“This feels like cheating.”

“What the fuck do you mean?” I ask. “How’s that cheating?”

We’re standing, not so much in line, but shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, hundreds of us pushing against each other like winter pigs around a farmer, waiting for warm slop. Whatever conversation we’re about to have is going to be overheard by at least fifty people.

“Getting in through the back door.”

“Isn’t that what we’re all here to do?” G says, and twenty people chuckle around us.

He’s got a point. They both do, really. We flew into Berlin last night specifically for Snax, the notorious fetish techno party that takes place twice a year in Berghain.

I’ve been there a few times—to the club, not to Snax—the first in the early aughts with a Turkish med student I’d fallen in love with in Istanbul. I hated it. I didn’t like techno then. Didn’t comprehend it, even. Didn’t understand how you could dance to repetitive, lyricless beats. Where’s the fucking chorus? How I’ve changed. I scan the crowd around us, wondering what he’s doing these days.

What I didn’t know, prior to defending my ground against aggressive circuit queens, is that for this particular party, both Berghain—the nightclub itself—and Lab.oratory—the sex club located in its basement—were merged into one. We’re therefore fighting to make our way to Lab’s entrance, braving the November cold and stepping in frigid puddles on the muddy side of the building, rather than waiting silently in line.

“Jesus, stop moving like this,” Denis says, backing into me in the process.

“Can’t help it, I really need to hit the bathroom,” Sébastien says, trying to inch forward.

“How’s that possible?” I ask Pierre, nodding toward Seb. He’s shorter than me and so close my lips brush against his hair while I talk. “You guys barely ate anything today.” Another couple of snickers reach us.

Pierre leans over and whispers: “He shoved a bottle of G up there.”

“Damn, that’s commitment,” I say, half impressed, half amused. My hand automatically goes for my crotch, checking that everything is still in place.

The crowd moves suddenly, and the seven of us are pushed around and shoved apart. G ends up on the other side of our group, sandwiched between Denis and Kyran. I’m not quite sure what’s happening between them, but Denis hasn’t let Kyran out of his sight since we landed. And yet, I’m pretty sure G’s hands have already found their way down Kyran’s pants. I catch his eyes and he smiles at me, but his arms stay hidden. G has yet to meet a blond twink he doesn’t like, especially if he means trouble.

Pierre and Thomas, Denis’s husband, strip next to me and thirty other people. I’m not sure why this party has a sportswear dress code when everybody strips down to their underwear the minute they get inside. The guy on my right goes further, down to absolutely nothing. He walks away in battered Nike Air Maxes, shaved from head to toe, and disappears into the darkness.

I stuff most of my clothes, my ID and my phone into a black garbage bag and surrender it to the makeshift cloakroom. The attendant seals it with a brightly numbered tag, then grabs my arm and writes the same number directly on my skin with a thick black marker.

Of course they do. Why bother with a ticket when you can turn me into one? I instinctively look for G to make a joke about Germany, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

By the time we find each other on the dance floor, we’re well on our way to high. The room has swallowed the November cold and replaced it with heat, hundreds of bodies generating their own weather. We assembled without trying, pulled like electrons in a storm.

Denis’s got his shirt off and tucked into his waistband, Thomas behind him, Kyran somewhere in the middle of us glowing from all the attention. We dance in a loose knot, facing each other and then not, propped up by techno, hard as the concrete floor. It’s not sexual yet, not quite, not up here, but it’s veering dangerously close to it.

Around us, men in various states of undress and arousal, singlets pushed down to waists, hands disappearing into their Adidas tracksuits without ceremony, three stripes like a highway to sex. Somebody’s getting blown against a pillar. It’s surprisingly tame, surprisingly fetish-less. Maybe a couple of pup masks, dark neoprene absorbing the strobe lights.

G dances closer and closer to Kyran, until they make out. I watch Denis look away first, then leave altogether, ostensibly to find the bar. A thousand horny strangers, most of them highly fuckable, and G still wants the friend he knows. The one he can’t have. He looks at me while they make out, and I nod. Go for it, I try to communicate, but I’m not dealing with the fallout.

I personally enjoy strangers. Anonymous encounters. Time to explore.

The stairs down to Lab are slick and I take them too fast, one hand on a wall wet with condensation, into air that seems to get warmer and thicker with every step. The music morphs as I descend, techno muffling into a low, physical pulse I feel in my sternum. The light, mostly absent to begin with, gives up almost entirely. What’s left is red, and not much of it.

Down here the geography is all suggestion, and I feel like Alice in hornyland. Corridors fold into corridors, dark alcoves turn out to be passages, recesses suddenly revealing skin on skin on skin. I move by touch, by heat, getting lost until I understand the lay of the land. Exploring has always been one of my favorite pleasures. You only get to discover a place once. After that, it’s too late. The magic has disappeared into something familiar.

Bodies change constantly, though, even when I recognize a corner. Shoulders, mouths, the wet shine of someone’s back. The smell is sweat and poppers and rubber and something mineral underneath it all, the smell of a place that never sees the light of day or fully dries out. I walk past metal stairs leading down another level, into white-tiled showers. It’s empty except for a single naked guy, waiting on his knees in a corner. I hope you have the night of your life, dude.

Nobody talks. That’s the first thing you notice. Well, the second. The first is the sheer number of kitchen paper rolls, tied everywhere around chains used like dispensers. Loose sheets lie crumpled in already overflowing bins or on the floor, in corners, dirty and forgotten. Whoever cleans this Monday needs all the money they’re getting and more.

Hundreds of men and almost no words, just breath and skin and the low sounds that could be pleasure or pain. Down here, it doesn’t need to choose what it wants to be. I let the current take me deeper, past a doorway where I can just make out a row of slings and the shapes moving around them, past hands that reach for me. I let them graze me and keep exploring, not yet, not that one.

The fetish is more present down here than upstairs, where it mostly was gear as fashion: harnesses over gym bodies, Nasty Pig jockstraps you see at every underwear party. Down here, it feels different. In one alcove a guy in full rubber stands perfectly still while two others work him over, the smell of latex coming off in waves. Someone's splayed out on a table taking a fist like a punch-out card, strings of lube sliding down his thick, jiggling thighs. A small circle of guys watch, dancing off beat from side to side, like it’s a performance more than anything else.

It dots the party, here and there, but the scene has been taken over by horny techno lovers. Like us, I suppose. We’re not adding to the diversity, either. I’m pretty sure the real kinksters skip the party. It’s a shame, they’re always so damn polite. Nobody gives good hugs like a dom top during aftercare.

At some point I shove my dick in someone’s mouth. I’m not sure why him, why now. His curls feel almost nicer in my hand than his mouth on my dick. It’s nice until he kneels even lower and kisses my sneakers. Too early for that. I pat him on the head, let him worship me for a while longer, then move on. Maybe I’m a tourist, too.

I make my way to our spot and find the group mostly dispersed, everyone exploring their own desires. Well all know where Seb is, and we let him be, taking turns to check on him. Pierre, who likes techno more than sex, is still dancing with Thomas, cradling a bottle of water like he’s in Mad Max. I grind with him for a while, enjoying his sleek skinny chest against mine. We make out, syncopated friendly kisses, until Thomas joins in, too. They both taste like tequila and salt, or maybe I do. I suddenly want to fuck Thomas, right there against a pillar, but I’m definitely not going there.

Then G finds me. He doesn’t say anything, just takes my hand and pulls until I follow. He drags me back down toward Lab, to the lower dance floor, where Jennifer Cardini is playing to a sea of sweaty, shirtless to naked men. She is suspended above us, looking down from her cage-like DJ booth, her face barely visible through the metal rods. Her beats pulse down through the walls and into all of us at once, hundreds of bodies moving like puppets on her synth strings. We’re so high I wonder if this is what Purgatory looks like.

We dance and make out with everyone around us, dicks out, until G walks backward through the crowd, grinning and gorgeous. He pulls me toward a kind of raised platform—a podium, an altar, it’s hard to tell in the red dark—where a knot of men, twelve or fifteen of them, are fucking in a single tangled mass. Limbs and mouths and dicks catch what little red light there is, moving almost in time with the music, one organism breathing hard. I’m pretty sure the same guy is fisting a set of ginger twins at the same time, but I could be hallucinating.

G leans in, his mouth against my ear, his hand on my ass.

“Look,” he says, like a man showing me a Rothko. “This is art.”

“You’re so fucking high,” I tell him.

“Maybe,” he says, pulling me deeper into Lab again. I want to stop everywhere now, every ass an invitation, to disappear into a pile of bodies but I follow him to a somewhat quieter corner, where Kyran is naked but for his yellow Pumas, busy sucking cock.

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Between rounds (of sex, of formula, of sanding the same doorframe for the third time) I still find the hours to consume the culture around me. I always have. You can pull me out of the club at 8 a.m., drunk and high, and I'll still have opinions about the last three things I watched. In the immortal words of Coupling’s Jane: “Ooh, I love giving opinions, I've got hundreds.”

A quick word on what this is. The Sexistentialist is, first and foremost and always, a horny gay sex diary. That’s the raison d’être and it’s not going anywhere. This (Sexistentia)List is something smaller. A companion piece, a B-side, a Sunday scrapbook of the things I read and watched and listened to and occasionally wanted while living the life the diary is made of.

Consider it the field notes to the field notes. Same eye, same appetite, fewer bodily fluids. Usually.

It helps that I work at a movie theater. Yes, that cinema. So we'll start there. Movies first.

Now Showing

We're starting, against all odds, with Mary Oliver.

I confess: as a French person, I had no idea who she was until last week, when I projected the documentary and sat in the booth to see what this was all about.

If you were expecting me to lead with something involving a sling, I understand your confusion. Hear me out, because among all the celebrities talking about her was none other than the King of Filth, the Pope of Trash himself, John Waters.

Turns out they were neighbors, and Waters worked for her one summer:

“They had this bookshop where you were allowed to be mean to the customers. It was really fun. These people would come in and say, “Do you have Valley of the Dolls?” Molly would yell, “Get out! We don’t carry that book!” If anyone said anything bad about Norman Mailer, they would snatch the book out of the person’s hand and throw them out. . . . The customer was always wrong.”

I’m not gonna tell you about Mary Oliver, you probably already know more than me. But I will say what I’m sure wasn’t discussed in class: she was an intensely private lesbian and enjoyed spending time getting lost in the Provincetown dunes (don’t we all?)

This was unpretentious, accessible, really lovely. I might even pick up one of her books.

Go see it in your local cinema, and buy some popcorn. This is how we get by.

Heavy Rotation

Troye Sivan dropped a new single this week and, as usual, the visuals could double as a Sexistentialist mood board: horny, sweaty, glossy, and yet somehow still down in the gutter with us.

He knew what he was doing with that opening shot:

Does Nicole ever sleep? Has she ever been more striking than here? Is she going to guest judge on Drag Race now that she knows Sasha Colby?

Anyway, She’s the Best hits so hard because even though I’m a gay man, I love women. Nicole, Julia, Sandra, Lupita, Charlize, Viola, Penélope… Don’t you just find actresses infinitely more interesting than their male counterparts? I have a feeling Troye does.

Anyway, I’m happy to know both Sivan and I think about the same things:

She's walkin' down the street with her little thin cigarette
Great smile and a cum stain on her dress

While the first listen didn’t give me what I thought I needed for this hot summer, a few repeats got me hooked and the visuals made me obsessed. It’s giving me queer Zach Bryan. The same talk-y way of hitting a downtempo melody, until it soars.

If you want to read someone’s way better words about it, here’s a review I agree with wholeheartedly.

She’s the Best is listed as the opening track of Troye Sivan’s upcoming album of the same name, out October 9. I can’t wait.

Between the sheets

I have trouble falling asleep, and will read just about anything I can lay my hands on. Earlier this summer I decided to try Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey. And while it is indeed hornier than Nolan’s version, it left me cold.

I decided I needed a good ol’ thriller, just in time for the NY Times to come up with its list of the 50 Best Thrillers of the 21st Century (full disclosure: I’m deeply uncool and Tana French is my favorite writer, so the list gave me both goosebumps—I have good taste!—and made me retch—I’m just like everybody else!).

I picked up The God of the Woods (Liz Moore) because something was dripping on its cover, and Lorde knows that always gets me.

I’m hooked. Not as hooked as I was by Straight Married Man^TM’s fingers, but pretty hooked.

I’ve always been a sucker for intertwined timelines, and I guess a story of children going missing now hits that much harder.

Hot off the presses

I'm leaving you with the perfect long read for a slow Sunday morning: Emi Nietfeld’s “Whose Babies Are These?” in The Cut (New York magazine).

As someone who just recently went through the whole surrogacy process, I could not put this down. I went in thinking I knew how these stories go. I did not.

I won't spoil it, but I'll say this much: it has villains, plural, and I mean more than two. International intrigue. A custody battle that reads like a legal thriller and a set of questions that could genuinely upend an entire industry.

Every few paragraphs I had to stop and text G a screenshot with no context except too many exclamation points. It's the kind of reporting that makes you realize how little you know about a thing you’ve lived through yourself.

This begs for a movie treatment. Somebody option this immediately. There are a couple of roles so juicy and morally tangled that actors would claw each other's eyes out for it.

Anyway. Pour a second coffee, put the baby down, and read it. Then come find me in the comments, because I need to talk about it.

That's the list. Same eye, same appetite, fewer bodily fluids, I told you.

One more thing before I let you get on with your Sunday. Starting soon, I'll be adding something new to The Sexistentialist: an advice column. You bring me the mess (the situationship that won't die, the throuple math that isn't adding up, the “is it weird that…” you can't ask anyone else) and I’ll bring you, well, probably not the wisdom, but the (probably biased) opinion of a man who has made every single one of these mistakes personally, and then wrote about them.

No question too filthy, too tender, or too stupid. That's the whole point.

Send them my way (thesexistentialista@gmail.com), and I’ll start answering the best ones soon.

Back Wednesday with the usual. Bring water.

The first thing I noticed about him was the deep shadow cast by his dick. It looked perfect, balanced and heavy, its upper curve smiling at me from across the backroom. I was already on my knees, drunk and dirty, sucking a mediocre dick I’d picked up on the dance floor. The techno hit so hard it knocked the standards right out of me.

The shadow came and went, hidden by passing legs, most of them hairy, but not all. Jeans and black shorts dropped to the ankles in every corner. Tits and dicks, separate or together. Someone on his knees eating pussy with abandon. The shadow reappeared, smiling at me again.

I must have stopped blowing him because the guy pushed on my head, shoving his dick far enough that his pubes caught on my teeth, his big belly cushioning my forehead. I gagged and pulled back, just in time for somebody else to kneel beside me and pick up the slack. Good.

I would’ve watched longer, entranced by the waving motion of wet lips working a shaft, sliding on my own spit, but that shadow smile almost winked at me.

The guy himself was now leaning against a wall, blond and shirtless against the concrete like a beacon, beautiful dick catching the red light. I made my way across the darkroom, struggling to zip up my jeans, hoping my breath smelled better than that dick tasted. I’ve been here so long I can’t remember the last time I brushed my teeth.

He watched me approach, grabbed his dick, and lightly stroked it.

“Are you gonna get on your knees for me, too?” he asked when I reached him. Shouted, really, his voice drowned by the industrial noise, naked beats endlessly layered one on top of the other.

His chest was glorious, fit but not muscular. The kind of guy who took care of his body but didn’t spend hours at the gym. But again, no one has the energy to pump iron after thirty-six hours at Berghain.

“I was gonna ask your name first, actually. But your dick does look amazing.”

“What about yours?” he said, reaching to unzip me. I leaned against the wall next to him and let him take me out, his sweaty hands digging for my balls, opening the whole package. “Camera ready.”

He pinned me against the rough wall to kiss me, his pecs touching me, his whole body pressing against mine. I grabbed his ass and hugged him closer, my dick throbbing against his.

“Come,” he said, taking my hand. “Let’s dance. There’s better places here to fuck.”

“What’s that book? I don’t remember this.”

G shakes a thin volume at me. He’s clearing the one shelf we have in the living room, if we can call it that, to make space for baby things. Mountains of baby things. Shades of pink threatening to take over our lives, one room at a time. Out with board games and the typewriter Lego set, in with animal-shaped teethers and dream bunnies. Whatever that furry, pink atrocity is.

In an ideal world, all of it would go into the baby’s room, minus a few tasteful storybooks to say that yes, I am a cool dad. In our current, all-too-real world, we’re renovating the whole house ourselves while caring for an infant. Our bed is in the kitchen, between the cot and the counter. We make it work. Somehow it feels like we’re twenty-two again, fucking like rabbits every chance we get.

“Sure you do,” I say, looking up. Our daughter eats like a troll and I’m covered in formula. “It’s even signed to you.”

He turns the cover, a photograph of a guy in the process of taking off his jeans, his speedo front and center, taking up half the frame. It always felt to me like an invitation.

“Kiss from Nikos, to G. Lose yourself in the excess,” G reads, puzzled. “Nikos?”

“Come on. It’s the photographer I met at Berghain, the day after winter Snax. I went back with David while you spent the afternoon at Boiler. You know, fucking Ky—”

“I remember that part,” he cuts me off. “So you bought his book and had it signed to me?”

“Can’t one thing be both a memento and a nice birthday present?” I smile.

“These are good,” he says, sitting down to sift through the photographs. “Feels like we’re right there with him. Doing lines in Berlin, fucking at the afterparty. Look at that dick!”

The main floor swallowed us whole. Nikos led me straight to the center, weaving through the dancing crowd, one with the beat. It was so loud it felt like sacrificing my eardrums to the moment, his beautiful chest catching the strobe in slices. I couldn’t stop touching it, touching him.

He danced with his whole body, loose-limbed but present. He danced with his eyes open, taking in everything around him. The way I moved my arms over my head, the trimmed hair in my armpits, the girls dancing around us into oblivion, as bare-chested as we were. Long black hair hitting my face, someone spilling a drink on us.

We danced pressed together, his mouth finding my neck between beats. It almost felt like a cleanse after the sheer amount of fucking I’d done a few hours before in that very space. He turned me around so my back was against his chest, his arms crossed over me, his hard-on obvious against my ass through two layers of denim. We swayed like that for a while, ignoring the pulsating rhythm, anonymous but held, him breathing into my ear, both of us slick with other people’s sweat.

I spun around and kissed him properly, hard, one hand on the back of his neck. The bass moved through the floor and up through both of us, sending droplets of sweat flying. When we broke apart he was grinning, pupils blown wide, and he shouted something I couldn’t hear. I leaned in. He shouted it again, right against my ear.

“Follow me,” he said, taking my hand before disappearing into a sea of skin and leather.

“We should go back.”

“What?” I say, putting the bottle down again.

“Snax. Berlin. We should go back.”

G is fully immersed in Nikos’s photography book, losing himself in the pictures. I’d go back in a heartbeat, but I’m holding a living, breathing obstacle to that particular side quest. The way she eats, she might as well guard a bridge.

“I feel like we know him,” he says, sitting next to me. He holds the book open, struck by a picture. Tattoos, pearl necklace. Red lipstick, muscled frame cinched into a black corset. “Did he take your picture?”

“Did you see me in the book?”

“Not yet, but it wouldn’t be the first time you ended up in one.”

“Are you jealous?”

“Am I ever?” he says, flipping another page.

“He did not. We just danced and fucked upstairs at Panorama. You know you can’t take pictures inside Berghain.”

“Pose for me.”

I laugh. “Come on.”

“I’m serious.”

He takes our satiated, sleeping daughter and disappears into the kitchen. By the time he’s back with his phone, he’s already cued up my favorite Jennifer Cardini set on the sound system. The first notes are blasting through the house.

“Come on. Dance. Remember she played at Snax? The red light, all those people fucking.”

“You were so high you thought we were in purgatory.”

“Who says we weren’t?” he says, taking off my shirt.

That set always gets me. The bass drops when I close my eyes and I’m there, climbing the stairs from Berghain to Panorama Bar.

The music carried me step after step, beat for beat, my eyes on his toned ass. The industrial noise ebbed and flowed into a more melodic house, looped voices replacing stark reverbs, Chicago house welcoming me into heaven with its disco-inflected grooves.

Panorama was packed to the literal rafters with Sunday afternoon ravers, every single one of us praying to the turntables. The vibe was less darkly sexual up here, and it just made me want him more.

As we swerved right around a group, skirting the dance floor, Nikos stopped to talk with a tall, beautiful girl. She flicked her long ponytail and laughed at whatever he told her before he dragged me forward.

He climbed in first and pulled me up after him into one of the recessed niches lining the wall, levitating two or three feet off the floor like hollowed-out, abandoned subwoofers. From up there we were above the current, floating in the harsh disco beats as the crowd streamed past below us. People cutting around the edge of the dance floor to reach the back bar, a whole parched congregation. Heads and shoulders and raised arms. Faces caught in the light for a second, then gone. Keys up nostrils without breaking stride. Someone crying and laughing at the same time, heavy mascara dripping down their face.

While we were watching them, lost in the music, Nikos undressed me. He unzipped my jeans and pushed them down past my knees. When they caught on my shoes he took those, too, throwing my beat-up black Converses behind me. By the time he’d smelled my socks and thrown them aside, too, my dick was begging to be freed.

He started playing with my dick, shirtless but otherwise still dressed, while I was stark naked in Panorama. He spat in his hand and grabbed my dick, his slick palm sending shivers all the way up my spine.

He knew what he was doing. Slow, then slower, his thumb finding the head on every upstroke, dragging it out until I was pushing up into his fist for more and he was making me wait. His other arm held me pinned down, teasing my pierced nipple, so I had nowhere to go and nothing to do but take it. The bass came up through the niche, from above and below and everywhere at the same time, and into both of us. He spat on my dick again and squeezed it as he moved, my moans lost to the music.

The congregation streamed by, some of them dead set on their destination, some of them looking, smiling, watching my naked body and hard cock as a Greek stranger was slowly taking me apart. I closed my eyes and gave in to the feeling, to the music, to his hands on me.

“Nikos, what’s up?”

“Oh, Gloria, Stan, what’s up babes?” Nikos said as I opened my eyes.

Two people had stopped by our niche and were now making small talk with Nikos, who was still holding my dick. I couldn’t believe it.

“Haven’t seen you since the expo. How did it go?”

“Amazing,” Nikos said. “The book should be published soon. So excited.”

“Congrats, that’s huge,” Gloria said, her tiny breasts visible behind a mesh top, her incredible mane of red curls falling over her tattooed shoulders. “And that’s huge, too. Who’s your friend? Are you gonna introduce us or what?”

“Quentin,” I yelled, not quite believing what was happening. Nikos gripped my dick harder and stroked it down, pulling the foreskin as far as he could, as if to expose every inch of me. “I’d get up to say hi, but…”

She laughed and grabbed my big toe, pulling on it.

“No worries. When you’re tired of his fisherman hands,” she said with a wink, “come find me.”

“And don’t let him photograph you,” Stan said, looking at my dick more than me. “You’d never live it down.”

His hand tightens on me, slick and slow, drier than I remember. Disco-house pours down from every direction, softer than I remember, too. My whole body is strung tight and begging. I close my eyes, feeling the world through my cock: wet lips replacing fingers, warm tongue running over me, teasing me.

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My knees won’t stop jittering, no matter how hard I try to still them and plant my feet on the ground. I barely know the people I’m going to see, and while I’m prone to party anxiety, I’m not sure that has anything to do with my nerves.

I look at the invitation again: “Come get naked and let us eat each other’s cakes. The vibe is sexy, social, friendly, naked, respectful, with pizza & drinks provided; hot tub, group shower & sling available. Ends at midnight! What this is not is a place for hard drugs, messy behavior, bad attitudes, or less than enthusiastic consent.” The opportunity was too good to pass up. I need to dance, I need to kiss, I need to fuck. I actually properly douched for this.

The last few weeks have been exhausting and boring. Work, baby, house renovation, repeat. A glass of wine in the evening. The occasional lazy fuck when we both get horny at the same time.

So when I realized that the cast iron radiators we wanted were available in Brooklyn for half the price, I packed a cock ring and jumped at the chance. G practically pushed me out the door and into the car.

I walk out of the train with no idea where I am. The neighborhood announces itself as tree-lined and residential, dotted with the remnants of a wholesome Saturday afternoon. Porches with strollers folded on them. Driveways with potted plants, dirty garden tools discarded on front lawns. Not where I expected to get railed on a sling.

I follow the guy from the train, a few steps behind, close enough to keep him in sight and far enough that I can pretend I’m not. He walks like he knows where he’s going, his tight ass rolling as he does, gym bag bouncing on his shoulder. Definitely gay. I feel like a freak in a spy movie, tailing a man through the early dark, toward an address I could just check on my phone.

“Hey,” I tell him on the front porch, just as he rings the bell. “Looks like we’re going to the same party.”

“The more the merrier,” he says as we walk in, quickly followed by a couple I hadn’t noticed behind us. “First time, right?”

“How do you know?”

“We haven’t fucked before. I’m kidding,” he adds before I can answer. “You look like you’re lost. Relax, this is a great party. Take off your shoes and leave them here. You can put your jacket on this rack, but don’t undress. Apparently, the neighbors have complained. Too many bare asses in the sunroom. There’s a bedroom upstairs to take the rest of your clothes off.”

To be fair, I do feel completely lost and utterly out of place. Maybe more than a little guilty. I’m holding on to my bag like it’s a life jacket and all my insecurities have come crashing back. Forty years old and I suddenly feel as awkward as I did when I was in middle school, bullied and friendless.

I take off my shoes slowly, fighting off the urge to leave, when somebody calls my name.

“Q! I’m so happy you could make it. That beautiful daddy dick is exactly what we needed.”

Nothing cures an existential spiral like a horny come-on.

“Dump your clothes upstairs and meet us in the kitchen. You look like you need a drink.”

Nate is naked, his dick swinging at half-mast. I feel him twitching against me when we hug. The last – and only – time I saw him, we were dancing at Mother Disco, his hands inside my pants and my tongue inside his mouth. His ass disappears into a group of naked guys I have yet to meet.

“What’s your name?” I ask the train guy while I take off my shirt.

“Corey.” He’s already naked, cramming his clothes into his bag. “You?”

“Quentin.”

“Well, take your socks off, Quentin, the stairs are slippery. Are you really gonna keep that on?”

I’m wearing nothing but a black jockstrap with a yellow zipper across the pouch. I nod.

“Can I?” he asks, pointing at the zipper. I nod again.

He crouches without ceremony, the way you’d bend to assess a flat tire, and takes the zipper between two fingers. It opens with a small plasticky sound. He reaches in, pulls out my dick through the gap and holds it in his palm like he’s weighing me. Then he folds it back in and zips me up.

“I give it ten minutes before you take that thing off,” he says with a smile, and leaves me to find a free spot for my stuff.

The kitchen is full of naked men doing the most ordinary thing in the world: standing around talking. Somebody’s explaining a co-op board dispute. Two guys are deep in it about Honey Dijon’s set at Knockdown. I don’t know what I pictured, but the atmosphere is so warm and cozy that I could sit in a corner and crack a book open.

The stack of red Solo cups makes me smile. For all the similarities between European and American gay life — the piles of white sneakers by the door, the tattooed legs, Robyn’s music drifting through the Sonos speakers — those cups are so American they could feature on a ten-dollar bill.

I pour myself a tequila on the rocks and drift into the nearest cluster, five dicks out like a Pantone fan deck. I almost want to arrange them by shade; they’re so pretty. There are hard abs and soft bellies I want to rest my head on. Tight asses and bubble butts, slutty little waists and a few pairs of love handles I already want to latch onto.

People come and go, walk in and disappear. There are trimmed pubes and bushy cracks. A tiny twink I’m pretty sure I’ve seen in The Book of Mormon. A large chest going gray in the middle, a handsome guy in his fifties with the confidence of someone who stopped apologizing two decades ago and is having a better night than I’ll ever have. Someone has a series of thin scars on his thighs I recognize and won’t ask about. Someone has back hair shaped like South America, taking my eyes straight to Cape Horn. They’re just men and the nakedness has stopped meaning anything within about ninety seconds.

I want to catch them all like Pokémon.

“Do you want a tour of the house?” Nate asks while his husband hugs him from behind and kisses his neck.

“I’d love to. The little I’ve seen is gorgeous.”

I follow him up the stairs, drink in hand, while he talks about their extensive renovation.

“I’m serious, that floor is gorgeous. The inlaid wood design is what, oak? And that framing line in a darker wood. Red maple? Gorgeous.”

“It is, right? Renovation took forever but I’m so happy we could salvage it. It’s probably the last time it can be sanded, so we’re careful.”

I can’t believe we’re having a full-blown conversation about the hallway floors while naked men walk past us, their dicks in various states of hard. I’m getting warm and starting to feel overdressed.

“Q! I saw your name on the guest list but I wasn’t sure you’d make it! Didn’t you just have a baby?”

“Hey, Kevin. I did, yeah, but I lost the weight real fast.”

“Are you having fun, babe?” Nate asks him. The answer to that question stares at us, curving to the left and highlighted in precum.

“Yeah, I just fucked your boyfriend.” He smiles.

“Good for him,” Nate says. “He’s probably already asking for more.”

“Oh, he’s already getting more,” Kevin says before making his way down the stairs. Then he turns back to me: “Let’s catch up after your first round, ok? And get that dick out so we can all enjoy it. I’ve seen it so many times on Bluesky, don’t tell me you’re shy.”

I follow Nate through beautiful rooms, all bare wood and deep tones. He lives with his husband and his boyfriend, and for a minute I imagine what it would be like to live with Antoine and JD. What it would feel like to move from the occasional vacation foursome to a permanent living arrangement. Cheaper rent. Extra hands to take care of the baby. Horny agendas in sync.

I’m picturing G’s face at the suggestion when I follow Nate into a third-floor bedroom, moans growing louder as he opens the door. Six guys are fucking on the bed, smooth, shiny black sheets sticking to their skin.

The bed is a writhing, breathing amoeba. I can’t tell where one man ends and the next begins. It’s a tangle of limbs and backs and gripping hands, someone on all fours getting fucked while he blows someone kneeling in front of him. Another guy lies underneath the whole thing somehow, looking up at the ceiling with the serene, faraway expression of a man exactly where he wants to be.

A candle burns in front of the TV, leaving the room smelling like sandalwood, sweat and poppers. A swing stands in a corner, near the window’s drawn curtains, waiting to be used.

Nate walks in and kisses his boyfriend while he’s on his back, legs over the shoulders of someone pounding him. Simon’s ass makes a sweet whoosh sound every time the dick dives in.

“Time to take that off.”

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“That’s so European of you,” she says, turning her attention back to the baby. She’s bending so low her bleach-blond hair touches the stroller. I can tell from her tone she’s trying to read me. What she means to say is something else entirely.

“What is? Being uncut?” I tell her, picking up G’s americano from the counter. It’s barely been a week and I’m already over people giving me their opinions. “Don’t worry, it’s a girl. We didn’t have to prevent the doctor from chopping her foreskin.”

She doesn’t know how to take my polite smile. I guess people don’t usually talk about foreskin while waiting in line at their local café. I should’ve let G handle the drinks. I can see him through the window, sitting at one of the sidewalk tables, sunglasses on, face tipped up to the May sun like he could absorb the energy the night denied him.

“I meant bringing such a young baby in a place like this,” she continues, like her point wasn’t clear. “I’m happy I got to meet her, though.”

“I know. I’m only teasing, Courtney.” Go fuck yourself, Courtney. The only thing I want teased is my dick, and preferably by the hot barista working on a latte right now. His red chest hair peeks out of his polo shirt while he’s working the grinder, and all I can think about is running my hands through it. I want to bend him over that counter and—

“I didn’t know you had a child.”

The voice is calm, collected, a deep baritone. Unexpected. I look back to find Straight Married Man staring right at me, sunglasses in hand. His name. What’s his name? The last time I saw him I left him blue-balled in his kitchen. Right now his skin is flushed from a run, Nike tank top clinging to his chest.

“You never asked.”

“I guess I didn’t,” he says, his thumb automatically scratching the golden tattoo on his ring finger. G leaves his band when he goes running, too. “Hey, Courtney. How’s Mike?”

Everybody knows everyone in this place. Of course. I watch them small-talk and air-hug quickly as he expertly maneuvers past her to get on my side of the stroller.

“How old?”

Before I can answer, I feel his hand grabbing my ass. Not just brushing the fabric of my sweatpants, but fully grabbing one ass cheek and squeezing it like a bruised peach.

For a second I don’t move. His hand is on me and my hand is on the stroller and on the other side of it the whole café is busier than Broadway. Somewhere in the middle of all that traffic, my daughter sleeps with her arms in the air, her little knuckles nearly grazing the canopy.

I should say something. I should move. Swat his end away. I know exactly what a good father should do but I file it somewhere for later, because his thumb is moving now and I have not been touched like this in what feels like a year.

“A week today, actually.”

“Well, so nice to run into you guys,” Courtney says, picking up a large green iced monstrosity with too much foam. “I’m gonna be late for yoga. Bye sweetie!”

Before she turns around, Straight Married Man’s hand swiftly moves inside my pants. His palm is hot against my bare skin, still damp from the run.

“Later, Courtney,” he says, just as his thumb finds my hole. “I like that you’re a dad,” he continues, so casual he could be asking about the menu. “It evens the playing field.”

I look him up and down, so close to me I can feel his body heat, radiating a confidence that wasn’t there a few weeks ago. Did he get hotter? He got a good fade, traded the corporate hair for a slightly edgier cut. Fresh sweat drips from his temples. His tank top hangs off pecs I didn’t remember his having. The thighs are actually impressive. Dylan. The name’s Dylan.

“What happened to being discreet, Dylan?” I say, looking around. I crane my neck to see G outside, still basking in the morning light like a sunflower. “Everybody can see us.”

The place is so loud I can barely make out the Fleetwood Mac song playing. Somebody pushes past the stroller to pick up a tray of cappuccinos. The hearts drawn in the foam look like butts.

“Sure. But nobody pays us any attention.” He moves his hand to the side and starts teasing me with one finger. No, two. I can feel his nails as he circles me. I’m getting harder by the second and wish I’d worn underwear.

“I told you I wanted this pussy,” he says, his fingers against my hole. He smiles and leans over the stroller, cooing at my daughter just as he pushes two fingers inside me. No spit, no lube, just sweat and the sheer will to penetrate me. It almost burns, that drag of skin on skin, and I let it. I let him in before I can think better of it, taking them deeper, and he feels me do it. “Your daddy’s a good boy,” he says with a lilt.

“I—”

“Aren’t you?”

He hooks his fingers inside me and almost hoists me up by the ass. I’d forgotten what this felt like. Being taken rather than needed. I’m so hard my dick twitches. I hope I’m not leaking.

“Don’t tell me you’re not into this,” Dylan says, almost lifting me. “I can see it for myself. And if you’re not careful, the whole place will too.”

Before he finishes his sentence, the barista calls another name and an elderly couple walks up to the counter, peeking inside the stroller. Dylan inches toward me, hiding his arm behind our bodies.

“Oh, she’s so precious,” the lady says. “I can’t believe it.” And I can’t believe I’m having a conversation while Straight Married Man is fingering me. I can’t believe he had it in him.

“Just like her dad,” Dylan answers as they turn around, moving his fingers inside me. For a second he’s gentle, almost, his fingers moving slow and deep like he has all the time in the world. And then he takes them out, just as I’m clenching around him, and wipes them on the back of my shirt. “She really is.”

“Latte for Q,” the barista calls.

Finally. I need to get out of here before G comes looking for us. Before I can reach it, Dylan grabs my latte and, after a quick look around the room to make sure no one’s looking, spits in my drink.

I watch it happen in slow motion. He puts his whole tongue into it, quick and precise, and lets it fall while looking at me. It lands dead center, breaking the surface of the foam. For a second it just sits there, obscene and glistening, before the heat takes it and it starts to sink. The little butt-shaped heart drawn in the foam closes over it like nothing happened.

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” he says, handing me the latte. “Ever since the wife made me watch that Carey Mulligan movie.”

“Promising Young Woman.”

The drink is right there between us. It’s hovering like a dare, or maybe like an invitation.

“I had a feeling you’d know the one. You know what to do.”

I should tell him to go fuck himself, leave him hanging like I did a few weeks ago. I know I should. Instead, I grab the drink from his hand and take a long, slow sip. I feel so vulnerable I could be naked, on my knees. I swallow. It tastes just like a regular latte.

“Good boy,” he says. “I’ll see you around.”

Next week, on The Sexistentialist: I leave the Baby with G to pick up supplies and attend a Naked Birthday Party. Yes, you read that right.

Photo by Pin Han Lim (https://www.instagram.com/lym.ph)

High up in a corner, a TV plays something nobody is watching, tiny bodies doing something I can’t quite catch from the corner of my eyes. Blues and greens flicker, reflected in the scrubbed walls. The bed is unmade, sheets falling on the floor. The air is warm and wet and smells faintly of sweat and chemicals. Somewhere behind me, below the TV, machinery beeps and hums.

There’s a tub in the middle of the room, huge and square and tiled, big enough for two. Possibly three, if we angle ourselves correctly. I’ve seen men do things I’d rather forget in one just like that. I can’t believe my mind is going there, but we’re all so bored.

Valerie is up on the bed, with her sister on one side and G on the other, and we are all profoundly bored. Two centimeters. We’ve been two centimeters for four hours. We’ve been here so long we have nothing left to say.

Two years since we started this surrogacy process, twelve hours since we rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night, two days before the scheduled induction date, and… nothing. The laughter and excitement wore off as dawn broke, leaving us with discarded breakfast trays, odd bits of conversation flying around, and boredom interrupted by the occasional nurse. Still two centimeters.

I try to catch G’s eye to make a micropenis joke, but he’s fighting his phone, trying to make the Wi-Fi work.

For someone who spends most of his waking life thinking about sex, it’s ironic that we got here without any. Well, that’s not quite true. We did ejaculate a few times.

The first testing kit arrived that morning by mail, its packaging so glossy white and sleek that it could contain an iPad.

“You’ll need to produce your sample after you’ve been abstinent,” G reads aloud from the instructions, “meaning no sex, no masturbation, no ejaculation whatsoever, for a minimum of 48 hours, but a maximum of five days.”

“Is this what women go through before they ovulate?” I ask, opening my box. It’s starting to feel real. I do not want to decide who the biological father will be, but maybe the answer is right there in this box. Maybe one of us shoots blanks.

G ignores me and keeps on reading: “It’s also crucial that you ship your sample on a day when it will actually reach us overnight. This means dropping your sample off before 3:00PM, on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.”

“I didn’t know we would have to do math.” Am I shooting blanks? Should I be a dad?

“When did you come last? I know we fucked Tuesday. So… two days ago.”

“And your cum tasted just fine to me.”

“Come on, Quentin.”

Thank God I was too busy to fuck around this week.

“This morning, after you left for work.”

“The usual then,” he says with a smirk. “I wanked in the shower before work.”

“I know.” I walk around and kiss him. “If my math is correct, we should fuck now. That way Monday morning we’ll be past the 48-hour mark, and you can drop the… samples on your way to work. But right now, how ‘bout I sample your big dick?”

He unzips his chinos and pulls his hard dick out before my knees hit the floor.

I take my time. There’s no rush. It’s Friday night, we’re home, the week is over and the only thing on the schedule is emptying ourselves out on a deadline. I know this dick better than I know my own. Its upward curve, the way it twitches if I press my tongue right there. I taste him get wet and sticky against my lips.

He puts a hand in my hair, the way he always does. Not pushing, not guiding, just following me. I look up and he’s already looking down at me, that half-smile, fifteen years of it. I try to take him all the way and hold him there but I’ve always been bad at that. He laughs when I gag, and pulls me up to kiss me.

“Let’s go upstairs and make a baby,” he says softly, pressing my dick against his.

Two sterile cups sit on our nightstand, already labeled with our names and the date. The last time I wrote my name on a test tube was for STI testing at home. My handwriting has not gotten any better. Let’s hope these results are better.

The instructions said to collect separately, lest we contaminate each other’s sample. So we sit on opposite sides of the bed with our backs to each other, like teenagers at a sleepover, and try. I can hear him breathing. I’m stroking but I’m only half-hard. This is gonna take forever.

After a few minutes I give up on the pretense and cross the bed. He looks over his shoulder at me, half embarrassed, half relieved.

“Give me that,” I say, and take the cup out of his hand.

I sit next to him, our bodies touching as much as they can, and take him in my hand. I’d love to spit in it, on his dick, rub its tip with my thumb, but I know I can’t. So I stroke him slowly, foreskin be blessed. I stroke him the way he likes when he’s not in a hurry, when I’m deep in him but still want to give his cock attention.

His shoulders relax and he lies back on the bed. I watch him close his eyes and relax, trying to enjoy the moment.

“I’m close,” he says, sitting back up. I position the cup carefully and move faster until he shoots into it with my fingers around him. Not a drop wasted, the way we both like it.

“Now do me,” I say, reaching for my cup.

A few months later we found ourselves stranded in a snowstorm, forced into a nondescript motel off I-89, somewhere outside Berlin. Two giddy idiots, driving through Vermont in December without snow tires. At least the parking lot has an EV charger.

He’s already snoring, naked in a sea of beige. Sheets that probably used to be white, threadbare comforter, cracking lead paint. I’m staring at the ceiling, at him, at the blond hair on his back that I need to shave, at the future.

What if it’s all a huge mistake? We broke up, once. Two years away from each other that ended up in an impulsive Vegas wedding. What if he leaves me again? What if I’m not meant to be a dad? What if I can’t even fill the cup with my less-than-average cum factory?

I edge myself, alone on the side of the bed. Will that fill up my balls for tomorrow? Can I Google this?

Coffee and the worst breakfast I’ve ever had. I can’t even touch the food, but G dives into the grey sausages, attacking processed scrambled eggs with a plastic fork. Another coffee. Two hours of driving through snow-covered Vermont and we’re greeted by the fertility doctor. Another STI test, to make sure our samples aren’t tainted. I hope I pass.

“You can’t do that together, no,” she says with a smile, like I’m joking. She verifies the names one last time and hands us our cups. “One per room. There’s a TV and we have magazines if you want, but most people use their phones.”

“We’ll be fine,” I say automatically, reading my name and birthdate on the cup label. I can’t believe I’m forty.

“And don’t worry about your sperm count,” she tells me. “Seven percent of millions is still a lot to work with.”

G giggles. I can see him biting his lip to suppress a laugh.

“When you’re done,” she continues, “just put the sample in the hatch – you can’t miss it – and you can leave through that door. Have a great day, this is so exciting! Congratulations!”

She waves goodbye and turns around, leaving us in the hallway.

“See you on the other side, mon Amour,” G says. He kisses me and disappears into his private bathroom. I linger for a moment, hand on the doorknob, and do the same.

“Four centimeters. Still a ways to go.” The nurse slowly closes the door behind her.

“My vagina’s always had a mind of its own,” Valerie says, pulling her gown over her knees and shifting against the pillows. Twelve months of doctors’ appointments and by now I know her sense of humor and joke delivery are so dry they could catch fire.

“I don’t know, it’s been cooperating quite well so far,” G says, laughing.

And it’s true. The embryos, the transfer, the pregnancy all took place without a hitch. Weeks and months with nothing to report but a perfectly healthy baby doing exactly what it’s supposed to.

“True. I keep expecting a jump scare, but so far so good.” She yawns. “I’m just so tired. I wish I could sleep. The contractions are okay, but these beeps are driving me insane. And my back hurts.”

I wish I could help, too. I know I can’t. G has been offering anything and everything since we got here, but he finally understood that there’s nothing he can do but wait.

“Anyway, I need my little friend,” Valerie says, poking her belly, “to pack up and leave. You’re getting evicted, little one.”

“Yeah, we definitely can’t afford the extra rent.”

She laughs. We’d always been open about the cost of surrogacy. Hard, honest conversations turned into jokes as the baby grew. I don’t generally envy straight people, but my bank account certainly envies how they get to make babies.

Valerie’s sister puts her phone down. “None of us are gonna be able to make rent if we stay here another day.”

“Well I’m officially on paternity leave,” G says, “so I really have nothing better to do. Does anybody need anything? Food? The cafeteria’s closed but I can run downtown.”

The sisters exchange a look they must have perfected over the years. I can see them covering for each other, creating alibis and dishing secrets without uttering a word.

“You guys should get some sleep while you can,” Valerie says, adjusting the pillows again. “Because once I’ve pushed her out, I’m off duty and it’s your turn at bat.”

The hospital bed is too small for two, but I’m not spending my last single night alone. The maternity is empty and the staff was kind enough to give us our own room when we arrived last night. It’s been so long since we rushed here in the middle of the night that we’ve already showered twice.

“You’re not single,” G says when I tell him, our legs intertwined under the blankets. I don’t remember the last time we slept with our underwear on.

“You know what I mean. No kid. Just us.”

“It’s going to be amazing.”

“I know.”

And I do. I’m sure of it. But I also know that whatever version of us exists in this bed right now stops existing sometime in the next twelve hours, hopefully less, and I want to hold onto it for a few more minutes.

He must feel me thinking, because he shifts and pulls me closer. There’s nowhere for either of us to go. The bed is a single, and though the mattress is surprisingly comfy, every time one of us moves the whole frame announces it to the hallway.

I kiss him and he kisses me back, slowly, with no urgency in it at all. Neither of us says anything. We can’t, really. The nurse’s station is forty feet away and three doors down a woman we’ve spent a year learning to love is doing the hardest thing any of us will ever do.

His hand under my shirt, my mouth on his neck, both of us moving as little as possible because the bed frame is a snitch. He laughs once into my shoulder and I feel it more than hear it.

I slide onto him with surprising ease, my body almost welcoming him. I pray that I’m as practicable as I usually am, but I’ve lost track of both time and whatever the cafeteria fed me. If anything, I’ll throw the sheets in the neat little ‘soiled linen’ trap near the door.

He’s under me and I’m on him and we never stop kissing, not once, not to breathe properly, not to say anything. His hands stay on my hips, holding me as close as he can while still fucking me. Every so often the frame gives us away and we both go still, listening, and then start again. I can feel his heart through his chest. I can feel mine through his hands.

I know his body so well I can tell he’s close, and G holds me so tight there’s no space anywhere, his mouth still on mine, my dick rubbing between our stomachs. I feel him come, and I shoot the moment I feel him contract deep inside me. We stay exactly where we are, foreheads touching, neither of us moving. Then, so quietly I almost miss it, he says it into my mouth.

“You’ll be a great dad.”

“We’re at nine and a half centimeters. Things are going to happen fast now, you need to come.” The nurse turns on the lights and closes the door behind her.

I’ve never been up and ready faster in my life. It’s 1am, thirty-plus hours since we arrived. The delivery room feels different, sticky and heavy. The harsh lights have been pushed to their max, casting their unflattering glow on everyone.

Valerie’s drenched in sweat, trying not to scream and failing miserably. Things moved fast during our short nap. She changed her mind and asked for an epidural. Four failed attempts later, the only thing left to do is power through it.

G and I are holding her hand, while a nurse and her sister each hug one of her legs.

“When the next contraction comes, I want you to push,” the nurse says.

“No shit,” Valerie says, gritting her teeth. “I can’t believe I actually signed up for this.”

“You really literally did,” her sister says with a small laugh.

The contraction comes, and I can’t help but grip her hand and push too. I shouldn’t have, but it’s too late to do anything about it now.

“Another push,” the nurse urges. “She’s almost there.”

We hold Valerie’s hand so tight I’m afraid we’ll break it.

“One more.”

“You keep saying that!” Valerie says, the last word disappearing into the biggest contraction so far. She lets out one last scream, then somehow the room changes.

Suddenly she’s there, so tiny in the midwife’s hands, so much hair it’s ridiculous. The umbilical cord looks like the old curly phone cords I used to play with when I was a child. A quick rub between her shoulders, one impossible second of suspense – I’ve seen too much ER, too much The Pitt – but the cry comes on fast and strong.

G takes off his shirt and holds the baby against him, skin to skin, her messy dark curls against his blond chest hair. She already looks at home, her breathing steady against his moving chest.

The nurse clamps the cord and hands me a pair of long scissors. It snaps easily under the blades, free. She’s here. She really, really is.

Next week, on The Sexistentialist: back to our regular, horny programming.

The Israeli in the bunk below me is pissing with the bathroom door ajar, and from the sound of it he’s taking hydration seriously. I guess three years of military service in the Negev will do that to you. It goes on and on, splashing against the water like a garden hose, while I lie in our shared dorm at Generator, staring at a ceiling close enough to touch.

Fresh out of the shower, he walks out with a towel wrapped around his lean, muscled body, tanned skin still glistening with water. Good guy. We had beers last night, two lonely travelers trading stories while night fell on Dupont Circle. The kind of straight guy completely aware of his hold on your attention and wholly uninterested in what men have to offer. Married, two kids. A good dick I’m trying hard not to look at while he changes.

“So, what’s the program for you today, man?” he asks me, buttoning his shirt, pants still neatly folded on the wall-mounted desk.

“Lunch with a client,” I answer, pretending I’m just noticing his presence. I wonder what he tastes like. Hotel soap, probably. “It was totally unnecessary, but sometimes it’s good to remind them that you’re available.”

“Right, you did mention that. Go get that contract. Beers tonight?”

The door opens and a perky older woman walks in, trailing a pink suitcase behind her. My erection disappears halfway through greetings and small talk.

This is what a hundred and fifty-five dollars a night gets you in Washington. A top bunk, a locker that threatens to bite your finger every time you close it, and a rotating cast of Europeans on gap years who treat 2 a.m. as an appropriate time to discuss Sisyphos.

I could’ve expensed something nicer, but hostels are a good way to meet people and an even better way to avoid spending my time on Sniffies, fucking strangers on a king-size bed. Hotels feel too much like cheating. Anyway, the flight was cheap, the client is a friend, and I needed to be anywhere but home, so here I am.

Dorothy has not stopped talking since she entered the room. By now I know her medical history and the names of all her grandkids. I check the time, grab my laptop, and let her ramble to an empty room.

I’m working in the lobby when they arrive all at once. Two dozen of them, matching duffel bags, matching jackets, matching energy. Cheerleaders. An actual troupe, swarming the front desk in a cloud of laughter and lanyards.

I watch them file in, looking for Monica Aldama, the coach of my pandemic guilty pleasure. One of the cheerleaders peels off from the group, tight jeans hugging his lithe frame. He wears his gayness like his tan, exposed by a crop top that says Barbie in rhinestones. His abs move as he stretches, one leg high up on the back of a chair, negative body fat that makes me self-conscious.

He walks past my table on his way to the elevators and looks at me, keycard in hand. Not a glance but a look, up and down, slow enough that there’s no mistaking it for anything else. Then he’s gone, swallowed by the elevator and his teammates.

I stare at my laptop and read the same sentence four times.

Zach cracks open a cold beer and hands it to me. He puts his feet up on the coffee table like he owns the terrace, legs crossed at the ankles, and downs half his bottle in one go, before sighing like he just came.

“How did the meeting go?” he asks, balancing the beer bottle on his flat stomach. “Good business, I hope.”

“Very good.” That might be a stretch. But it was good enough to keep me employed and worry-free for the upcoming months, which, considering my current situation, is virtually priceless.

“Cheers to that.”

Our bottles clink in the evening warmth, sending drops of condensation on my shorts. He drapes an arm along the backrest, so relaxed his hand almost touches my shoulders. I wonder if he knows what he’s doing, or if he’s clueless. I take a sip. I don’t even like beer.

“We should get ourselves some cheerleaders,” he suddenly says, nodding behind me. I turn around in time to see a throng of red and white filing onto the hostel’s terrace, laughing and high-fiving each other. Most of them are still wearing their uniforms. Short, pleated skirts twirling as the girls move, sleeveless tops hugging their breasts as tightly as possible. Two blondes are already looking at us.

“These two would be nice,” Zach says, raising his beer in their direction. Definitely not clueless.

“I prefer them with more muscles, more hair and a dick,” I say. “I’m into dudes,” I add when he looks at me.

“No shit. I meant those two would be nice for me. You can probably fuck the twink following them, though.”

I look up and there he is, his smile so big I can see his teeth from twenty yards away. He traded the Barbie shirt for a cheer uniform that shows off a waist G would call slutty. He waves. I could swear he’s biting his lips.

“I—”

“And for the record,” Zach cuts me off with a swing of his beer, “I don’t mind a dick if it’s attached to a beautiful woman. Protect the dolls.”

“Cheers to that.”

“Imagine Dorothy’s face if we all came back to the dorm.”

“I guess she’d have a story to tell her grandkids. Looks like we missed our chance, though. They’re gone.”

“So?” He cracks open another beer, popping the cap off against the armrest. “Just open Grindr and talk to that guy.”

I’d rather be celibate than endure another second of Grindr’s relentless ads. It stopped being annoying years ago to fully enter profiteering territory, another app price-gouging its way through our community.

I’m not perfect, so I open Sniffies instead. He’s sent me a couple of messages already, our dots sitting so close together on the map that I could already be inside him. His cute, smiling face shines like a beacon in a sea of dicks and holes. His waist is even tighter without the clothes. A couple of mirror selfies. An ass shot.

“Hey Daddy,” his first message reads. I guess I better get used to this. “You look good. Show me that dick.”

I do, and things escalate quickly. “I can’t host though,” I type. “Sharing a dorm with several people.”

“That’s okay, you can fuck me in my hotel room. My friend won’t mind, he won’t hear anything.”

“Are you sure?” Because I’m not. Not about any of this. I look at the mirror selfies and close the app.

Dorothy snores like a freight train. An unending, rhythmic thud that seeps from the closed curtains around her bed and reverberates around the room. I jerked off under the shower, trying to cool down and push the cheerleader away from my thoughts.

It’s not working. I’m lying naked on my bed, putting down my book every paragraph to check Sniffies again and stare at his tight hole. I want to feel it against my tongue, feel it open against my cock. I’m hard again when he messages me. They fly in small sentences, one after the other before I can answer anything.

“Come! Room 206. My name’s Casper. My friend is asleep. We won’t wake him up, I promise.”

“I’m already in bed.”

“So? You don’t even have to put shoes on. Come fuck me. I need your dick daddy.”

The door opens before I knock. Casper stands in the small hallway, between a full-length mirror and the bathroom door. He’s naked but for a pink thong and his infectious smile.

He pulls me inside without a word and kisses me, closing the door with a kick. It slams so hard I wonder how he expects anyone to sleep through it, but he doesn’t seem to care. Before I can say anything, he drops on his knees, frees my dick and starts blowing me.

He is very, very good at this. There’s no warm-up, no ceremony, just enthusiasm and a complete absence of gag reflex. He works me with his whole face, his hands flat against my hips, looking up at me every few seconds like he’s waiting for a good grade. His mouth is soft, his rhythm relentless, and when he takes me all the way down he holds me there, breathing through his nose. I put a hand in his hair and he mumbles around me, pleased with himself.

I look past him and take in the carnage for the first time. The desk and dresser are covered in Red Solo cups, few of them still standing. A bottle of vodka stands upside down in an ice bucket, surrounded by empty cans of Coke and Red Bull.

A forgotten protein shake sweats on the nightstand, surrounded by spilled glitter and two little bottles of poppers. Clothes are strewn everywhere, covering half the bed. On the other half, under a heap of blankets, the unmistakable shape of a sleeping twink.

Casper moans so loudly around my dick he could wake up the entire hotel. I try to tell him to be quieter, but he just keeps blowing me. Behind him, his roommate stirs, rearranges the blankets around himself and turns his back to us.

As if on cue, Casper leaves my dick alone just long enough to grab the poppers, two pillows and the blanket. He arranges them in the room’s hallway, like a little nest, and brings me down to the floor with him.

He turns around on all fours, ass up, and pulls the thong aside himself. He’s so hungry I can read it on his body, no words necessary. I spread him open with both thumbs and go in. He’s clean and warm and he tastes like fresh skin and soap, like someone who spent an hour getting ready for this. I take my time, catching his enthusiasm.

I lick him slow at first, then deeper, working my tongue into him while he pushes back against my face. His whole body responds. His back arching, his thighs trembling, the muscles across his stomach flickering under his brown skin. He’s built like an instrument, for vault and pikes and splits, and he plays himself against me.

He moans so loudly when my tongue reaches in that I worry again his roommate will wake up and find us there, naked in a nest of fabric.

“Come on, man, quieter,” I whisper.

He ignores me and reaches for the poppers. I hear the crack of the cap, the two hard inhales. Then he drops his forehead onto the folded blanket and lifts his ass higher, offering it with another moan. We’re done with the preamble.

I spit on him, taking a second to watch it drip in his crack, then I press the head of my cock against him. He opens without resistance, taking me in one long, slow slide until I’m all the way inside him and he’s shaking around me. I grab him by the thong and pull him on me.

The full-length mirror is right there in the hallway, an arm’s reach away, and I can see all of him in it. His face pressed sideways into the folded blanket, eyes shut, mouth open. He’s gone somewhere, all of him focused on his ass. His fingers are curled into the fabric. Every time I move he makes a sound that isn’t quite a word.

“You’re so fucking hot,” I say, pounding a little harder, using my hips as punctuation. “So. Fucking. Hot.”

He doesn’t say anything back, just grabs the poppers and takes another hit before pushing himself back against me. I can feel the pressure mounting deep inside. I can feel I’m about to come but we never discussed this.

“Do you want me to cum in you?” I ask, slowing down a little.

He ignores me, just pushes on my cock again, picks up my rhythm and moans.

“Casper? Can I cum inside you?” I try to think about something else, but his perfect ass is eating me again and again and I’m about to burst.

“Fuck me, Daddy,” he says, every syllable just a little too round. It’s only then that everything clicks into place: the door he slammed without a second thought, the moans he never once tried to swallow, the fact that he never answered when I whispered for him to be quieter. Nobody’s going to hear us because Casper can’t hear himself. I want him even more.

I’m two seconds from coming in him and I have never actually asked for his consent.

He looks back at me in the mirror, confused about why I stopped, until I hold up a finger.

“Wait,” I can’t help myself from saying out loud.

I’m still deep in him when I do the least dignified thing I have ever done, and that covers a lot of ground. I make a ring with one hand and push a finger through it in the universal motion we’ve all learned in school. Then I hold up my fist and open it, miming an explosion. Inside, through the finger ring. I raise my eyebrows. This is the silliest game of charade I have ever played.

He watches me do all of this in the glass, then tightens his ass around me and laughs. Loud, delighted, deeply unbothered. He starts moving against me, clenching and releasing like he’s trying to milk me, taking exactly what he wants.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes.”

Afterwards we lie in the makeshift nest, sweaty and tangled, our bodies taking up the whole space between the doors. The roommate is still asleep six feet away. Casper found a way to let me know he’s deaf, too.

He turns onto his side to face me. Now that I know, I understand the way he angles himself. He needs my face, my mouth, the light from under the bathroom door. I just want to hold him close and fall asleep right there.

He types on his phone and turns it toward me. “San Francisco. You?” I take his phone and type back. I don’t feel like talking about me. “You’re beautiful.” He reads it and laughs, then puts the phone down.

He points at me, then moves his hand across his face. A graceful movement, deliberate, the shape of a word he mouths at the same time. He points at me, then does it again, slower, so I’ll remember. I sign it back to him and he laughs again.

Then he grins, wicked, and signs something else. A different shape, faster, and I have no idea what it means until he takes my hand, presses it flat against his stomach, and mimes an explosion. He signs again then he mouths it, carefully, so I can’t possibly misunderstand: “Can I breed you?”

I laugh so hard the roommate stirs.

Next week, on The Sexistentialist: we can’t put it off any longer, The Baby’s coming!

He knows what I look like, of course. I’m sure he came multiple times looking at my pics, locked in his bathroom, pretending to shave. I’m also sure that if he wasn’t accompanied by who I assume is his gorgeous wife—tousled blond pixie cut, tan cashmere sweater, so far from our usual crowd she could be Scandinavian—he would have turned around and left the cinema the minute he recognized me.

He takes his card back, giving me the blankest look he can muster. An impish part of me wants to have fun, but I’m not in the business of outing people. I might nudge them a bit if they need a little encouragement, but that’s as far as I go.

“I’m sorry,” I say, looking at his beautiful wife, possibly sending cold sweats down his spine. “I forgot to ask if you wanted any popcorn.”

“We’re good,” she answers with a smile. “Unless you need anything, Dylan?”

“I’m good,” he says, already turning away.

“Enjoy the movie. Carey Mulligan is fantastic.”

I’m counting the till, arranging stacks of ones so they face the same direction, when the door separating the lobby from the theater opens with a light squeak of its hinges. I look up to find Straight Married Man ^TM standing in front of me. Tall and handsome in a nondescript type of way, I can see how charming he’d be if he wanted to. He probably sells cars. He’d probably say he’s fit. He has, actually, and well, either that was true at some point and he hasn’t updated his vocabulary, or we just don’t have the same definition.

“I guess my wife would like a popcorn after all.”

“Can you guess what size she wants?” I ask with a smile.

I wish I could stop flirting, but I remember the dick pics. His sweet but horny messages before his pathological need for secrecy annoyed me enough to block him. We’re also two weeks from the due date and I’m so angsty I could fuck a tree.

I shake my head to push the thought away and concentrate on filling a large paper bag, trying to avoid the blackened kernels. I actually had to drive to the maternity this morning for a non-stress test and barely made it back in time to open the cinema, in such a hurry I think I burned the popcorn.

“What gave it away?” he suddenly asks as I’m pouring hot butter into the bag.

“What do you mean?”

He looks around before saying, “You know what.”

Yeah, no. “I just had… an inkling. Maybe something from a pic, I can’t remember. That’s seven dollars, Dylan.”

“We should meet up and jerk it, man. You know I’ve been looking for a bro-type situation.”

“Yeah?” I hand him his change back. “Then step to the side and put your hand down my pants.”

I get hard as the words come out. My dick gets stuck under the side of my briefs. Hopefully he’ll rearrange it for me. He looks at me, at the door, at me again, and just as I think he’s about to disappear back into the theater, he takes a quick step to the side, around the popcorn machine.

I do the same. Anyone can walk in from the street or out from the theater, but he doesn’t know that it happens so rarely that I’ve received blowjobs mid-movie, right there behind the counter.

He reaches around with his free hand and grabs my dick through my pants. I can see the outline of his dick pushing against his jeans.

“Inside.”

He slips his hand beneath my waistband and fully grabs me, running his thumb over the tip, spreading precum across it. I hope he’s not going to use this hand for the popcorn. I also hope his hand still smells like my dick when he locks himself in the bathroom later to jerk off.

Two days later I’m standing in his kitchen, looking at a finger painting held to the fridge by alphabet magnets, while Dylan gets me a glass of water I didn’t ask for. Purple handprints, a yellow smear that might be a sun. THEO, 2, written in the corner in an adult’s careful hand. Drawings cover postcards from Positano and Valparaiso, beautiful architecture and blue seas half-buried under attempts at spirals. Dylan’s ass looks better than anticipated.

The house is beautiful and completely overrun. Wooden toys are colonizing the living room floor, inch by inch, animal by animal. I can tell an attempt at fighting back has taken place. The high chair is tucked in a corner, tray up, recently wiped. Little colorful books are neatly stacked on the marble coffee table, next to unopened issues of The New Yorker. I can’t look at this anymore.

I’m not sure what made him change his mind. Maybe my smell lingering on his hands. Maybe the need to fuck someone else. Maybe he just needs a break, too.

He hands me the glass and closes the refrigerator with an easy shove of his shoulder.

“You do this often?” I ask, taking a sip of cold water.

“No. First time I’ve had someone over.” He leans against the counter. He’s spreading his legs just enough for me to see his bulge. He’s probably tightening his abs, trying not to stretch his Ralph Lauren polo.

“No?”

“No. Wife rarely travels. Thank God for daycare.”

“No affairs?”

“Here and there. I don’t like it when it gets messy. Women…” He lets the sentence drop. He probably fucked his secretary and lived to regret it.

“I’ll swallow, don’t worry.”

He laughs, sort of, like he’s texting the syllables. “Yeah. The wife doesn’t really do the job.”

I should leave. I want to feel Jack against me, I want him to grab me in the hallway like he does and push me on the couch laughing. I guess Dylan will have to do.

“Let me see your cock,” he says.

I put the glass down and lower my pants below my balls. My dick flops out, not even halfway hard. He follows suit, probably waiting for my mouth to drop, then grabs me by the waistband to bring me close enough that our dicks touch.

We stand there for a while as he plays with our dicks. He tries to pull my foreskin around his dick, but just pinches me. He slowly becomes hard against me. It’s pleasant. If only we weren’t standing in front of small jars of homemade puréed carrots.

“Let me see that pussy,” he says, suddenly grabbing my ass.

“No.”

I’m definitely not bending over and spreading my cheeks for him. I finally get hard, thinking back to the last time I really did that, offering my body to Chase, my anticipation and pleasure stronger than whatever remains of my shame. How G and JD took turns loving me while Antoine sucked me, feeling their thrusts through me. Yeah, no. Not doing that.

“Come on,” he insists. “The wife—”

“I get the gist, yeah. Maybe she’s saying the same thing about you.”

“Bro.”

“I’m just saying. But if you want to suck my dick, go ahead. I know you want to.”

“Come on, bro. I’ll fuck you good.”

I knew I never should’ve answered his messages. G’s right. Straight guys, DLs, he doesn’t even acknowledge them. He wants men to like his cock openly. He’s better than me. I drop my principles like my pants, indiscriminately and far too often. This time I pull them back up.

“I’m gonna head out.”

He looks genuinely confused, then a little panicked, glancing at the clock like daycare pickup might already be a problem. “Wait—did I—”

“You’re good. I’m just not feeling it.” I finish the water and put the glass in his sink, next to a sticky sippy cup. “Hope you like Wallis Island, by the way.”

“What?”

“The movie.”

“Oh. The wife loved it. I guess that’s what matters.”

I hear his car pull up in the driveway, the familiar cut of the engine, the patio door I keep meaning to fix bouncing against the frame. I’m in the kitchen making tea I don’t really want, just because it’s 5 p.m. and I need something to do. He walks in carrying a shipping box.

“Hey daddy,” he says, and something in my chest loosens.

“Hey gorgeous.”

“Bobbie order arrived,” he says, shaking the box, beaming. “We’re ready to feed the beast.”

He sets the box on the counter and comes up behind me while the kettle heats, one arm around my waist, his hand going straight for my crotch the way it always does when I’m cooking. Some things don’t change. He kisses the back of my neck.

“Did you have a good day?”

I think about Dylan’s kitchen, the drawings G can’t wait to display on our fridge.

“Better now. You?”

“Good, except for this boner that won’t go away,” he says with a grin. He rubs his crotch against me. I get hard the second I feel him against my ass.

I lean over the counter, drop my pants to my knees, and spread my cheeks for him.

Next week, on The Sexistentialist: a week-end in DC turns the temperature way up.

This. G’s hand resting on my thigh, his light snores barely a whisper. I reach back to let him know I’m there, my fingers brushing Antoine’s firm body on their way. He’s spooning me, lying naked between G and me. Some time ago, half an hour maybe, I lost track, I watched G fucking him, slow and steady, the pleasure widening Antoine’s eyes with each thrust.

I was kissing him at the time, Antoine and I breathing into each other, lips wet with our bodies. JD was deep inside me, holding my waist in his big hands, watching G fuck his husband. My dick’s starting to get hard again thinking back to that moment, holding Antoine while our husbands fucked us, their rhythms somehow synced.

I cannot believe I’m here, naked and hard in this gorgeous shotgun house. I loved it the minute I walked in, greeted by a marble bust wearing a top hat. Plants everywhere. Cases of taxidermied insects, butterflies and scarabs pinned above their neatly written Latin names. Paintings in gilded frames so big they rest on the floor, slanted against dark walls yet still reaching the ceiling.

It felt like the heir to a colonial fortune had fallen on hard times and been forced to downsize, cramming his prized possessions into the servant’s quarters. He probably lost his money gambling and fucking his way through New Orleans. I smile to myself, weaving in and out of sleep. It shouldn’t work, but the taste is impeccable. I wanna downsize, gamble, fuck my way through New Orleans and move here, too.

The ceiling fan whirs, sending warm air through our intertwined bodies. I thought I was the only one still awake, but I feel Antoine’s light kisses on my neck and his hand on my dick. JD’s stirring, too, his broad back shifting against my chest. He hooks one of his legs between mine, gently pushing their dog out of the way, and brings me closer. Antoine takes hold of my cock and guides it between his husband’s muscled Arkansas cheeks. I let him use me to tease him, my dick slick with desire and with all of us.

“Fuck him,” he whispers in my ear, before kissing it. “Fuck him for me.”

“I thought he only was—”

Before I can finish my sentence, JD pushes himself against me with a grunt.

I tried to organize drinks with them ever since I left Poor Boys to follow Chase down the rabbit hole. I liked them both straight away, and not because Antoine blew me between a rusty caravan. Though I guess it might be as good an indicator as any that they’re my kind of people.

It’s a mystery to me, but while I won’t fuck my friends, I’ll want to be friends if the sex is good. Go figure. We kept in touch all week before connecting Friday night for a burlesque show. In a commitment to sobriety I would not have been capable of, Alex drove the four of us across town to catch a glimpse of perky breasts hiding behind ostrich feathers. Count me in.

Alex blasts Purple Disco Machine, swerving through the tight streets, windows open. I’m sitting between Antoine and G in the back, trying not to speak in French, trying to keep my hands to myself. JD’s riding shotgun, ginger hair blowing in the wind. If I close my eyes I can see him driving a John Deere, surrounded by nothing but cornfields and hate. I wonder what he’s thinking about, surrounded by four French guys, three of whom he met last week. I’m about to ask when Alex plays Let’s Have A Kiki and I can’t do anything but sing.

The lounge is exactly the kind of place that could only exist in New Orleans and probably already existed when they filmed Live and Let Die. We walk in laughing, still singing, into a narrow room with mismatched velvet chairs and a low stage that’s more suggestion than architecture.

The jazz trio is already playing when we squeeze in, finding seats wherever we can, knees and elbows touching strangers who quickly become acquaintances. Antoine ends up next to me, JD on his other side, G somewhere behind us with Alex and the rest of his friends.

The music swells and the feathers come off one by one, slowly, in no particular hurry. Nobody’s in a hurry here. Antoine leans over to say something in my ear and stays there a beat longer than necessary. His hand finds my knee in the dark. I put mine over his. On his other side, I catch JD watching us. By the time the second act starts, we’ve stopped pretending we’re just watching the show.

Midnight rings, ushering in G’s birthday. By that point we’ve moved on to the closest gay bar, using my earring to do bumps between cars, stealing kisses under mossy trees.

Another night, another dive bar. The crowd is older, the music louder. Leather and beer bellies bumping against me. I let a big bear grab my ass as I walk by to get cash from the ATM, then stop to let him grab it again when I make my way back to the bar.

The jello shots are so cheap I buy the whole tray and give half of them away to friends I made minutes ago. Despite the late hour, the heat and humidity have reached unprecedented levels, dragging my hormones along with them.

G slides a finger into the small plastic cup to dislodge the pink jelly, then swallows it whole without chewing. I see him hesitating for half a second before he raises his finger to Antoine’s face and traces his lips with it, leaving sticky vodka in his wake. Then he kisses him right there against the pool table. Despite everything, my dick stirs.

“I think I’m going home soon. Are you coming?”

“Am I—what?”

I turn around to see Alex, car keys dangling from his index finger.

“I, um, think we’re gonna stay a little longer. Are you sure you wanna go?”

“Yeah. Bike ride in… six hours,” he says, looking at his watch. “If you wanna join, we leave at 7 to beat the heat. I have extra bikes for you and G.”

I do, I really do. But I wanna watch G fuck Antoine more. I hug Alex good night and let him know we’ll find our way back on our own. I make my way to the bathroom, drunkenly playing with my earring.

I try the door to the only cubicle and find it unlocked, but occupied. The smell hits first. Sweat, poppers, the cramped musk of a small space doing more than it was designed for. A guy is on his knees on the sticky floor, wearing nothing but a jockstrap and a leash, his face buried in the crotch of the man holding it.

The guy standing has one boot up on the porcelain rim, head thrown back, not even looking down. The leash is wrapped twice around his fist. He looks at me over his boot and pulls the leash tighter. The guy on his knees gags and adjusts, but keeps on working.

“Wanna join?”

I look at them for a second, hand on the door, taking it all in. I can’t believe his bare knees are touching this floor.

“I’m good,” I say. “Have fun.”

I leave the door open and let them at it.

“I think we’re going home soon. Are you coming?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

I lean forward and kiss JD on the cheek.

Back in the Uber, it’s all any of us can do not to start fucking right there, crammed on the backseat. I can literally see JD’s dick pushing against his pants. G’s hand is down the back of Antoine’s pants, hidden from the driver but not from us. Fifty percent chance he’s fingering him. No, make that seventy-five.

“When is your baby due?”

“Not quite yet,” G says, taking out his hand, “or we wouldn’t be here, but we’ve never been closer. A few more weeks.”

“I heard it takes a village,” I say. “We could do with a few more villagers.” I cannot believe I said that out loud. My brain is fried, but for a moment I can actually see it.

The shotgun house announces itself with a lit porch and a dog barking once, halfheartedly, before deciding we’re not worth the effort. Antoine finds his keys on the third try. He licks one before using it. The marble bust watches us file in, top hat slightly askew, definitely judging us. Streetlight pools through the windows, giving the room a dark, golden hue.

We make it as far as the living room. G pulls Antoine toward him by the waist, and I watch them kiss properly for the first time, unhurried. JD steps behind me, his hands on my shoulders, his lips on my neck. I lean back into him and close my eyes.

“You guys wanna drink something?” Antoine asks, surfacing briefly. “There’s rosé in the fridge and a ton of seltzer.”

“Or something? Gin, vodka?” JD asks.

“Harder than this?” I say, reaching back to grab JD’s cock. I regret my comment as soon as I make it, but he laughs. “I could do with a glass of wine, actually.”

Antoine pulls a bottle of rosé from the fridge and JD finds glasses and a plate while G and I lean against the kitchen counter, his hand finding mine. We pour and drink and graze, wine glasses clinking, passing straws between us, the four of us moving around each other in the small space with the ease of people who have known each other much longer than a week.

Eventually we make our way to the bedroom, nobody quite sure whose hands are whose. Shirts come off first. Then shorts. Antoine has that tight French body that looks better without clothes, all compact muscle and olive skin. JD’s bigger than all of us, corn-fed muscles and confidence everywhere.

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A street sweeper moves slowly down Canal Street, dirty fluorescent jacket tied around his waist, pushing the dregs of last night’s sins into the gutter. I watch him from the backseat of my Uber, still wearing the mesh top, the pink lurex catching the first gray light.

The driver steals quick glances at me through the rearview mirror, silent. I wonder if he knows I’m clenching for dear life, lest Chase’s loads seep out of my jockstrapped ass directly onto his fake leather banquette.

The whole fucking street will be clean before the light turns green. My mind flashes back between G, sleeping in our hotel bed, and Chase, pinning me against his bed. I wanted to stay there, I really did. I wanted to suck his cock for breakfast, to let him shower me and make me coffee.

I can still smell his Axe shower gel on my skin, still taste his sweat and his spit. He’s everywhere on me, so present he could be sitting next to me, waiting for the light to turn green.

The hotel lobby is empty except for the night manager, a young guy with the particular exhausted look of someone two hours from the end of an endless shift. He looks up when I push through the revolving door and takes me in with a quick smile.

“Breakfast won’t open for another hour, but I can get you some coffee if you’d like.”

“That’s all right, thank you,” I say. Somehow his shirt is still perfectly pressed. I feel the sudden urge to hang around with him for a while, crack open a bottle of whiskey and ask his opinion on my recent choices. Nah. “What I need is proper clothes and some shut-eye.”

The elevator takes so long that I sink into one of the lobby’s leather armchairs, the kind that’s been distressed on purpose, aged by a factory in Guangzhou to look like it survived the Civil War. The whole lobby has been renovated to within an inch of its life to look like a set from a TV version of Interview with the Vampire, all painted leather headboards and fake old books arranged by color on built-in shelves.

Someone taped the faux-brick wallpaper peeling behind The Complete Works of Charles Dickens in six matching burgundy volumes.

I slide the key card in and carefully crack open the door, trying very hard not to make noise. With the AC off, his light, rhythmic snores bounce around the stuffy room.

G left the blackout blinds up and the city bleeds through those awful lace curtains, a parking neon sign slowly blinking on the other side of the street. He’s on his back, naked and looking away from me, the sheets twisted around his waist the way they always are when he sleeps alone.

He’s gorgeous. Even now, even like this. Especially like this.

I should shower, brush my teeth, and drink several glasses of water but I dump my clothes on the floor and slide into bed behind him. I spoon him, feel his chest rise and fall in my arms. My hand travels down to feel his soft, sleeping penis and cup his balls. I’m hard again.

I kiss the back of his neck, his shoulder, work my way down his spine while he sleeps. He doesn’t stir. I pull the sheets back slowly and kiss the small of his back, the curve of his ass. Still nothing, just the slow rhythm of his snores.

I take him in my mouth, soft and warm, and just hold him there for a moment. Breathing him in. Tasting him, trading one sweat for another, more comforting one. Finding my way back.

He starts to get hard before he starts to wake. I feel it happening slowly, the shift from sleep to something else, his body deciding before his mind does. A small sound, somewhere between a sigh and a yawn. His hand finds my hair without looking, resting there the way Chase’s did, except lighter. Familiar.

“Mmh.” Another yawn. His hips shift slightly. “What time is it?”

I don’t answer. He doesn’t really want to know.

He’s fully hard now and fully awake, or close enough. I look up and find him looking down at me, his golden hair everywhere, eyes soft with sleep and something else.

“Welcome back,” he says. “How was your night?”

“Still going on,” I say. “Yours?”

“Uneventful. Until now,” he smiles.

I turn my attention back to his incredible cock, my head resting on his stomach, giving him pleasure without a show. I know where to lick, how to take him without gagging despite his size.

I rearrange myself without letting go of him. Head down, ass up, close enough that his hand doesn’t have to look for me. He finds his way up my thigh, my ass, my hole. I hold my breath for a second, hoping he’ll do what he always does. Two fingers make their way inside me.

“Someone’s been a bad boy,” he says, pushing his fingers deeper.

My cock starts leaking before his sentence is over. We never share details, but sometimes it’s good to feel seen. I don’t answer, just nod around his cock.

His fingers slow, then stop. I look up, chin resting on his hip. He’s watching me, calm and amused. Definitely turned on. He holds his fingers out toward my face, an inch from my lips.

“Lick him,” he says.

I do. I taste Chase and lube and the whole long night, as G watches every second of it, his cock hard against my cheek.

“I love you,” he says, before pushing his fingers deeper down my throat. I feel his cum on my cheek before I can say it back.

Next week, on The Sexistentialist: our final night in New Orleans takes us in bed with another couple…

Photos by Julia Sakelli (@juliasakell) and Matteo Milan (IG: matteo__milan__)

“Are you okay in there?” Chase asks, his voice muffled by the bathroom door.

Tucked in a sad corner between the toilet and the wall, a plastic bin is overflowing with blood-soaked tissues and cotton balls.

I found it odd when he suggested we shower before getting into his bed, but now I’m reconsidering all my life choices. I didn’t even tell G where I was.

“Can I come in?” he asks with a single knock on the door.

Can he come in? Am I okay? Better questions are: where am I, and why did I blindly follow home someone I met only hours ago?

I’ve been checking my phone all day, stealing glances at Snapchat every time I’m alone for more than a few seconds. It’s all unnecessary since I turned on notifications, but I can’t help it.

I’ve been around the closeted block enough times to know what Snapchat means. The easy way to keep people at arm’s length, to withhold your phone number, your name. Your identity. As if that could change what happened under the red glow of Hit It’s neon sign.

I don’t agree, yet I downloaded the app for him, right there in the Skeleton Lounge, my eyes on his muscled arms and the taste of his cum still on my tongue.

I’m bored out of my mind, manning G’s corporate booth while he’s running around the trade show, shaking hands and swapping cards, when Chase finally reaches out. A simple “hi”, typed over a picture of him shirtless in bed, white sheets spread around him. My dick immediately twitches.

“too bad you couldn’t spend the night here”

No kidding. Not that I’m complaining. G and I walked back to our hotel together, swaying in the Louisiana night, drunk and horny, and fucked all the way from the elevator to the king-size bed.

“Any plans for tonight?” I ask.

“not sure” Then: “I work sunday”

“Lucky you. I’m working now, and I’m not even getting paid for it.”

Another picture, tattooed arm up behind his head, lazy smile on his lips. I can smell this picture. He definitely knows what he’s doing.

“We’re going out tonight. Gay party. Some place called Poor Boys. You should come.”

“can we fuck there”

“Only one way to find out.”

“Who’s making you smile like that?”

I look up and G’s standing next to me, his eyes telling me he already has a fairly good idea.

“Just trying to organize tonight. We’re meeting Alex for dinner before going out, right?”

We end up in a place on Magazine Street where the ceiling fans move the humid air around without actually cooling anything, and the waitress calls us baby like she means it. I order a shrimp po’boy on principle and spend the rest of the meal wondering if I made the right choice.

We walk off dinner through the Garden District, taking in the architecture, sweating through our shirts, G’s hand finding my ass at every crosswalk. He actually slips it inside my shorts while I look at the Buckner Mansion, feeling like I’m the Supreme (Bitch). He’d finger me right there if I let him. Maybe I should. The heat is getting to me in the best way possible.

We end up sharing a bottle of rosé on Alex’s front porch. I feel back on European time, pregaming before hitting the clubs around midnight. The second glass starts to hit and I wonder why we settled on New England in the first place.

“Anything good?” Alex says, watching me check my phone between sips.

“Just trying to convince the EMT we met yesterday to join us tonight.”

“Tell him to come here.”

“I did.” G cocks his head to the side and raises a single eyebrow. I shrug. “But he’s somewhere in the fruit loop. We’ll see.”

THIS IS A GAY PARTY

The words are printed in black on a white sheet of paper, taped to the wall. I love it. I do wish it lined up better with the pink and black stripes, but that’s probably why I’m insufferable.

“This might be the best sign I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah, it’s not usually a gay bar,” Alex says. “So, you know, they need to make sure everyone knows.”

I’m wearing a see-through mesh top with pink lurex sleeves over the sluttiest shorts I own, so I’m fairly sure everyone does know. My choice of outfit notwithstanding, we are once again warned that THIS IS A GAY PARTY by the femme girl checking IDs at the door. She stamps my wrist in exchange for ten dollars, her breasts bobbing as my bill disappears in a battered cash box.

We walk into a huge fenced-in yard, strewn with picnic tables and string lights. It’s 11:30 pm. The air has cooled down but it’s still comfortably hot, and somehow we’re early, almost the first ones there. Electro seeps through the small building’s door, its rusty metal covered in stickers and graffiti. In a corner of the yard a whole family is cooking and setting up a food stand. Burgers, wings, po’boys. Crawfish stew simmers on a hot plate. The sign lied. This is way more than a gay party. This is heaven.

We grab beers and claim a picnic table while the yard slowly fills around us. I sit on the tabletop, legs dangling off the side, and strike up conversations with strangers. The family starts doing real business, the smell of grilled meat drifting over everything, mixing with cologne and deodorant.

By midnight the string lights start to have competition. Phones, cigarettes, the occasional joint passed between strangers. The music gets louder as more bodies arrive, shorts and glitter and tank tops, the electro bleeding out from the building until the whole yard is vibrating with it.

Alex knows everyone, stopping mid-sentence every few minutes to hug someone who’s just arrived. G has his arm around me, watching the crowd with that particular look he gets, relaxed but curious.

I spot Chase the second he enters, flanked by two guys. I can’t help noticing that they’re much, much hotter than me. Still, he came. I try to kiss him hello, but he does that bro thing, half-hugging me with one arm.

“We met on the way here,” he says, introducing me. “Turns out we’re all going to the same party.”

“This is a gay party, after all.”

“That it is. Antoine,” one of them says, extending a hand and a slight accent. “And that’s my husband, JD.”

“Oh, another French gay. Feels like we never sold Louisiana after all.”

I like them immediately. Antoine has that tight, French build, slutty waist highlighted by huge pecs. The man might say he’s in academia, but he clearly works out. JD’s almost as tall and big as Chase, gorgeous ginger hair and a twinkle in his eyes that says he knows you’re looking. I can tell G likes them, too. He’s laughing and trading coming-to-America stories with Alex and Antoine.

Chase comes back with hot wings and chicken tenders and sits next to me. I hesitate for a moment, then lay my head on his shoulder. He keeps eating for a while, then puts his box down and puts a hand around my waist. If it was socially acceptable I’d lick the BBQ sauce off his fingers.

“Mon Amour,” G calls me. He’s standing so close between Antoine and JD they might as well be kissing. “How many push-ups before I get the same pecs?” he asks, touching Antoine. “A million? Two million?”

“You’re perfect.” I smile and I mean it.

“See,” he says, turning to his new friends, “I told you he’d say that. Such a pretty little liar. Anyway, I have to go. I need to be at the convention center early tomorrow, and if I have another beer I’ll never wake up.”

He comes up to kiss me just as Chase withdraws his arm.

“Gimme a second, I’ll come with you.”

“No, have fun, mon Amour. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?” I ask, relieved that he didn’t take me up on my offer.

“I am. Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“So… no carbs after midnight, but everything is okay, right?”

Another beer, another joke and I’m holding Antoine by his short dark hair, watching him suck Chase’s cock. I’m not sure how it happened exactly, but we made our way to the farthest corner of the yard, half-hidden by an old caravan, weeds all the way up to my knees.

I crouch down near Antoine and we make out, our tongues meeting around his dick. We kiss as we take turns, spit mixing as Chase sighs against the caravan. I feel something crawling on my ankles but I ignore it.

Chase pulls me up by the collar and kisses me hard while Antoine works on us both, switching back and forth with an efficiency that suggests this isn’t his first caravan. I feel his whole body tense when Antoine takes him deep, his fingers tightening around my neck like a reflex. I bite his shoulder to keep from moaning too loud, tasting salt and the long day on his skin.

“Let’s get outta here,” he says in my ear. “I wanna fuck you. In my bed.”

The car ride to his place was so long, past crumbling houses and abandoned cars, that I have no idea where I am. I’m still not convinced yesterday was his first time in a backroom, but at least he didn’t lie about his job. The EMT badge sits on the kitchen counter, on top of its leather case. It’s heavier than I thought.

The flat is pristine. Nothing on the walls, nothing on the floor. I’m still holding the badge when Chase suggests we take a shower, and ushers me toward the bathroom.

“Let me get a towel, I’ll be back,” he says while I take my shirt off, closing the door behind me without looking.

I’m naked by the time I notice the blood.

So much blood.

“Can you come in?” he asks again, ever so polite.

“Chase? That’s a lot of blood.”

“What?” He slowly pushes the door open, towel in hand. “Oh, that. Sorry. I get really bad nosebleeds.”

“Nosebleeds? Are you kidding me? For a second I thought you were gonna chop me to bits in your bathtub.”

“I—”

“Seriously, bro,” I say, my limp dick swinging between my legs. I feel so exposed, I grab the towel from his hands and wrap it around my waist. “You can’t leave it like this. I’m into fluids but that’s too much. At least wash it up and empty that bin. This is scary shit.”

“I was running late and I forgot.”

“Just don’t kill me.”

“I’m a good guy,” he says, walking towards me. “Promise.” He leans in to kiss me, taking his clothes off at the same time. He nudges me under the shower as steam starts to fill the small bathroom.

The water is too hot but I don’t say anything. Chase finds a bottle of Axe shower gel and works up a lather between his palms before running his big hands over my shoulders, my back, slow and deliberate. Like he’s checking I’m still in one piece. Like he’s sorry. I lean my forehead against the tiles and let him. His hands move down my spine, over my ass, between my cheeks. Still slow. Still gentle. I feel him getting hard against me and I push back slightly, just enough to let him know I noticed.

He turns me around and washes my chest, his

thumbs tracing my collarbones. He cups my face in his soapy hands and kisses me, careful and warm, his massive body blocking the showerhead so I don’t have to squint. For someone who let blood dry on the floor and forgot to mention it, he’s remarkably good at this.

By the time he leads the way to his bedroom, PrEPed and showered, I’m both fully dry and completely wet. I need him inside me. I need him to crush me under his weight, to smother me in his arms, to choke me against his pecs.

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Our own car seat judges me, still wrapped in its box, ready to be sent back if I change my mind. No…

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Coffee hasn’t hit yet and all I can think of are variations of “what?” and “I didn’t do anything.” I keep dozing off, lying on the couch while the day starts around me. A waltz of doors opening, toilets flushing, phones beeping. Jeremy is already back from the gym and I’m still curled up under a fleece blanket, watching the reflections of clouds slowly drifting on the glass facades.

“Did you?” G asks again before playing Pete Yorn’s musicforthemorningafter. It’s a bit on the nose and it makes me smile. “The list. For the party. Did you get in? I haven’t heard anything.”

Oh. That. At some point last night, looking at the city lights, tangled together while his cum slowly dripped down my thighs, we decided to try an invite-only sex party. I can’t quite recall who recommended the place, but it piqued both our curiosity and tonight’s party is just a few blocks down.

“You guys still planning to go?” Jeremy asks, dropping chunks of banana into a blender. Whatever Pete Yorn sings about is drowned by the whirring blades.

They talk about it while I check my phone between sips of coffee. There it is, between an ad for baby formula and the New York Times morning newsletter:

“Hi Q, You are now on the list for ⚡SXU NYC!⚡NEXT PARTY: SXU MIDTOWN – Tonight – 10pm-5am in our HUGE MANHATTAN LOFT!”

The copywriting and Ikea color palette are already giving me a headache, but at least they’re going straight to the point: “PACKED w/ SUPER HOT Younger Guys. Jock or Naked ONLY! HUGE Midtown LOFT w/ENHANCED SOUND & Social area! Slings, Beds, Benches & darkened play areas Bar & social area with club lighting throughout.”

“I guess we’re super hot younger guys,” I say, handing G my phone. He reads the email, a shadow creeping on his face. His brows crease as he scrolls down, so knotted they almost touch each other. He sighs. I know what he’s thinking. “Your email’s on its way,” I add as he hands me my phone back, but we both know it isn’t true. Ian cuts the discussion short, appearing fresh out of the shower, wet-haired and ready to go.

“Morning boys!” Ian’s good mood bounces between his words. “I hope you didn’t put almond butter in that,” he says, pausing to rub Jeremy’s shoulders as he makes his way to the Nespresso.

While G deflates the air mattress and straightens the living room, I retreat into the bathroom. For someone who could sell books to Circuit queens, G has no idea how to market himself. I wonder why that is. Maybe I’m just skewed by years of sexting, chasing good lighting in hotel rooms to send somewhat accurate but definitely flattering pictures of my body to anybody who asks.

I brush my teeth while I send his application again, using pictures of him I have on my phone. His perfect cock, a glistening drop of precum dripping down its curved shaft. A candid shot of him, shirt on but with the CrossFit Open logo prominently displayed behind him. Let them infer from that what they will.

I always knew “HUGE MANHATTAN LOFT” was an oversell. All caps and bold, too much of a try-hard, and that’s coming from me. But I certainly wasn’t ready for how seedy the building looked. We’re standing outside, freezing, waiting in front of a small door, white neons and a broken EXIT sign. Fluid stains everywhere, but someone brave enough drew a heart in the grimy glass door. I can feel the camera overhead. I wish I had more hair. I should’ve worn a hat.

“Are we gonna get murdered?” G asks as we’re buzzed in. He’s kidding, I think. “Maybe I was better off not being on the list.”

“Come on. I told you that email was just taking its time.”

A quick flight of stairs, another door and the cold vibe shifts, morphing into black curtains and red lights everywhere. Strangely inviting. I pay both our entry fees, forty-five dollars each, and the cashier goes over the rules and invites us to pick a glow-in-the-dark wristband.

“I knew this was a come-and-go situation,” I say with a smirk, “but I doubt we’ll be party-hopping.”

I was expecting an eye roll, but he actually laughs and points to the sign hanging over the glow sticks. An EDM, millennial take on the hanky code. Fun. Red for tops, blue for bottoms. Yellow for vers and white for sides. I pick a red stick, crack it, and tie it around G’s wrist just as it starts glowing.

I lean in and say, “I do,” before I kiss him. “Now go fuck some twinks,” I tell him, slapping his ass as we walk in.

We’re taking our clothes off side by side, my yellow wristband shining and bobbing as I tie my laces. A shiver runs up my legs, from cold or anticipation or both. I love a first time. There’s something to be said for being uncomfortable, off-kilter. Discovering the rules, letting the vibes carry you somewhere unexpected. I’m starting to get hard under my jockstrap, while G’s buck naked, his erection pointing the way.

“Well hello there,” I say, giving his cock a gentle flick. “I’d blow you, but you’re not here for me.”

“I’m always here for you,” he says.

The guy waiting ahead of us in the line for the cloakroom turns around in a flicker of blue light. “How ‘bout I settle this and blow you both?”

Slim build, slutty waist, long hair falling around his shoulders, he’s still holding his clothes in his arms.

“By all means,” I say. “Get on your knees and suck our cocks.”

He does as he’s told and takes us both in his mouth while we make out. G and I both reach for his head at the same time, and our fingers meet under his curly hair. I enjoy it for a moment, G’s wet cock rubbing against mine, spit dripping down that guy’s chin, a tiny drop hitting my sneaker. Then I pull out, drop my clothes on top of G’s and let them stand in line.

“Have fun,” I say, pushing through yet another heavy black curtain.

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I’m sitting cross-legged on the leather banquette, ankle over my knee, elbow resting on the backrest, trying to be cool. I ordered wine while I wait for him, and if I’m not careful, I’ll be through my second glass before he appears. I text G, ask how his day was. No answer.

I’d flirt with the waiter, but he’s pointedly ignoring me. Maybe he’s hoping I ge…

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“Have a great day, mon amour. Can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”

It’s not even seven, the late-winter light has barely started hitting the window, but how could I be mad at him? I text G back, lying in bed, asking about the gym. Of course he went. It’s leg day, but I know he went straight to the upper body again. He’s been obsessing ever since we decided t…

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I have work to do and I do it, mostly. My laptop is op…

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