The Best 2009 in History!

2009: The year I learned how to have a Body By Fun.

Revelation of the Year

I'm not gay, just Jock Crazy!

Smell of the Year

Take a whiff, if you're Ripe for Funky Pits.

Booty of the Year

In 2009, I had the time of my life Building a Better Butt.

Truth of the Year

More than a black cock, I'm a Man of My Words.

GPS Request of the Year

Can anybody tell me: Where's My Buddy?

Shame of the Year

Why is that, in the gay world, Black Gay Men Are Least Wanted?

Wish of the Year

Dear Universe, Please send me One Buddy with a Brain

Statement of the Year

I look in the mirror and think: You've Come a Long Way with AIDS, Baby.

Best Match of the Year

Hooked up with HIV? Here's Three Core Beliefs for a Happy Life with AIDS.

Best 'At Bat' of the Year

Did you know: Poz Guys Need Love, Too.

Dream Come True of the Year

Who would have ever dreamed I'd still be alive in the 21st century, Still Sexual After All These Years.

Plea of the Year

They keep doing it, so I keep asking: HIV-Neg Guys: Must You Hurt My Feelings?

Motto of the Year

When looking for sex and/or love, HIV Status Doesn't Matter.

Tongue of the Year ... Again

Oh, how sweet to dream of Tongues In Cheeks.

Question of the Year ... Again

Do you really have to know: How Big Is My Dick?

World, Take Note

Click here for more funky pics

Learning to Love Me

They've called me fag my whole life long. They still do. They call me worthless without noticing or bothering to care. They've called me nigger to my face, and “who knows what else” behind my back.

They see me and think: black fag with AIDS, and it's not all that shocking in their minds because that's what happens to fags, right?

So here I stand, a nigger faggot with AIDS in a world that has very few positive dreams for me and my kind.

But I don't care so much anymore. I care more about my own dreams. I care more about loving myself than somebody else liking me. I care more about being comfortable with me than another human's opinion of me.

Walk in my shoes; you'll find a man who's learning to accept himself despite the many ways the world tells him: we don't care about you nigger faggots with AIDS. Walk in my shoes and you'll find a man learning to love me.

• Originally published 8/21/2008

So Many Men, So Little Sensitivity

Why do so many gay men feel the need to say things, like, DISEASE-FREE, NO BUGS, SUPER CLEAN, UB2?

Saying these things makes a person ugly. Insensitivity is downright unattractive. Yet these words are more than commonplace online. Makes me wanna scream, then open up a can of whoop ass on somebody's head, but I know better.

Instead I ask, HIV-Neg Guys: Must You Hurt My Feelings? And to those who just don't get it, I have a cup of patience and try to explain Why the Term “Disease-Free” Hurts My Feelings. Here's hoping somebody's listening.

Armpits Make the Man

Whoa! Those are some ripe pits! Lemme get another whiff. Fuck, man, that's what you call funky!

In my dreams, my buddy and I take pride in our pits and the scents that make us men.

Deodorant? Maybe once a decade. Cologne? Ha!

No need for artificial scents. All I need is a good whiff of a good man, preferably my buddy.

Buddy Dreaming

What kind of man do I dream of being with? Find out in My Buddy and Me: the Kind of Men We Are.

Funky, but True

I haven't belonged to a gym in years, but I'm having the best workouts of my life. Find out how in Body By Fun.

I may be HIV-positive, but that needn't be the primary concern of the people I date. Find out why in Why HIV Status Doesn't Matter.

I may have survived two-plus decades living with AIDS, but I'm not immune to a broken heart each and every time I hear the words "clean" and "disease-free." See what I mean in Why the Term “Disease-Free” Hurts My Feelings.

Be an AIDS Survivor

So you've got HIV. Now what? Find out in Three Core Beliefs for a Happy Life with AIDS

I'm Not Gay, Just Jock Crazy!

I'm not gay. Really, I mean it. I'm No Longer a Homo.

I used to use the word “gay” to communicate my primary sexual desires, but lately--say, for the past decade or more--I've been feeling less and less gay about being gay.

That's because gay, which use to mean happy, then came to mean homo, is now something altogether different, which doesn’t make this gay man very gay at all.

Gay has become a marketing term. And I definitely don't feel part of this new gay market. Do I feel sexual? You bet. Towards one gender only? Why limit myself in the banquet of life?

I'm capable of having sex with a man or a woman, but I can only imagine being in love, soul to soul, with a man. Why? Who's to truly say, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with being Jock Crazy.

Why I Wasn't Born Gay (or Jock Crazy)

Personally, I don't think anybody is born gay or straight. We're just born. We're born with organs that have needs. The stomach needs food. The skin needs water. The sex organs need stimulation and in the case of men, ejaculation.

We're not born liking pizza over meatloaf. We're born needing nourishment.

We're not born preferring bottled water over tap water. We're born needing hydration.

We're not born liking pussy over dick, or dick over pussy. We're born with dicks and pussies and raging hormones that have the need to get off and often, like the Young Jock Offers Oral Sex for Magazine Subscription.

What humans don't pass on genetically is cultural tastes. How humans get their food, water and sex changes with the times, time and time again, through the millenniums.

What doesn't changed is the basic need for food, water and sex. How you end up fulfilling your basic needs, however, is based on your environment, including when you're born and where you're born.

I wasn't born Jock Crazy; it was my environment. I was born into a sports family, complete with legendary history and a father, uncles and brothers whose lives revolved around playing sports as a springboard for life.

I wasn't born gay, either, but I did come into this world with an imaginary basketball in my hands: my first step on the road to becoming Jock Crazy.

Jocks, Jocks and More Jocks

Growing up in a sports family, sports was life and life was sports. Sports was my first language, after English.

If my brothers and I weren't playing basketball, football or baseball, we were watching it. Time spent with my father was time spent listening to him explain the game of basketball.

It's no wonder my novels feature characters who are jocks. This exchange from my fourth novel, Walt Loves the Bearcat, shows how I was already mixing sports and writing in my formative years:

"I used to dream of writing stories when I was a kid, stories about great sports teams overcoming great odds to win the great games ... and the greatest game.”

“What sport?”

“Life.”

“How do you play that?”

“You dream.”

Being a boy Jock, I spent a a good deal of my early youth in gyms. Old gyms with creaky wooden floors and musty-smelling locker rooms. A very male environment for a very male-dominated family. As a kid, I enjoyed these places where men and boys went to play, sweat, shower and be men (and boys).

Only this boy, who would become a man, didn't shut off the EROTIC BUTTON in his mind. Unlike some of the other boys and men, this boy was destined to become Jock Crazy.

Check Your Jock Crazy at the Door

The sports world is all about structure: rules, discipline, practice, repetition, drills, men working hard towards a common goal. The harder you work, the more of a man you are. The more of a hard working man you are, the more respect you gain among the other men around you.

That doesn't leave much room for sexual intimacy or crazy things like feelings. Sports is a man's world. Put your jock on and leave your erotic thoughts at the door. Forget about the fact that a good whiff of your own funky jock sends you on a heady trip.

Yeah, right. And married couples sleep in separate beds like Ricky and Lucy. And the homophobic dreams of an NFL coach don't do damage to the dreams of little boys.

Playing sports as a kid, I knew that I couldn't express or articulate the erotic feelings my body was feeling, but as I practiced hard, worked hard and played hard the athletic games of my early youth, I secretly knew that I was already becoming one Jock Crazy boy.

Jock Crazy Young Jock

Playing sports means always being around guys who stink, and guys who have Bodies by Sport (as opposed to body by gym membership).

Growing up, my world was populated with two kinds of men: those with Bodies by Sport, and everybody else. It was a world where a man isn't a man unless he's drenched in sweat from a hard game of basketball, football or baseball.

By the time prepubescence hit, being funky and sweaty from sports was the most natural thing in the world, as was hanging around other guys who were just as funky and sweaty. It's what men do.

Another thing men do--so we boys were told--is all think and act the same way about sex and sexuality. As in, boy meets girl = good, while boy meets boy = fag. And fag was the antithesis of a real man with any worth in my male-dominated sports world.

What a lie, but Boy Randy didn't know What Makes a Man a Fag, and wouldn't know the Grapefruit Theory for years to come. So Boy Randy believed fag = bad, even though bonding with boys was all he ever dream of. It was enough to make a buddy young jock crazy.

Jock Crazy in Junior High

My time as a junior high jock changed my life forever, for better and worse. My best memory would have to be watching all those naked butts in the locker room, an endless parade of (mostly) pale white asses, often encased in even whiter, sweat-soaked jockstraps.

For seventh and eighth grades, I went to an all-white private school, forever immortalized as Private Parks Academy in my fourth novel, Walt Loves the Bearcat. My junior high angst is actually a running theme throughout the book and plays an important role in the novel's most climatic football game.

At “Private Parks,” I played on the football and basketball teams. The school was K-12. The junior high boys shared the locker room with the high school boys. Naturally I sized up the boys my age, but I was mostly drawn to the older, high school boys, with their more advanced bodies, and the young coaches, who used our showers, showing us all what our bodies would end up looking like.

I couldn't act on or articulate my appreciation of the male physiques within arms reach, but I can still remember the shock I felt the first time I saw the beautiful, long, thick penis of my math teacher turned coach as he entered the showers, no doubt noticing the surprised look on my face as we passed one another.

I can still remember the ripped wrestling jock who transferred to our school midyear as a sophomore. He seemed more worldly than his provincial peers, more like a rebel. When he walked naked through the locker room (usually to take a dump in the restroom's doorless stalls every afternoon around 3:45), he walked with a confidence and comfort level that was new to me, almost as if he enjoyed strolling around nude, showing off one of the best asses I've ever seen.

“How's it going?” was his standard greeting in the hallways of our hallowed private school. It was the first time I had ever heard that phrase. It's my standard greeting to this very day.

For me, being drawn to the boys did not mean not being interested in girls. It simply meant boys were a much higher priority for my budding adolescent soul. I grew up my father's son in a man's world, bonding with boys. Now those boys were naked in front of me daily. As difficult as it was thinking “faggy” thoughts, women were even more remote and inaccessible. And they weren't showing me their asses in a jock!

A playful childhood experience had taught me the joys of sticking one's face in another boy's ass. When I began to see boys' butts in jockstraps in junior high, I knew there was no turning back from being certifiably Jock Crazy.

Jockin' the Crazy Jocks of High School

I spent half of my time in high school checking out other guy's butts in blue jeans. I had my favorite butts--mostly jock butts, of course--and knew when I'd see them in which hallway between which period and so on. I was a very well-prepared student.

In high school, I quit playing sports because I was a fag and thought the two were incompatible. Now I know better, which is why I write the column, Jockin' Homos in Sports on my author blog. In athletics, you can be as much of a fag as you want, as long as you don't “act” like a fag and keep your mouth shut about it, especially after you get done blowing your teammate (or your teammate gets done blowing you).

Like high school, sports is a confidence game. The more confidence you project, the more others are apt to go along with it. Lack of confidence is seen as a weakness. In high school, kids are always on the lookout for ways to exploit the weaknesses of others. It's the law of any jungle.

When I was in high school, I thought my urges to get off with other boys was a weakness. Little did Boy Randy know, all the other boys in school were having those same urges, more or less, one way or another. That's right. We were all fags, if you wanna get technical about it. Every last one of my peers in school thought about same-sex sex--more or less, in one way or another--and many, if not most, acted on those thoughts and desires at some point in their lives. We are all fags.

Had I realized that in high school, I could have turned my weakness into a strength, an asset, an advantage. I could have had my cake and eaten butt, too, so to speak. Some boys played the game better. They feigned confidence--or had it for one reason or another--and were able to get off with other boys and get away with not being labeled fag. These guys knew that they could be fags behind closed doors, as long as they didn't “act” like fags in public or talk openly about what went on between “the guys.”

“The guys” who, by the way, oftentimes, happened to play sports together, practice together, shower together, take road trips together. “The guys” who spend so much time together grappling, tackling, groping, sliding underneath one another, straddling, smelling, feeling, touching ... oh, no, but none of us are fags!

In high school, I thought I was one of the smart ones. Turns out, I was a dumb-ass in one respect. I had no idea the jocks of my school were also Jock Crazy.

Jock Crazy at Closeted U.

I went to college in the 80s at two major universities: USC for two years, then UCLA for three and a degree. I began college in 1980 as a socially-retarded nerd who had run away to California to escape life in Indiana. Thought I was gonna meet my buddy-for-life the first day of school, give or take. I was that innocent, or that much of a dreamer, or both.

Why did I transfer from USC to UCLA? The main character in my fourth novel, Walt Loves the Bearcat, explains it best: “Half my financial aid dried up as soon as Reagan got in office. Plus, it didn’t help being called nigger while walking by the Sigma Chi house the week before school started.”

Five years after the Sigma Chi's at USC called me nigger in 1980, I graduated from UCLA in 1985. I was still single and still closeted, having shared my true nature to only a handful of people, some of whom excused themselves from my life immediately thereafter.

Did I mention I was a cheerleader at both schools for four of my five years in college? My sister taught me cheerleading when I was age seven. College was my one and only shot to be what boy Randy always wanted to be--a cheerleader--and do what cheerleaders do: date the jock.

But this was the early 80s and I was one socially-retarded nerd with an obvious secret. I was so void of love for myself, I never even conceived of the idea that any of the basketball or football players constantly around me would ever be attracted to or interested in ... me. Or someone like me.

I was crazy about the jocks I cheer for, but all I could offer was my love in spirit, literally. Talk about crazy! I had so much to give. I know now at least one of those guys would have appreciated having a boyfriend like me in college. Or now. I have so much to give.

I may not be so clueless anymore, but I'm still Jock Crazy.

Still Jock Crazy After All These Years

After graduating UCLA in 1985, I found myself working with people of all ages, many of them already married off. To find my buddy, I ventured more and more into the gay world. Like the main character says in my fourth novel, Walt Loves the Bearcat: “Where else was I supposed to look?”

I started calling myself gay during my mid-twenties: went to gay parades, marched in gay marches, danced in gay bars, wrote gay novels. By my thirties, I was balling--sweat-drenched jockstrap and all--in gay basketball leagues.

At the same time, I began feeling increasingly distant from this “gay” community. The content in gay media focused on things that didn't resonate with me: celebrities, fashion, porn stars, circuit parties. Even HIV/AIDS seemed relegated to the back burner.

I'm not sure what gay is anymore, other than a marketing term. I suspect someday in the future, people will be calling gays something else, just as they have in the past. Just as blacks have gone from colored to Negro to black to African-American.

Whatever future generations call perverts, I mean, fairies, I mean, fags, I mean gays, I mean, queers, I mean, same sex couples--that term will not fit everyone, rather it will be a generalized idea that comes with preconceived notions.

I don't know what that term will be, or if it will resonate with me, but I do know that then, as now, as in my youth, I will always be Jock Crazy.

What Is Jock Crazy?

If the sight of a man's butt cheeks in a jockstrap sends your senses reeling, you may be Jock Crazy. If a well-worn, ripe, dirty jockstrap is all you want for your birthday from your buddy, you may definitely be Jock Crazy.

Other symptoms include: using your jockstrap as a JO rag at night, then working out in it the next day (then using it as an aromatic aphrodisiac that night); not washing your jock until absolutely necessary; constantly sniffing your jockstrap--or your buddy's or somebody else's jock--hoping to get a good whiff.

NOTE: The gateway "drug" to Jock Crazy: constantly sniffing your ripe, funky armpits--or your buddy's or somebody else's pits--hoping to get a good whiff.

The Side Effects of Jock Crazy

If I'm ever fortunate enough to have a buddy in this life, he'll never hear me say, “You stink. Go take a shower.”

Being Jock Crazy makes me want to cherish every single whiff of my man. It makes me want to know him every way possible, including when he's ripe, funky and sweaty and his smell is off-the-charts strong.

I dream of my buddy and me working out together until we're drenched in sweat, then heading home and seeing who has the ripest pits and the sweatiest jockstrap. Winner gets?

My fourth novel, Walt Loves the Bearcat, tells the story of a lifelong romance between a college cheerleader and quarterback (who goes on to become a great pro QB). The boys are nothing if not Jock Crazy. The cheerleader collects his QB's game jocks and can identify each one by smell. In the off-season, the boys go “days without showering or shaving, content to enjoy the natural aphrodisiac that is my man and his scents.”

Even in my writing, I gotta take a whiff.

Is There a Cure for Jock Crazy?

Like the characters in my third novel, The Devil Inside, you could try reprogramming your brain at one of those “we'll make you straight” joints.

Think Exodus Ex-Jock Crazy Institute.

Some men have actually gone on to live very productive lives while resisting the temptation to be aroused by the scent of a man's manly, odoriferous remnants on a tatter piece of funky, sweaty cloth that was once all up and through his most private and odoriferous parts during extreme physical exertion.

It's true. Some ex-Jock Crazies have become immune to the aroma they have cherished for so long, the very smells that distinguish man from a woman: the ripe, funky pits, the strong, aromatic crotch, the sweaty ass, the raw scent of a man.

Some resist ... until a random whiff of wind tickles the nostrils with a hint of funk--the flavor of which sends your senses on a heady journey that rocks your world all over again.

Point: As long as men are male sexual dawgs, there is no cure for Jock Crazy.