Once had a Dom tell my partner and I that despite the agreed upon terms of the session, he didn't actually believe in safe words and would not respect them. AFTER I was in restraints. Discovered a huge, angry, panicky limit right on the spot. Surprises in BDSM scenes are for stories on Lush, NOT for real life. We negotiated ahead of time, stick to the fucking plot.
Other than that... I'm old enough that the AIDS crisis formed a part of my sexual psyche, so no unprotected sex unless we're fluid-bonded. No blood play, corollary to the previous. No piss, no shit. I'll happily catch, but we're not doing anything with my ass that'll do damage, keep your fists to yourself.
No infidelity. Poly and sex-positive dynamics are fine, but nobody who's lying to a partner. No downlow. I paid the price to be out and I'm not feeling all that closeted shame on someone else's behalf.
There's what, 30+ categories? Sounds like a fun idea, but it would take me seriously two years, minimum. Good luck, though, I wish you well with it.
My first handful of times were quick and fumbling exchanges on the bench seat of my old pickup. I doubt any of them lasted longer than five minutes. Still exciting, still fun, paved the way forward, but neither of us was any good at it.
Shameless pimping: My story "Educating Ken" is an only-slightly-fictionalized account of the first time I sucked cock (and more) without being a fumbling kid sucking a fumbling kid. The second chapter is wholly fiction, but the first is pretty honest.
Where did you live when you were younger, dpw? It was always far, far easier for young me to find sex with men than women. So much so that when the subject of one's sexual history number came up recently, I was able to readily add up my female number but had to estimate my male one.
Mazza, dpw, you both rock. Many thanks.
Reading, I have no real preference between first and third. I just want good. Writing, I enjoy first person for the challenge. Hard to appreciate just how challenging it is to write without narrative omniscience until you try it. And for me there's no bigger satisfaction than making a first person story read as easy and natural and light when it really took so much more effort than telling it in third would have.
Inspiration comes from a lot of sources. I've got a story on another site that's an attempt at writing my wife's favorite fantasy, most of my m/m stuff is flights of fancy drawn from relationships in my own life, and I've got a couple higher-concept pieces I work on that were inspired by something I was reading. I've got one set in Ancient Rome that I really like and probably won't ever finish, since it seems to want to be a novel.
As to time, my latest story is the first where I kept track. My early stuff, including the stuff I put here four years ago, was just the first scratches of my learning to write and I probably don't want to know how long they took. But with "Samuel" I wrote about five pages a day to a total of 36 pages. Then it took a couple read-throughs to correct style and grammatical issues. I tend to get stuck on certain phrases and repeat them too many times, and it's a pain in the ass to edit that kind of stuff. Next step was cutting for length. I dropped about seven pages, in the end. Still not sure if it became a tighter story or if I just scrapped some of the tension, but I'm still learning. And finally, when I felt it ready, I ended up altering or adding paragraphs after each of the sexual encounters to form individual chapters so I could post it here, since it was well above the 10k word count. All told it was about forty hours of work. I have some hope that at some point in the near future I'll be able to put together stories of similar length and character development in thirty hours or so.
I'm also hoping to learn to put together a single shorter story in one week's writing time, which is about fifteen hours for me. That might qualify as hoping to grow wings, but we'll see.
One can see my two biggest problems right here in this reply. One: Verbosity. Look how many words I just spent on this. And two: Self-discipline. I'm "working on" the next chapter of "Samuel" right this instant. Except I'm not, I'm really writing two sentences and then browsing the internet.
I'll add my voice to the "dudes do it too" chorus. Nobody's who they say they are until you meet them, at least in a live video chat of some kind.
Except me, of course. I really am Quinne and Zoli from SuicideGirls. Both of 'em. Really. Would I lie?
I think topping might actually be more proof of inherent bisexuality/homosexuality than bottoming. You can suck a dick as a mechanical exercise as opposed to something you want to do. You can catch without enjoying it. But if your cock is hard and you're taking the active role, you have to be at least a little bit into it, right? Can't fake an erection.
Based on purely anecdotal personal experience, I think the number of (pick a word- bi, curious, flexible, whatever. Your label, your choice) dudes is much higher than generally acknowledged. I'm openly bisexual and openly sex-positive, and I would have a hard time remembering how many times ostensibly straight guys have approached me “on the downlow.”
It happened all the fucking time back when I was more of a twink, physically. I think a more “manly” presence is somewhat intimidating to curious guys, although it could just be that I'm a little older and less sexy to men than I used to be. But even so, it's a running meme for my partner and I.
Me: “Baby, you'll never guess what Joe said last night when he was drunk.”
Her: “Bet I will. 'So, um, Kenny, um... you're into dudes, right?'”
Me: “You must be a damn mind-reader.”
Her: “I wanna watch.”
I'm probably the harshest critic of my work, so generally if a two lands I think "Okay, mate, fair cop. I didn't like that wordy bit in the middle either."
I do much prefer them with explanation, though. If you're going to lob a low score at someone's labor of love, taking a couple minutes to explain why seems like basic courtesy.
I'm kind of the opposite of you, Metilda, in that erotica is what I write when I can't write substantial plot. This is my writer's block writing, if you follow. And I'm wordy enough just with some flirtation and some sex, if I tried to be genuinely creative I'd end up with "War & Penis," a million-word epic about two gay soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars.
My process is basically "Sit down, try to work on my novel, eventually realize I'm not coming up with anything productive, decide to write something else because not writing at all is the only real failure, be horny, write about people fucking."
The stories tend to work outward from a conversation. I like writing conversations. And once I start, I'll generally go well over the five pages a day goal until all the buildup is written, then let the story sit idle until I'm in the mood to write the sex. And the sex usually gets written at two in the morning when I couldn't sleep and suddenly had a flash of inspiration/horniness.
Then the publishing process is a fuckton of editing. My latest story lost over six thousand words before the sex and still had to be broken into three to live on Lush. Flirtation and conversation and buildup are fun to write. I'm seldom writiing sex before I'm 10k words into the story.
Thanks, clum. Part 3 is back up. And thanks a lot for the comment, glad you liked it.
to this? Dancing Doll takes time to thank people for comments, and i think it's amazing. she also takes time to answer PMs about her stories. i used to do both as well. sometimes the comments or PMs are simple - your story was awesome, and it was easy to do. sometimes i'd end up getting lengthy PMs and i'd answer them back. and then i'd get another one in reply. at a certain point i realized that i was spending as much time saying thank you as i was writing - i even had one reader who'd send me daily PMs who got upset when i started lagging in my answers. at present, i have over 100 stories up, i verify stories and i'm one of the senior mods. here. i really do appreciate comments and thanks yous, but keeping up with them is impossible - if someone sends me something particularly touching, i WILL reply, sometimes it takes a week or too, but i will. the ones that simply say 'great story, thanks' tho, i don't. yes, i read them, yes, if someone does that repeatedly, i'll send out a thank you, but no, i don't thank each and every one - i just don't have the time. it would take away from my writing, my other duties here, and, frankly, the little fun time i do have chatting or using the forums...
