Tops and bottoms from top to bottom.

Ten years ago, I was in Ft. Lauderdale, on a packed weekend night, at (the original) Club Cathode Ray, when I found myself shoulder-to-shoulder with some random dude at the bar. We were both checking out the same guy across the room, and he was looking back. He turned to me and said, “Hey, I just heard this joke: Do you know the best way to get a bottom off?”

Yes, I definitely know some proven ways, but for the purpose of the joke, I replied, “No, what?”

“Who cares?” he said, laughed alone and sent the guy a drink.

Passive sexual partners of both sexes and all orientations are widely considered ‘less than’, even subtly (Did you notice that the word ‘bottom’ isn’t capitalized here, but ‘Top’ is?) and we expect them to have a certain level of ‘bottom shame’ just so we know that they’re not complete sluts. There are, on the other hand, complete sluts (again, of both sexes) who proudly own their title, finding plenty of happy company and more than a little liberation, I’d imagine. Combine this with some business savvy and you could build an empire, but that is certainly the exception to the rule.

Gay American Heroes

“So who knows what’s around the corner or down the street. I’m just gonna live life and find out.” -Sean William Kennedy

This past weekend is one that Sam and I had been anticipating for a while, but boy, did it play out differently than we expected. Chip Arndt had asked us some time ago to serve as co-chairs for his event: “Silence the Hate” a benefit for the Gay American Heroes Foundation, at East West in West Hollywood.

You know the drill, no matter how noble, on these kinds of things. It’s a charity you can get behind with a message you support, and you call in your connections and favors all over town to pack the house, and line the worthy cause’s coffers with much-needed resources. You make sure you look great (and we felt good about that having prepped for a season of events 1, 2, 3), then you show up to the event, have a few drinks with your friends, take photos, talk about the charity and what they’re doing, etc., until the goals have been wildly surpassed and a great time had by all.

Interview: Rodeo Cowboy, Sonny Koerner

Sonny Koerner is the randy cowboy who approached us at the L.A. Gay Rodeo in 2006, if you recall the original story. Here I thought I he was recognizing my natural talent for bullriding, and… well, you’ll see. Anyway, Sonny is the first real rodeo cowboy Sam and I ever met. He’s an inspiration to anyone involved in rodeo at any level, certainly, and as it turns out, he’s a real sweetheart. We’re lucky to have crossed paths with him again, and grateful to count him among our friends. Here’s the interview.

Video: Meeting My Sister for The First Time

Here’s another video from the archives that deserves attention. Sam and I met Cassie last summer, in Naples, and spent the weekend together with some of our closest friends and her adorable daughter Jessie Jane in tow. Cassie’s a rock star, and she mixed right in.

Cassie and I share the same Father, Robert Runyon Page, and we know that we’re not his only children. We just don’t know where to begin to find the rest of ‘em. I’ve been an only child my whole life, as was she, and it was strange for us to see a little bit of ourselves in each other. Our lives have had striking similarities, and we’re both older, wiser, and more grateful for them. The video Sam shot and Paul edited, says it all:

Our Lucky LuRain Penny

Seldom do I discover something on the web that is truly breathtaking, but this evening I discovered LuRain Penny, a self-described 85 years young blues singer, maintenance drinker, and WWII survivor who bends a note as beautifully as she turns a phrase and bares her soul. She made some of the most poignant comments I’ve read yet about the loss of Heath Ledger, drawing a parallel to her own life and her meanderings close to the edge but fortunately not over. I double dog dare you to get through the epitaph she wrote for him without saying ‘wow’.

She had me with her blog, and had me forever with her wonderful and prompt reply comment on my site, sealed with a trademark kiss – x. Join me in loving the miracle that is LuRain Penny, truly a treasure.  Also, check out LuRain’s HOTCAKES.

Your Dirty Minds

When I wrote The Girls with Whom I’ve Had Sex and the inevitable The Guys with Whom I’ve Had Sex, I did it primarily to document details that grow foggier with every passing year, to make a lasting marker just before my 40th year, and to show that we gay men are not all mincing vaginaphobes. It also felt good to get the information out of my head, and onto a page where random readers could find it and be entertained or maybe even learn something from it, and that has definitely happened. Here’s a screen grab from my blog stats page that shows my top blog posts:

Maybe the Chute Dogging video just hasn’t made the rounds yet, but nonetheless, it looks like the wrestlers I’ve wrestled are more interesting to you than the steer. Then comes the Brady Quinn fantasy, which I’ve even read a few times, and then on to celebrities and more sex, and the swing set suicide, and on and on… you get the picture.

Driving from the Back Seat

The air at home has been thick with philosophical discussions of late, mainly about where we are and why we are here. A decade in Los Angeles can have that effect.

I learned at a very early age that L.A. is the center of the entertainment universe, and longed for it ever since. When I moved here, at 29, I thought it was the be-all and end-all, and it is. There’s almost nothing that you can’t be here in L.A., given the drive, luck, youth, beauty, opportunity, and talent – usually in that order. Take your pick of any activity in snow, forest, mountains, beach, vineyard, or city, and it’s within a couple hours drive or a couple of phone calls to make it happen. It’s a place where you really can have and do it all, and as my Mom always said, “People who can have it all, usually do,” which can make for a formidably interesting, but exhausting schedule, and for the less than careful, it can be their undoing.

It’s that kind of excitement that brought me to Los Angeles: the same excitement I once got from my first drinks, my first drugs, my first screws, and that time on I-75 when I set the cruise control in my 1987 Mazda 626 Turbo and slid over and drove from the passenger side… and then from the back seat. You get a big rush from possibility, power, and invincibility, even when it’s imaginary, and that rush is part of what makes this town tick.

We Lost Jack. Now We’ve Lost Ennis.

My Mom just told me he was gone, and then I had to go to a meeting. I was in the hallway, and some brainless, soulless girl I work with approached, a spring in her step and a smile broad as a jack-o-lantern’s, saying, “Did you hear the news?”

I was hoping she’d heard something happy to offset what I’d heard. “Heath Ledger’s dead,” she said, breezing past.

And I just stood there, dazed, never having been a fan, and not needing any other reason to love him, and now to mourn him, than the fact that he was, and always will be Ennis del Mar – not to mention I’m fresh from the rodeo with Sam, my very own Ennis del Mar. The first time we saw the film, I saw Sam in Ennis right off, and he saw me in Jack; he even does a dead-on impression of Ennis. That film put the west into our psyche, was a big part of the earliest days of our relationship, and was (and is) a cinematic representation of the true and legendary love Sam and I have for each other. It always will be.

I’ve seen Brokeback Mountain all the way through only twice, because losing Jack was practically unbearable the first time. God knows when I’ll ever watch it again.

Rodeo Chute Dogging: Bronson Wrestles a 700lb. Steer

We landed in Phoenix at 10pm, with only the clothes on our backs and a small bag containing cameras, deodorant, chewing gum, and two DC comic books. We bought toothbrushes at a 7-11. In contrast to the choked freeways and side streets of Los Angeles, Phoenix roads are a dream: broad and mostly empty – as if they’re expecting a bigger turnout – and they connect adventurers to the vast, emotionless grid of strip malls and stucco-walled subdivisions, barren of any real landmarks, that is Phoenix, Chandler, and Mesa, Arizona.

We navigated the grid for about an hour before we found the little rundown area on the edge of Guadeloupe: home to the ‘neon’ motels and specifically, the Aloha Motel, wiped clean of all of its tiki motel-era details over the decades but still seedy enough to give us that rodeo authenticity we were after. The man at the front desk did a double take when we two strapping cowboys asked for a king-sized bed. The room was large and clean, and nothing says “welcome home” like slightly pink wood paneling, faded fake florals, and a filthy yellow flyswatter. We settled in for a restless night.

The Guys With Whom I’ve Had Sex

I leafed endlessly through the men’s underwear section of the Sears catalog when I was 3. I recall it perfectly.

When I was 12, I loved a man, 33, who was doing me a lot of damage; our ‘relationship’ lasted 6 years.

I seduced a football player and a wrestler from my high school when I was 16. The wrestler, probably on steroids because he was impossibly muscular for 17, was big and gruff looking. He took to wine coolers and back rubs very, very quickly, and it wasn’t long before he discovered how much he loved getting ‘pinned’. Last I heard, he was a cop in Atlanta.

I found my high school quarterback’s sneakers in his gym locker and stole them. I returned them in his home mailbox, slightly more used. He wore them the rest of the semester.

I discovered my insane fascination with blonds thanks to a handsome 16 year old Swedish friend who was covered with blond fur, and had a Dad who looked just like him. His Dad didn’t like underwear. Shawn and I hung out in our boxers a lot, but there’s no more to tell. He was genuinely never into it, and I think genuinely fine that I was. He was really kind. He’s a fireman now.

I had a secret boyfriend in high school who died accidentally while experimenting with shooting up Valium.