In Seattle, sometime around 1996, I had a friend by the name of Em who would, on occasion, pinch my ass or fondle me or pull up my shirt in public or…and this was a big one…spontaneously sit down, lean herself against me, and play with my hair. We’d go to clubs together. Host parties. Take road trips. Have movie-sleepover nights. There was a charge and a curiosity there, no doubt about it, and more than once she made it tempting to reconsider the whole heterosexual thing.

That lasted all of six months or so before it fell away, because in the end I cannot help it, cannot deny it: I love the penis. I can’t imagine ever not craving them. Not having my hands all over them. Seeing and not wanting. Not wondering about it when I brush up against the guy in the produce section. Not imagining the sensation of different shapes and sizes I’ve seen. I am addicted to the very idea of penis.

And yet, when it comes to active cravings, my neediness is remarkably selective. I’ve never turned one away for aesthetics, and have really enjoyed sex with various types of cock, but when it comes to overtly reacting to it, desperately needing it, the package of features has to be just right to make a penis that drool-worthy. Yes, size matters to some degree, though it’s the combination of that and shape and orientation and other factors that makes the difference. I can barely register a reaction for a huge porn-quality penis, but will break a dizzy sweat over a nude portrait of a man with average size but a well-defined, sturdy (this is unsexy to say, I know, but trust me on it), nicely-angled penis that might go unnoticed by anyone who wasn’t as diligent about the details. And I am most definitely diligent about examining the details.

Luckily, thanks to the gifts nature chose to bestow on S., I have a truly delicious specimen at my disposal. Scout’s honor to always worship and enjoy and make good use of it so it doesn’t go to waste.

I’d post a snapshot here so you can see for yourself, but it occurs to me now that 80% of the people reading here, to my knowledge, are men, and I’m guessing most of you don’t care to see that. Which is too bad, because it really is spectacular.

Is it weird to be turned on by the idea that David Duchovny is a sex addict?

I asked him what that makes me, knowing that, and he didn’t seem to think it was all that strange to be affected by it. So why do I feel like a geeky stormchaser on tornado night - amped up over something, a force of nature gone awry, that’s capable of causing someone else harm?

I know there must be considerable suffering in Duchovny’s life, for him and the people around him, but I can’t help it: the idea of anyone being that unfailingly needy for sexual contact makes me a little dizzy.

Perfectly timed - this arrived in my RSS feeds this afternoon, tempting enough to make me fork over the $16 and change for it. Because, you know, I don’t have enough books to read in the 12 or so boxes of them that we are still unpacking.

But this was irresistible:

“The study of sexual physiology—what happens, and why, and how to make it happen better—has been going on for centuries, behind the closed doors of laboratories, brothels, Alfred Kinsey’s attic, and, more recently, MRI centers, pig farms, and sex-toy R&D labs.  I spent two years wheedling  and conniving my way behind those doors to bring you the answers to the questions Dr. Ruth never asked.  Is your penis three inches longer than you think? Is vaginal orgasm a myth?  Can a dead man get an erection? Why doesn’t Viagra help women—or, for that matter, pandas?”

For a geeky grad student of semiotics (how we assign meaning to symbols/words/stimulus) and cognitive science, it doesn’t get any better than this. I can think of at least two of you who would enjoy paging through it, too, and I can pass it along when I’m done with it if you’re interested.

Anyone who’d like their own can find it here.

This wasn’t feeling right. I was forcing myself, for the sake of what I thought everyone else wanted to see here, to write topical, scheduled entries about sex and sexuality and that’s just not how sex works for me. It’s unpredictable, exploratory, tangential, strange. Intensely personal. So from here forward this blog will be that, too. Because all I really wanted was to talk candidly about sex and explore on “paper” the unexpected streak I’ve kept for the most part under wraps, the things I’m curious about, get turned on by, want to indulge in, the stories I want to tell.

While I’ve pulled a small handful of trusted friends into the fold, I’ll be writing anonymously so that I can write freely.