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Life In The Apocalypse 6. Monday April 27, 2020

Discerning Daddy

I am living in Quarantine with my ex-husband, Alex, our friend Matías, and on weekends with Dylan, Alex’s boyfriend, and Layne, my boyfriend. In the back house is our friend Robert.
There are a lot of us here. And for the most part we are making it work. But under the best of circumstances living with people can be hard, no matter how much you love them.

These guys are my family. And I feel lucky to be here in lockdown with them.

But recently we had our first “house fight”. It was over something stupid. I came home from a bike ride and the air-conditioner was on in the living room. Which made sense, it was over 90 degrees that day.

I had been letting resentments build. Creating stories in my head of injustices like not doing dishes in a timely manner, not cleaning out the kitty litter, leaving an opened letter on the table, all the stupid little things that cause minor conflicts between any roommates, but seem somehow magnified under a pandemic lockdown.

I came into the house saying, “We have to be careful about the AC. The bills are getting higher and higher because we are all home.” And while, yes, this is true: it was how I said it. Accusatory. Full of all the built up resentment I had over wayward envelopes and chaotic glasses left unwashed.

I was full of feeling locked in. With the TV on all the time. With someone always home. I work from home. I’m still working from home. I’m used to having space when everyone else leaves. Now no one is leaving. This isn’t their fault or mine. They want to leave just as bad as I want space. They probably want space from me as well. This is just how life is now, and will be for the unforeseeable future.

So I blew up. And they blew up back. And then it was over. And we were able to talk about it.

We have been good about boundaries. Alex and Matías have been incredibly kind: in the mornings they let me sit in the living room and work for a few hours while they mostly stay in their rooms or out in the front yard. We have been good about giving each other as much space as possible. We have each had moments of annoyance, snapping for no reason, and for the most part we all just let it go.

One of the things I keep coming back to during this weird fucking time in our lives: who am I as a man? Who do I want to be?

I am not always the easiest man. And I am definitely not the easiest man to live with or be in a relationship with, but anyone who knows me knows that my “Family” is important to me. And lockdown has been all about family. My chosen family. The people I consider home.

We are going to drive each other crazy right now. Annoy each other. We are going to consider breaking up and running away. We are going to think about leaving them all behind when it’s all over. How could we not think these things? I have been on the brink of blowing everything up a few times. And then I remember: I am so fucking lucky to have these people in my life. And not just the ones I am living with: but the friends who I am zooming with, house partying with, facetiming with. All the people who check in on me daily, and the ones I check in on.

And I am learning: it all comes back to community. To Family. And I can take this to an even broader sense: when grubhub suggests I tip $4 I can choose to tip $5. Or to bring some cash for the person working the check out at the grocery store. To say hi to people as I bike past them. To wave at people from my porch. To be kinder. To not honk at the person in their car when they do something I don’t like.

To just be easier. Kinder. Slower to respond. To try to hear what is happening around me, what people are saying.

This will be over one day. None of us know exactly how that is going look, but I’m pretty sure it won’t look like before. Those days are gone and what is ahead of us is uncertain. And that can be scary. Even those of us who don’t mind change will find this uncertainty scary. And we are going to suffer loss for our lives, for who we once were, for the freedoms we don’t have right now. And we are going to have anxiety for the future. Because the future right now seems scary.

But I also have a lot of hope. Maybe hope is just a blind spot in my personality. I don’t know if the world will work out. I don’t know if we will correct the huge mistake we made as a country in November. I don’t know if the virus will come spiraling back, more vicious than before, I don’t know if the future is dystopic or utopic. I have no control over those things beyond what I do. How I act.

And so I am here trying my best to be the man I want to be. To be kind. That’s all. And when I’m not to say sorry.

Here is a funny stupid story. A few days ago I was calling the pharmacy for some prescriptions and I was annoyed that day so I took that out on the woman on the phone helping me. I wasn’t mean, but I was rude, gruff, obnoxious. When I hung up Matías and Alex called me out on my behavior.

So I called the woman at the pharmacy back and I said, “Hey, this is Jeff Leavell. We just spoke and I was a total jerk to you and you didn’t deserve that. I’m so grateful you are working right now and taking care of us. I’m really sorry. Thank you so much.”

When I went into the pharmacy later she and I had a fun moment laughing about what had happened.

I want to live in a world where we are all trying to be our better selves. The only way I get to have that world is to focus on myself. How I am behaving. And I fuck it up all the time. Like royally fuck it the fuck up. But I’m working hard to own that too. And to forgive myself and to just say sorry.

I am ready for this to be over. I am ready to get on a plane, to go outside without a mask on. Some mornings I cry for no reason, some nights I want to scream and yell. I want to work the door at the Eagle and to go to the beach and to hug people and flirt with hot guys I don’t know. I want to get brunch with friends.

And I am afraid. Like deep in my bones afraid. And I am happy. And I am full of hope. And I worry this is the end of the world. And I am full of love. I am all these things at once.

Anyway, this isn’t my most poetic piece ever but I wanted to get it out. Just to write something. I hope you guys are ok. I’d love to hear from you.

Life In The Apocalypse 5. Monday April 13, 2020

Discerning Daddy

I keep this written on an index card next to where I work: “I love you Jeff. Being human is hard. You’re doing great. Even when you think you are failing.”
On the reverse is: “What if it’s all just going to be okay.”

These two things are my mantras, the philosophies that are carrying me through life in lockdown.

Because it’s true. It’s fucking hard being a human being.

Lately I have found it hard to settle down, to stop my thoughts from racing. And then I find myself swinging into acceptance and peace. There is a lot to be anxious about right now. A lot to be afraid of. And there is a lot to be grateful for, a lot of proof of how lucky I am.

But I am feeling cantankerous. My character defects seem to be coming out swinging right now.

When I got sober, the hardest thing about that first year was the way everything became unbearable. But the most unbearable thing was my reaction to things: I was angry, moody, controlling, afraid. Once a feeling took hold it seemed to control me, I had no idea how to talk myself off the ledge.

Through the program I was in, through meditation, and through therapy I learned how to manage those things. I learned that just because I thought or felt something I didn’t have to react, I didn’t have to express my thoughts or feelings. I could sit with them, even if they felt like they would tear me apart.

And they never did tear me apart.

Peace became a place that didn’t erase the anxiety or the fear, but it became a place where I could allow it, and it didn’t have to define me, to swallow me whole.

Just because I thought a shitty thing about someone, or got angry, or wanted to control what someone was doing, didn’t mean that I had to hold on to that thought or those feelings. I didn’t have to let them take form. And when I did, then I learned that I could make amends, and forgive myself, and move on.

Because being human is hard. For all of us. Not just me.

Living right now, in lockdown, under the threat of a pandemic, feels a lot like that first year sober for me.

Because right now it feels like so much of what is happening is internal. And I’m having to use all those early sobriety tools to confront my thoughts.

And I’m mad. I’m mad at the government, I’m mad at Donald Trump, I’m mad at the healthcare system, I’m mad at this fucking virus, I’m mad that all the things I was working on and building got suddenly put on hold. I’m mad that once again I have to confront myself. In this new way.

A couple nights ago, sitting in my living room, I just started to cry. For all the things that have been lost. And I remember a time in early sobriety when I cried for a similar loss: of drugs and booze. Of the man I had been.

Things are changing. And we are powerless over that. But here’s where we aren’t powerless: we have the opportunity to change as well.
Everything that we are living in this moment, in lockdown, the way our life looks, the people around us, is because of choices we have made. Who we were.

So I keep coming back to this: Who do I want to be? How do I want my life to look? In that first year of being sober I made myself a promise: I did not get sober to be unhappy. I did not get sober to lose my life to some other distraction (addiction). I got sober because I wanted to live the largest life possible. I wanted to chase my dreams to the end. I wanted to risk failure.

Lockdown is reminding me: Who do I want to be? How do I want my life to look? What false obligations are holding me back?

And that it’s ok when all I can do is watch tv, or jerk off, or eat ice cream. It’s ok when all I can do is cry. It’s ok when I feel lost and I can’t imagine ever succeeding, when I think this is all I will ever be.

But those things don’t have to define me. Or who I will become.

A friend once said to me, “It’s not about what you get, it’s about how you went about getting it. That’s the only thing you have any control over.”

I just finished reading “Later My Life at the Edge of the World” by Paul Lisicky. Beautiful and reflective. Now I’m reading “Overthrow” by Caleb Cain.

I’m listening to a lot of Records. Right now I’m kind of obsessed with Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, Francis and the Lights and Four Tet.
And I’m missing a lot of you.

Life In The Apocalypse 4. Thursday April 2, 2020

Discerning Daddy

I have been in “lockdown” for 18 days. Roughly. There was a day or two in those early days where I went to the gym. My boyfriend and I have driven to the beach, and once into the Angeles National Forrest, exploring the mountains. I go for walks. And bike rides.

And we are finding ways to have fun, sexy adventures. On Sunday night we joined a zoom circle jerk group, jerking off with 15 other guys. During our drive through the mountains we pulled over in the flats to pee. He ended up fucking me over a rock, the expanse of sky and mountains breathtaking.

One of the things I’ve learned during this time: I’m not built for cynicism. I’m not built for fear. Even as things are getting scary, even in those moments, alone in bed, when I can’t breathe, sure I am dying, afraid about money, about my career, I still keep falling back on hope.

I find that most people are being super kind, friendly.

Here’s a story: a week ago I was at Pavilions. A man and I reached for the same last jar of pasta sauce. I pulled my hand back, saying sorry, and he smiled at me, took three jars of the same pasta sauce out of his cart and handed them to me.

“I already have too many,” he said.

I was in my teens and early 20’s when AIDS hit New York City. I watched as many of my mother’s friends died. Young gay men, a community devastated.

One of these men, David, before he got sick, told me,

“We are all learning about who we are right now. All of us. The whole world. It’s easy to be nice and kind, to stay hopeful, when the world is on your side. It’s almost impossible when the world turns on you. But that’s when you need it the most. It’s these times that define us. What kind of a man do I want to be?”

Before he got sick David was tall and muscular, beefy and hairy. The last time I was home my mom showed me a picture of him right before he died. He looked emaciated: so skinny he was almost unrecognizable. His cheeks were sunken in.

He was sitting outside, by the river, smiling. That smile will forever stay with me. That smile is the man I want to be in this time.

18 days and it’s not easy. My Facebook page is filled with people who are sick, know someone who is sick, posts about people who have died, non-stop information about the virus. I find myself getting annoyed at small little things that happen in my house. Annoyed at my roommates, my boyfriend, the dog and cats: but then I remember how lucky I am. That we are all here. Together.

There is a lot to be afraid of. And then there is that picture of David, who knew he was dying, but smiling anyway. And there is a lot to be hopeful about too.

Even if it’s the fucking apocalypse I have to believe there is still beauty.
My best friend Amy taught me this very important mantra, that I keep written on an index card on my desk, and as a screenshot on my phone:

What if it’s all just going to be ok?

These words save me in times of doubt and fear.

And I’m really glad my boyfriend still wants to fuck me in parks. That’s gotta count for something.

Life In The Apocalypse 3. Thursday March 26, 2020

Discerning Daddy

Today’s record, GoGo Penquin, A Humdrum Star, Deluxe.

I woke up feeling discouraged today. And horny.

I keep thinking, this has to have meaning. I have to find a way to allow what is happening in the world to change me.

I’ve been meditating a lot. Jerking off less than I would have thought. I bought a bike and try to spend an hour each day riding it, exploring new neighborhoods. I go for walks. It’s nice to be out, even if at a distance, seeing the world, knowing that all of you are out there too. I try to smile and say hi. I read somewhere that saying hi, that smiling, is good for the immune system. Either way, it makes me feel better.

And I’ve been writing.

I set a goal for myself: I will read two new books a week and I will spend less time on my phone.

But today I woke up feeling discouraged.

“I think things are going to go back to normal sooner than we think,” my friend texts me from San Francisco. She is married with two kids. The four of them quarantined in their two-bedroom apartment in the Mission.

“I hope so,” I write back, but what I am really thinking is: what is normal? What does that mean exactly?

“By your birthday for sure,” she texts. “God, it has to be all over by then don’t you think?”

My birthday is May 8. And I don’t know what to think.

“I think this is just going to be what it is.” I say to her when she answers her phone, deciding we needed more than just texting.

“I don’t think I can live like this,” she says to me. “I have no space. Nowhere to go.”

We are silent: the two of us breathing.

“Sometimes I could just run away,” she says. She says it softly. “Sometimes I think I could just run away and leave them all behind. Does that make me a bad person? A horrible mom?”

“No,” I say.

“What if I did it? Would it make me a horrible person then?”

“You won’t do it so it doesn’t matter.”
“Remember when we were in College and we would eat mushrooms and wander around the Lower East Side and the Village? And we felt so free. So limitless. I want that feeling back.”

“Let’s add it to the list of life in the age of coronavirus goals,” I say, and we both laugh.

It’s so easy to be sad. To be afraid. It’s so easy to struggle against what is happening: to deny it even as the rising tide of it seems to be growing. It is so easy to say it’s just a conspiracy.

It would also be so easy to just sit on my couch and watch Netflix and jerk off to Pornhub (they’ve even made their premium videos free during the crisis…it’s an endless cornucopia of gang bangs and bareback loads).

And yet I can’t help it: I need there to be meaning to this. I need it to have an impact. I don’t want to resist what is happening. I don’t want to slip into denial so I can just go back to normal when this is over.

When I found out I was HIV positive I remember thinking, “This will change me. It should change me. I want it to change me.” When Jon died I refused let him just slip away, to allow the sadness of it to destroy me, instead I demanded it have meaning. Because if I could find the meaning in what had happened then I could find a way to not just survive but to grow.

I want to do more than just survive this. I want to live. I want to experience. I want to grow.

And some days I will wake up discouraged. Some nights I will be so wrecked by anxiety and fear I can’t breathe.

But then I will get out of bed. I will read and write and drink coffee and then I will get on my bike and I will ride through the empty streets, saying hi to anyone I see. And I will eat lunch with my boyfriend and I will reach out to my friends and my mom and dad and brother, I will send dirty jokes to my nephews, and search for pink and sparkly headphones for my nieces and I will say to myself: this matters. This will mean something. This can change us if we let it. Even in all the fear and loss and pain this can be an opportunity.

If we let it.

Check out my book, Accidental Warlocks, on Amazon. Your support means everything.

Life In The Apocalypse 2. Tuesday March 18, 2020

Discerning Daddy

Today’s record, Bon Iver, “For Emma, Forever Ago”.

Every morning begins with panic. Not at the virus, or the fear of becoming sick, but at what we might have lost. And fear for what is coming.

I get out of bed, 8:30am. I think, why? Why not just sleep? Why not just turn the tv on and hunker down and just fuck it all…but I make my coffee. I open my book. I write in my journal. I choose the records I’m going to listen to, and I get to work.

Because I have faith. I have hope. That we will come out the other side. I’m not sure what the other side looks like, or what we will look like, but I know there is an other side.

I had a friend in New York, years ago, 1992. In my book, Accidental Warlocks, I called him Laurent. Laurent had AIDS. I would go sit in his apartment in Chelsea and read him Lorca poems, we would sit in one of those pools you could buy at Kmart, the small ones: he had it set up in his living room. We drank champagne and ate strawberries and chocolate and talked. He would tell outrageous stories about orgies and alien abductions and art.

“I believe we are beautiful,” he said to me one night, sitting on the couch, listening as the rain outside hit against his window, purple lesions on his chest like a map of his past, a prediction of his future. “Even when all we can see is the ugly, I still believe we are beautiful. Just a few years ago the world seemed happy to let all our gay brothers and sisters die, but we haven’t died yet. We are still here. Filthy and gorgeous, the most beautiful of all the ugly little monsters. I love every single one of us.”

Back then we came together to mourn, we danced and went out, we threw ourselves into each other, the only safe havens we knew. Now we are told to stay away from each other. We are told about social distancing and that it is safer in isolation.

My friend Jake and I went for a walk through Echo Park yesterday. My boyfriend and I ate Lasagna and cuddled up on the couch last night. I FaceTime with my ex in Berlin. I check in on friends. My brother told me that one of my nieces, she’s 12, facetimes with her friend as she makes herself snacks.

“Sometimes they don’t even talk.” He says to me over the phone, from the East Coast. “They just do their thing, but it’s like they are doing it together.”

These connections, to our friends, families and our partners, are essential. In some ways they are more important now than ever.

Alex and Matias and I will go outside later and lift our DIY weights and stretch and jump rope and get as much sun as we can. I will meet a friend for a walk (we keep six feet from each other but we can still talk, we can still feel close). And I will keep writing.

And I will have faith. And hope. In us.

“We are all there is,” Laurent said to me. “We are the reason.”

He put on a record. We got high and danced in his living room, the fading summer light golden through his windows.

I fell back into the couch, too high to really understand what was being said to me. But I remember this, I remember this the most, Laurent standing bathed in that golden fading sunlight, breathless and beautiful, and saying,

“And if they all turn their backs on us, if the whole world refuses to see us, I will always see you. We will be family. We will save us.”

And the panic has subsided a little. Just the act of writing this to you, whoever you are, has saved me a little. Because I know you are out there. You are reading this. And maybe you understand, maybe you can identify a little, and maybe this act alone will remind us both:

We are not alone.

Life In The Apocalypse Part One. Tuesday March 17, 2020

Discerning Daddy

Record of the Day: Francis and the Lights: Farewell, Starlite! (“My City is Gone” is my favorite song on this album, but fuck this record is incredible)

It is easy to be afraid. It is easy to allow what is happening around us, the fear and panic, the lines at grocery stores, the mixed messages handed down from our President, to overwhelm us.

I woke up today and looked at the NYTimes and instantly started to panic. Sunday night, the bar I work at in LA, the Eagle, shut down, along with all the bars in Los Angeles. My household all works in gay bars and in queer nightlife. This is going to affect us.

This is going to affect all of us. In ways none of us can understand.

Not just the virus itself, but how we handle the virus. Currently, watching the Trump Administration, it doesn’t feel like we are handling it well. It feels like we are racing toward more panic and fear.

I am a 51-year-old HIV Positive gay man. I remember clearly the AIDS pandemic that decimated our community in the 80’s and 90’s, which still continues today with close to 37 million people living with HIV/AIDS world-wide and almost 800,000 people still dying yearly. I remember the fear and the loss and the horrific mishandling of the situation by the Reagan Administration.

I also remember falling in love. I remember making out with cute boys on dance floors. I remember my community and the way, in spite of all the death and fear and abandonment by our families and government, that we took care of each other.

We are still that community. We are strong. I have so much faith in us. Who I am as a man, as an artists and a writer, who I am as a human being, is intrinsically linked to my queerness. To my community.

With the gay bars and queer spaces being closed down across the country, I am looking for ways to connect. To stay together even as we are told to be social distancing.

Isolation will not save us. I believe we are stronger together.

I am thinking of ways to maintain that balance: safety and community.

I’ve been thinking about online queer book groups, bike rides through the empty streets (you can keep a safe distance but still be together), walks and hikes.

Are there ways to volunteer in this time? Things that will get us out and together but still maintaining personal safety?

I live in a house with two other gay mean. My boyfriend lives just blocks away. This morning, one of my roommates, Matias, was in our front yard lifting DIY weights Alex made from bricks, plastic bags and towels. We are jumping rope and doing yoga. My coworkers and I from the Eagle have a group chat where we check in on each other and share information. Last night we made a family chicken soup dinner and watched horror movies. I Facetime with friends around the world.

I am finding ways to reach out, to be together, I am finding ways to survive this new life.

And I am writing. Because that is how I ascribe meaning to the world. And right now we need meaning.

I’d love to hear the ways you are finding meaning and community in the world right now. Feel free to comment and message and let us all know that we are still here. Together.

Look for my daily instalments of Life in the Apocalypse. Without you there is no meaning. I’m counting on us.

ON JEALOUSY AND FUCKING AND BEING TRUE TO WHO I AM: EVEN WHEN I DON’T ALWAYS LOVE WHO I AM

Discerning Daddy

Sometimes I am jealous as fuck. And I don’t even always have my shit together about it.

There is this expectation that we are supposed to be super chill about our partners fucking other dudes, making out with them at the bars, flirting with them on the dating apps. There’s this constant, hidden message: If you aren’t open and cool with it than there is something inherently wrong with you. And if you have any inclination toward monogamy you must be incredibly unenlightened.

So I’m just going to say it: I’m an incredibly unenlightened fucking cave man who can’t stand the idea of my man with another man. Except, when suddenly, I think it’s the hottest thing in the world.

Because sex, and love, and relationships are complicated as fuck, and I don’t believe there is any one way, and to be honest, I think maybe the closest thing I can get to is being fluid with my sexuality and the openness in my relationship.

Sometimes I love to watch my dude fuck another man. Sometimes my favorite thing to do is go to an afterhours or a sex club and watch my man suck a bunch of dicks. I love when he fucks me when a bunch of guys stand around and watch, jerking off. One of my favorite fantasies is me and another bottom totally spoiling him.

And I get to do all those things with him.

But there are other times when I lie in bed driving myself insane with the exact same scenarios. Imagining him falling in love, leaving me, or being bored with me and only being able to get off with another guy.

Because not only am I jealous as fuck, I can be insecure, and afraid: that I’m not enough, or good enough, or that I will be left alone, and that ultimately I will die alone.

Sometimes I want to be the only man he wants to fuck. And it hurts to know that I will never be the only man he wants to fuck.

But if I were honest, he is not the only man I want to fuck either.

My jealousy and insecurities aren’t even based in rational thought. They are these deep down wells of emotion that come from nowhere, screaming at me and causing me to do and say stupid, mean, petty things.

I want to be one of those guys who doesn’t care what my man is doing when I’m not around. Totally fine sitting in the living room watching Rachel Maddow while some trick comes over so my boyfriend can fuck him on our bed.

But I’m not that guy. I don’t even know how to be that guy. And really, maybe that guy isn’t even that guy. At least not the way I’m imagining him.

So I have to find a way to be myself.

And I have to be honest about my desires, and what I want. Because let’s get real. I want us both to fuck other guys. I want to share them with my man and I want them all to myself. I want to get nasty piggy and do dirty slutty shit. Sometimes I want to do a lot of nasty piggy dirty slutty shit.

The hardest thing for me to accept is that I am powerless over what my partner does. Just as he is powerless over what I do.

I have been manipulative, I have tried to control him, I’ve started fights because I caught him looking at an ex, or any number of things I’m super ashamed of. Things that I don’t think are true to my nature, but they are. They are just as much a part of me as the good and kind and generous and loving things are. I just have to figure out how to accept them without nurturing them.

And then I have to be honest. And tell him I’m scared. To be vulnerable. And to try to grow. To try to be the man I want to be. To be deserving of the man he is.

Because that’s the point, right? To find a way, even if that way is messy and scary and sometimes makes me look bad, to be real and vulnerable, to rise above my pride and my shame to become the Jeff I know I can be.

Right now I’m working on a middle ground. I’m not ready for 100% open and I don’t think monogamy is the right path for me either. So we are monogamy-ish. We can do whatever we want together. We can fuck, go to sex parties, put on shows, have threeways and fourways and group sex. We can do whatever we want.

Together.

And what I’m learning is to say, hey, I don’t want to do that right now. I’m not feeling comfortable. I’m sorry.

Because that’s also about being vulnerable. Admitting that sometimes I don’t feel safe. And not making that about him. Because it’s never really about him.

And trusting that he will have my back. Because he always does.

It’s not easy for me to say no. To say I’m not comfortable, especially when it comes to sex. I think I should always be ready, always hard, always horny, always down to fuck and get fucked.

But I’m not.

Sometimes I’m emo. Sometimes I just want him, his dick inside me, his kisses. Sometimes I’m just not in that head space.

And that’s ok.

Here’s the deal, here’s the reason I’m sharing this not so sexy side of myself: Because it is ok. And the more we accept that side of us, the more we stop feeling ashamed and get honest, the more we will be true to who we are. The easier it’ll be to be vulnerable when the jealousy arises, instead of angry. The easier it will be to approach him and myself with love, and compassion, and not insecurity and fear.

I am ok. And if I’m ok, considering the things I’ve done, I’m pretty fucking sure you are ok too.

Feel free to reach out to me if you have things related to this you want to share. It makes me feel less alone if we are all in this together. Or if you just want to ask me questions. Or to tell me that you get it. Or that you think I’m crazy as fuck (you’d be right, I am.).

Also, it’d be a big deal if you’d check out my book, Accidental Warlocks, on Amazon. Your support makes it possible for me to keep writing. Without you there is no point. We are in this together!

Getting Pissed on Taught Me The Secret to Being Free

Discerning Daddy

“What are you doing?” Clay Texts me.

It’s Monday. 6:30pm.

“I’m being lazy. What about you?”

“May I make a suggestion?”

“Sure.”

“If I were you I’d take off all my clothes and sit in the shower with the water off.”

I feel my dick get hard.

“I’ll go do that now.” I text back.

“Good boy. Wait for me.”

I strip naked and get on my knees in the shower. I hear Paco start to bark, then the front door opens.

I close my eyes and breathe in deep.

The bathroom door opens and I am overwhelmed by how handsome he is. He is dressed in a blue button-down oxford, dark pants. He has just come from work.

He smiles when he sees me. The way he smiles makes me feel proud.

I watch as he unzips his pants and pulls his cock out. I brush my face against it, my cock hard in anticipation, and then he is pissing.

I lean my head back, letting it run over my face, into my mouth: I drink it and let it run over my head and down my back.

He must have been saving it for me. He likes to spoil me.

When he is done I take his cock in my mouth: it is hard too. I kiss it, stroking it. Then I stand.

Clay kisses me, tasting his piss on my mouth.

“Shower. I’ll be waiting in the bedroom.”

He leaves me to wash off.

In the bedroom he fucks me like he owns me. He holds me down, teasing my hole then pounding it, kissing the back of my neck, biting at my ear lobes, he holds me tight as he grinds into me, saying my name, reminding me that I am his, to use, to do what he wants with.

When he cums he rams it in deep, pinning me to my bed, his weight heavy on me.

When I jerk off his fingers are deep in my hole, and he talks me through, working me to that place where he is in total control.

When I cum it shoots far, and then he is kissing me, wrapping his arms around me, and I am laughing.

I always laugh when he makes me cum.

Some people might call me a sexual deviant. Or a slut. Or kinky, or into fetishes, or a bottom or a sub, or a top, a bear, a daddy, queer, gay, masculine, feminine, but I’m done with these labels. With the ways we divide and separate each other. The ways we try to make ourselves feel special or elevated, above someone else. I am done with the idea that being kinky, or deviant, or open or poly, or monogamous, or vanilla, or into leather, or any word we use to somehow establish an elitist idea of how someone should behave or be are the things that define who I am.

I like when Clay pisses on me. Not because I am into piss play but because I am into Clay. I am into exploring the boundaries of sex and dominance, the limits of who I am and who he is.

But I also like to cuddle and watch Schitt’s Creek.

I also really love “vanilla” boyfriend sex. The kind of sex where we are both just chasing our nut. Sometimes that is my favorite kind of sex.

What makes something a kink or a fetish? One person piggy and another not? Why can’t we just like what we like without labeling it? Without using it to divide ourselves?

I’m not saying I don’t think communities aren’t valuable. I think finding like-minded people who share your preferences is essential to no longer feeling like a deviant, an outcast, alone. I think celebrating our sexual identities, our desires, celebrating who and how we love, is the way we become visible: the way to acceptance from ourselves and others.

By being visible we normalize what can sometimes seem foreign or threatening.

I like trying on different labels, different fetishes, exploring the ways in which my sexuality expands and grows, but I do not want to be defined or limited by these desires.

Just because I loved that moment when Clay was pissing in my mouth and all over my face doesn’t mean I don’t also love when he holds me tight and whispers that he loves me, looks into my eyes, the moments when we are vulnerable, when I am jealous and scared and he reminds me of who I am.

The minute I allowed myself to stop thinking of myself as a label I was able to discover a vast landscape of possibilities.

I think this is what it means to be sex-positive. To be aware of the ways in which we limit ourselves and each other. To stop viewing our sexuality as something transactional.

There is a whole world of experiences out there just waiting. I want to be free to explore them, to be open to them, I want to feel secure enough and happy enough to trust that I can move outside the boundaries I have created for myself and try something new.

So I’m gonna keep writing about them. Keep trying to make sense of who I am and who I am becoming. And maybe it’s arrogant to think this, but I can’t help but believe that by doing this, by being as open and honest as I can be, maybe I am helping to light a path, to let others know they are safe too, that we get to be as big and as vast as we want to be.

To be pissed on and fucked, to dominate and submit, to follow all our desires and fetishes without shame or stigma.

But to also be more than those desires and fetishes.

I’d love to hear your stories. To hear some of your adventures.

If you’d like to read more of my writing check out the stories on my blog or my book, Accidental Warlocks, on Amazon.

Your support means everything to me. We are in this together.

Submission: Exploring What Ownership and Control Means In My Sexuality

Discerning Daddy

I remember the first time I ever got fucked. I mean that deep down, in your soul, owned kinda fucked. I was a sophomore in High School. Khaled was 22. He was dating my friend Carrie. She used to say she wanted to watch Khaled fucking me.

One night, Carrie was traveling with her parents in Thailand for a month, Khaled showed up at a party I was at in East Hampton. A friend’s parents were in Europe for the summer and we decided to throw endless parties at their apartment on the upper west side, with weekends spent in the Hamptons.

We got stoned on the beach and I remember Khaled took his dick out. It was thick and uncut, and without saying a word to me, he put his hand on the back of my neck and pushed me down.

He was so hard, there was no room left for me, just for that relentless, impossibly hard cock.

“I’m gonna fuck you,” he whispered, his breath warm against my ear. “I’m gonna fuck you and make that pussy mine.”

He took me upstairs, into one of the guest rooms. A screen door opened to a balcony and the ocean.

He kissed me hard, his fingers slipping down the back of my bathing suit, playing around the edges of my hole.

“So sweet,” he said. “My sweet little slut.”

When Khaled fucked me there was no question about who’s needs were being met and about what my roll was. Khaled fucked me like I was his: property, he forced me into submission, and made me beg to be owned by him, marked by him: he taught me what it meant to give myself over to a man: to be of a single-minded purpose: he taught me how to exist in the giving of pleasure.

I’ve learned a lot about desire since I was a high school sophomore being used by Khaled. I’ve learned a lot about love and sex and who I am as a man and as a sexual being.

I’ve never thought of myself as a bottom. Or as a top. I’ve always just loved sex. I love to suck dick and to eat ass, I go kind of crazy when I’m getting my ass eaten, I love to own and to be owned, I love to fuck and get fucked and to make out and to fall in love and to be passed around and to explore all the ways that dominance and submission and control and passion and tenderness and intimacy and desire play out in my life.

Lately I’ve been posting lots of butt pics on Instagram. I’ve been exploring what it means to be an HIV Positive, 51-year-old, sober gay man. What it means to grow older, but to still celebrate my sexuality, and to allow it to grow and change. Because, if I’m learning anything, that is the point: to grow and change, to be ever evolving.

Recently, in response to one of my butt pics, someone wrote, “Oh, I’m so disappointed. I thought you were a top. What a waste of a real man. Why don’t men act like men?” While hanging out with a group of friends, someone said, “I mean, the whole point of the bottom is to just lay there and take it. Let the top do all the work. Bottoms need to just shut up and be still.”

I’ve recently started dating a man named Clay. With Clay I get to explore aspects of being a bottom I haven’t allowed myself. The idea of ownership and submission, exploring aggression, and intimacy, allowing for something primal to enter into the tenderness, to be held down and fucked relentlessly, then to feel his kisses on the back of my neck, the way he wraps his arms around me and whispers in my ear: to know I am his but to also know that he is mine; that ownership is a relationship, it works both ways. Clay isn’t telling me to just lay there and be still, he isn’t telling me to shut up, he isn’t denigrating my masculinity even as he holds me down and uses me, even as he turns me into a possession he can share with another top or keep all to himself, instead Clay is opening doors, he is creating safe spaces for me to explore who I am, while also exploring who he is.

We do this together. We do this as a team. We do this in a way that celebrates the other instead of putting them down.

A couple nights ago, his cock deep inside me, the full weight of his body on me, grounding me, holding me down, his arms wrapped tight around me, his hips grinding deeper and deeper into me, to the point where I no longer knew where the pleasure and the pain began or ended, where I no longer was aware of anything but that feeling of him inside me: where all I was was his: my body possessed, my mind wiped clean. Fucked. And then he kissed the back of my neck, pulling out, licking down my back to my ass, tasting me, playing with me, working me into a frenzy, he whispered my name, he created a connection before slamming back into me, working me back into that place where there is nothing left but his cock inside me.

I don’t believe that who I fuck, or how I fuck, whether I am a top or a bottom, whether I am submitting or owning, says anything about who I am as a man. My masculinity is inherent, it is not determined by anyone else. It is not reliant upon any outside forces.

And that as bottoms our desires are not secondary to our tops, in some ways our desires are primary; a good top knows how to get deep inside his bottom’s head, to fuck him so deep he reaches into the darkest corners of his bottom’s needs and desires and ignites them, sets them free. That’s real ownership. That’s real connection.

I love to get fucked. I love to submit and to be owned, and to give myself over to a top who knows how to pull me deeper into my own desires, who is just as focused on satisfying me as I am focused on satisfying him.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to fuck too. That I don’t love to be the top, to explore those sides of who I am. I don’t want to be limited: I don’t want to be labelled.

But right now I am learning to explore sides of who I am as a man I didn’t know existed. I am excited for this journey. I am excited to share in it with Clay. I am excited to share in it with the other men we fuck. I am excited to explore the ways intimacy and love and partnership play into my desire to be possessed and owned. I am excited to explore my Self, as well as explore him and his desires and needs.

This, to me, is what it is all about. Sex and love and relationship.

As I’ve said before, none of it is easy. I also navigate jealousy, and fear, and insecurity, I navigate questions of being enough, of balancing who I am and who he is, of who we are.

But what I am really learning is allowing myself to be true to who I am.

So this is what I’m doing. I’m beginning a new journey of self-exploration. This is what it looks like to be a 51-year-old HIV Positive Sober Gay Man. This is what it looks like to be Jeff Leavell.

I’d love to hear some of your stories. I’d love to hear the ways you explore and celebrate who you are as a sexual being.

And let’s all remember: No one gets to tell us that we are less than, or not enough, or that we are somehow undeserving because of our desires and our needs.

Go be you. The biggest, queerest fucking you you can be. Being true to who we are is the most radical thing we can fucking do.

Hey, and go Check out my book, Accidental Warlocks, on Amazon! Your support allows me to keep writing!

There is a War On Queer Bodies: So Go Fuck, Show off Those Sexy Bodies: and Be as Loud And As Queer As Possible

Discerning Daddy

About a month ago Tom Bianchi found himself locked out of his Instagram account. Bianchi is a well known HIV activist and photographic historian of gay culture, most notably for his photos taken in Fire Island in the 80’s. A photo of his had been reposted on Instagram. The photo, “Untitled 457” shows a naked man sitting on a bed, his back to us, looking out a window.

Instagram decided that this photo, with a man’s butt barely revealed, had broken its Community Guidelines.

After a huge amount of pressure and backlash, Instagram re-instated Bianchi’s account.

And while, in my opinion, it never should have been taken down in the first place, it’s great that it is now back up. Tom Bianchi is a Queer hero. He has chronicled LGBTQ history for over 20 years.

But what happens when you aren’t Tom Bianchi, with a huge fan base willing to come out and fight for you? What about young queer and trans artists out there struggling for recognition, chronicling the world around them, whether through photos or videos or writing, who don’t meet the standards of Instagram or Facebook, or Tumblr? Who stands up for them?

I stayed out of this public debate. I decided that I wanted to stand back and wait, to see where things headed: if there would be any real change in how Social Media and the Mainstream Media handled our sexuality and our bodies.

That change never came.

Instead it feels like we keep moving slowly in a direction that is more repressive: restrictions put on our physicality, on our sexuality, on our gender: and how we are allowed or not allowed to express these things.

In 2019 many young artists’ careers live and die because of social media. It is a way for someone relatively unknown to build a following, to create a network of fans, to gain exposure.

It is a way to create visibility for a community often forced into the shadows.

And that is important.

As queer people, our bodies and our sexuality have been used against us for decades. Our gender has become political. Who we love and how we love, who we fuck, is political.

Facebook recently added to their guidelines a ban on all images and writings (including your private chats) that were soliciting sex or graphic in nature. This means that technically you aren’t even allowed to have sexy chat in your private messenger on Facebook between consenting adults.

Tumblr purged all accounts and images with nudity and overly sexual content, often times including shirtless gay men.

For a long time my ex-husband, Alex and I, used Tumblr, as a way to flirt. We created a joint account and we would add pictures of guys we found hot. We would take pics of ourselves: I won’t lie, my ass and dick, pics of me getting fucked, were all over Tumblr. You can have your opinions about this and your feelings and thoughts, but the truth is, we were just having fun. We were flirting, we were venturing out into a larger arena and expressing and exploring our sexuality.

And from the comments, and the amount of followers we had, people seemed to be enjoying our new exhibitionism.

We live in a world where sexuality, especially Queer and Trans Sexuality, are demonized. A world where our bodies are politicized and scrutinized: where a female nipple, the hint of balls, too much exposed ass, is considered “porn” even when the context is art, or just naturalism.

A world where how we fuck and who we fuck: how we love, is judged amoral.

One of the excuses being used by Social Media platforms is that we live in a global community and while they don’t believe in censorship, they also want to be sensitive to other cultures and groups who don’t share the same values. So…we don’t believe in censorship but we are going to censor you because we don’t want to upset a group of people who find your sexuality and your body to be morally wrong. Got it Instagram. Thanks.

I’ve thought a lot about how to respond to all this. I’ve tried to understand that companies like Instagram and Facebook have a right to define the content that is seen on their platforms, but to be honest, fuck them. Enough is enough.

Let’s call it like is: censorship. As queer people we have lived our whole lives being censored. We have been shamed and made to feel unworthy. We have been shoved to the side so as not to upset groups who find our way of life to be amoral.

I’m not arguing for allowing “porn” or graphic sexual images on Facebook on Instagram. But what I am saying is that showing some ass, or women showing their breasts, or shirtless guys, or queer people kissing should not be something we should be afraid of showing for fear of being locked out of our accounts.

It’s hard for me to make sense of this: it goes against everything I believe. It goes against everything I think is logical.

Human beings are sexual creatures. Fucking is fun. It is hot to look at pictures of other people fucking, showing off.

But there’s another component here that isn’t just about sex: our bodies are vast, uncharted, and beautiful territories: they are gorgeous and full of artistic and creative potential. Why can’t we show this off?
Why are we so afraid of allowing people the opportunity to explore their otherness, their gender, their sexuality, their beauty, their humanness?

I think it’s great that we all came out to fight for Tom Bianchi. But we need keep fighting. We need to keep the pressure on.

I show ass all the time on my Instagram account. I talk about being HIV Positive. I try to be as sex positive, and proud of who I am as a 50-year-old-HIV-Positive-Queer-Man as I can be. And I refuse to hide or to back down. I refuse to be made invisible.

I’ve been “shadow banned” (a process where with no warning or notice Instagram removes your ability to be seen on hashtags), I’ve been reported and I’ve been blocked on all my social media accounts. I’ve received threatening and incredibly unkind messages from users who troll the internet looking for people to attack. I’ve been called a slut, told I deserve to die from AIDS, that I am a worthless fag. But I don’t back down.

Because we can’t let them silence us. We are beautiful. Our bodies and our sexuality, our gender, our fluidity.

It is easy to believe that we had a major win last month. Instagram caved. Bianchi is back up. And that is a win. A huge fucking win. But we need to make sure we are still out there, celebrating who we are, and being as loud and as queer as possible.

We are only silenced if we let them silence us. We are only invisible if we let them take away our visibility.

I’m gonna show ass and talk about being Queer and Positive and be who I am, as loud and as visible as possible.

And fuck anyone who tries to tell us we aren’t worthy, who tries to censor us or push us to the side.

So go be as queer and beautiful as you want. Show those bodies. Make out on the streets. And stand up for those of us who might live in places where they are living under oppression.
Because that’s what these platforms don’t get: by allowing people like Bianchi, or someone like me, or any of the other LGBTQ people out there who refuse to back down, to be vocal and visible we are giving a voice to those still living in a world where their voice is being suppressed.

That should be what our community guidelines stand for. Not more censorship.

Check out more of my writing on my blog!

Also, check out my book, Accidental Warlocks, at amazon.com.