panel from the comic “Transmetropolitan.” The main character, a cross between Hunter S. Thompson and a dog-killing maniac, lost everything, and rather than getting wrapped up in the awfulness, he sees it as a beautiful thing. After the jump, the image.

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Random IMs from AcademicTrout, IndecentTrout, and BailedOutTrout. Anyone else get these lately?

Either this is an annoying person or a strange bot attack. Google

Comments?

Totally unsexy, don’t mind me. If you want the sexy, I’ve been on a tear on my Tumblr blog lately. Lots of pictures and some movies, not safe for work AT ALL.

My meta-question - what do you use to blog? Lots of my readers are blogging, and yes, I’ve been in the game a long time, but BECAUSE I’ve been in the game a long time, I wonder if I’m missing out on fancy whiz-bang technologies and whiz-bang techniques…

For me, blogging is often a function of finishing an experience, walking home and processing it, then writing down what I processed. I used to compose in BBEDIT and then post via the browser, but since then i’ve started using Ecto, which I adore. Sometimes I blog via Flock although not nearly as often. I like using Ecto since I can do offline composition and offers all sorts of useful goodies that I don’t take advantage of.

What do you use? What’s your method? Do you mediate the experiences of your life, as Troy suggested in the comments that photographers and writers do? Do you really hear “and then I …” in your head while you do stuff? I don’t. Closest I’ve come to that is when I get into a situation that intimidates me sometimes I hear in my head “you know, if it goes horribly awry you could at least blog it.” And recently I gave myself a pep talk by saying “umm, you ARE the Bad Man, you know.” I then laughed at myself, patted myself on the head a little, and found both my fear and my pep talk deeply amusing.

Do you use your blog personality to give yourself license to do things you wouldn’t otherwise?

Anyway, how do you blog? Both technology and mental. Do you have any tips you want to share? Things that make things easier? How do you keep track of your prior posts for linking back to? (Last Week’s Date, I’m looking at you… Also Friction… and of course Instapundit, but I’m sure he won’t be looking here)

Someone complained the other day that they need a roadmap and a flashlight to make sense of this site because I’m so self referential about stories that I assume you all know. What would be helpful to sort that out? A timeline? A glossary? A cast of characters and lost loves? How can I help you make sense of this place? Or am I good just the way I am and you’ll figure it out as we go, reading the archives as you can?

Note that I just found a huge cache of comments, but they’re in email, so I don’t have a good way to import them. They’re from ‘05-06, and if I only had an Intern to copy and paste for us, you could see some of the earlier comments… *sigh*

A few administrivia pieces. First - I am seeking an intern again. Second, even if I can’t find one, I could use a 400×50 banner because I’ve just listed myself with the LicList and, well, they ask for banners.

Marcelle once teased me that BDSM was trendy, that I was only taking a detour down “Wannabe Avenue.” I should have known she was prescient. Smart girl, that one. I will note that now Nina Hartley has a guide to bondage. Just in case you, or anyone you know, wants to do what I’ve done.

Nerds that we are, we still enjoyed learning the ins and outs of bondage sex—like what positions are best, how to tie a good knot, and all the fun little bondage gadgets. But we’d still recommend viewing this video when you’re in a learning mood, not a fapping mood. You’re bound to get something good out of watching the video, but it just might not be until after you’ve watched it, when you’re putting Nina’s lessons to good use.

[From It's Knot(s) For Everyone: "Nina Hartley's Guide To Bondage Sex"]

In response to Girl’s most recent post and my continuing troubles, I’ve begun to wonder - is there something about blogging, particularly adult blogging, that makes the bloggers undateable? I, for example, have been willing and able to put blogging aside when the situation warranted. Like when the New Yorker decided she wasn’t totally comfortable with it.

There would obviously be a fair sized irony there, for me at least. That I started blogging to get over heartache and to try to sort out my life with regard to dating only to make myself undateable? I’m not sure that any of the three of us -actually- are but we all seem to feel that way. To the adult bloggers in the audience - do you feel that way too? To those of you reading along, what are your thoughts?

Obviously, none of us have trouble finding playmates. I guess what I’m wondering is whether blogging, like the law, is a jealous mistress.

I have a crush on the blogger at Last Week’s Date. I like her tumblr a lot. You should check her out. (It’s a blog crush, I have no idea who she actually is). Also, it’s a long time since I read Mistress Matisse’s stuff, and she still makes me laugh (well, chortle really) as she eviscerates the no-goodnicks that write to her.

1: In a conversation with Legs about a friend of hers, the subject of MMF came up. Apparently, her friend was the guest M in a triad with another couple. During a heads or tails scene in which her friend called heads, he looked the other guy square in the eye and asked - “hey, do you come here often?”
2: I went and got a haircut yesterday and was bemoaning the state of the economy to my shampoo guy. I told him that I was in a financial place and enough of a feminist that I was considering being kept. “Honey,” he lisped, “the economy is so bad that -I- am considering letting a woman keep me.”

1:

“I was going to text you instead of calling you” said a sheepish sous chef. “I even wrote the text. First I wrote, ‘Can we fuck and then make me light headed?’ Then I wrote ‘Would you fuck me and make me light headed?’ Then I decided it would be easier to just call you.”

I smiled and snaked my fingers around her throat. “You have to be careful with this, it’s dangerous and addictive and you could get hurt.”

“I’ve got brain cells to spare.” I smiled and threw her onto the bed.

2:

Out for drinks with Axe and the subject of MMF threesomes came up. I’ve never done one and have only once seriously considered it, but I’ve had my share of FFMs and like those, so perhaps MMF would be fun too. He told me that he didn’t enjoy the other guy being there so much as the absolute raw, unbridled lust that it evoked in the girl in the middle. I thought about it for a moment and decided “I’m pretty sure I could do a heads or tails, call it before we get in there threesome, but not the four leaf clover.”

3:

The Hayseed, formerly College Best Friend, now nicknamed The Hayseed in his own right, in conversation with me.

“You know, I never get to give you advice about women, I don’t have half the experience you do. But I can tell you this. Hang on, the barrel’s clogged. I can tell you this. If you go to a strip club in Asia, do NOT go into the back room. I imagine it’s the same here, but you’re going to leave with things clinging to you that weren’t there when you went in. Just say no. There. Got it. Now where’d I put that holster?”

4:

“How is it that I know so many sex workers, and have even dated a few?”

“You like smart, edgy, beautiful women. That’s the kind of woman who can make a lot of money off sex work, and why shouldn’t she?”

“I’d never pay for what I get for free.”

“I can’t see you ever paying anyway.”

5:

The Fox and I were talking about marriage material over lunch. She, a former banker and Ivy grad, has recently settled down with an FDNY guy (yes, she’s dazzling enough for a firefighter, beat THAT) and we were discussing the troubles her friends in banking have dating in this town. She told me “they all want a guy who went to an Ivy School, makes $500k a year or more, and is Jewish.”

“Show me a guy like that, and I’ll show you a freezer full of preserved heads.”

“Actually, I was just thinking of it as a really bad numbers game, I mean, how many of those are there altogether? But your way works too.”

6:

The Turk, at a rooftop party, explained that if you’re not in a relationship between June 1 and September 15, you aren’t likely to get into one.

“Women pick men for the summer. If you don’t have a woman by then, you won’t get one.”

I told him that I’d started seeing the Sous Chef and I’d been on a bunch of dates since June 1.

“You’re a god among men, clearly. Wait, you met on July 4? This holiday is obviously an American thing to break that curse. We need a summer holiday in Europe.” I thought that assertion was a bit odd to me what with the month of August being a holiday in Europe, but I left it well enough alone.

• 2008-07-03 twitter updates:
  I’ve never been to an orgy. In my imagination they look like this. In.. http://tinyurl.com/62ojfw #
• When the hell did my shyness creep back in? Dammit. #
• Stall: Tonight was odd. Short version - I was shy and I stalled in talking to people, including pe.. http://tinyurl.com/5kparb #
• I am now convinced that the Nerve personals have been hacked. Back to AdultFriendFinder redirects #
• Nerve.com Personals: I have a Nerve.com personal up. You’ll not know it’s me, there.. http://tinyurl.com/6dxjcg #
• @girlonetrack That’s excellent, thanks for sharing that. #
• http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/cas/742666043.html #
• Craigslist Casual Encounters: Shoot you in the face?: In honor of July 4, I think that it would be.. http://tinyurl.com/5osmzy #
• Oy, misconfigured spammed you. Sorry! #

• I’ve never been to an orgy. In my imagination they look like this. In reality, I understand, way.. http://tinyurl.com/6qbtga #
• Exhausted after a long, hard day. Want to play with naked girl soon. Need to find one. #
• Has nerve.com personals gone down? I’m getting a page that lists loads of other personal sites, but not the nerve personals site… #
• Something oddly… human… about her. http://tinyurl.com/6put35 #
• 2008-07-02 twitter updates:
  I have such a crush on @adrianadeleo - I admit it here for my (small).. http://tinyurl.com/5rx77k #
• Limits: For anyone that wondered if Lex and Les’s life was the way that they described it, I.. http://tinyurl.com/63xrvv #
• Nerve.com personals - have they been hacked? Are our credit cards safe? Can someone else check and see if it’s just me? #
• sitting at coffee with Chet watching the East Village beauties and talking pickup #
• Fantastic fantasy images.  Click through, I wish I was this creative.Verzauberte Welten http://tinyurl.com/68fd3l #
• Sex scandal tapes: I’ve seen several sex scandal tapes - this woman or that woman who made a.. http://tinyurl.com/6s43oy #

• I have such a crush on @adrianadeleo - I admit it here for my (small) twitter following to hear. #
• @viviane212 It’s nice to be back, since I’m in a Bad Place once again. Thanks for noticing :) #
• @viviane212 I appreciate the offer, but I’ve got plans elsewhere tomorrow night. #
• 2008-07-01 twitter updates:
  What amazes me is how much persistence there is online. My account st.. http://tinyurl.com/5urflx #
• Out of Practice?: Tonight, out with a girl with whom I’d been set up. Fine time, split the c.. http://tinyurl.com/62mvfm #
• I was recently asked by a woman with a very large chest whether I was a breat or an ass man.  I to.. http://tinyurl.com/6465dx #
• Why am I so full of myself?: In the comments to the last post, Cassie asks:
  Yay! Finally a post th.. http://tinyurl.com/5e736v #
• I’ve never been to an orgy.  In my imagination they look like this.  In reality, I understand, way.. http://tinyurl.com/6qbtga #

• What amazes me is how much persistence there is online. My account still exists here and Facebook, although my tumblog is gone. #
• Not Ugly: Ruminations on being somewhere between not ugly and attractive. http://tinyurl.com/6hdxty #
• This looks a fair bit like my trip to LA.  And why I want to move there. http://tinyurl.com/5ee9ow #