Men Are
PiGs,
But We
Love Bacon
Not-So-Straight Answers from
America’s Most Outrageous
Gay Sex Columnist
MICHAEL ALVEAR
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
850 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10022
Copyright © 2003 by Michael Alvear
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
All Kensington titles, imprints and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund raising, educational or institutional use.
Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Special Sales Manager: Kensington Publishing Corp., 850 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10022. Attn. Special Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
eISBN 978-0-8065-3511-1
eISBN 0-8065-3511-3
First Kensington Trade Paperback Printing: May 2003
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
To Richard Banconi,
for teaching me how to lie about my age
Great things can come from someone saying “no.” This book is a testament to that. Three years ago Dan Savage’s syndicator told the publisher of a gay entertainment magazine that he would not sell the gay author’s column to gay newspapers. How’s that for irony?
The editor was Chris Crain, the visionary editorial director of Window Media, the largest chain of gay newspapers. Chris called me up one day and said, “I want you to write about sex.”
“Fine,” I responded. “Send me your cutest employees and I’ll get started.”
So, my first thank you is to Dan Savage’s syndicator. The second goes to Chris Crain, not just for making the column—and therefore this book—possible, but also for standing up to enormous pressure from easily-offended gay schoolmarms to pull the column on account that it made so much fun of easily-offended schoolmarms.
I’d also like to thank my distinguished and often sober panel of experts, starting with Richard Banconi, MSW. His warped yet flawless logic (“beauty is only a light-switch away”) significantly affected the way I wrote the column.
Shouts also go out to Brad Thomason, Ph.D., who was literally my psychologist-in-residence. We lived together as boyfriends for the first two years that I wrote the column. I depended on him to give me the clinical view of my psycho readers and for that I thank him. And also because he let me steal his best lines. Like the title of this book. It was his response to a friend wondering how he could have dated me.
I’d also like to thank the three board-certified family practice physicians who made themselves available for my impertinent questions: Jim Braude, M.D., the funny, fresh-faced scion of the busiest gay practice in the southeast. Manuel Patino, M.D., my own personal physician. If I had his bedside manner, I’d be too busy fucking to write this book. And finally, the bright and beautiful Kris Johnson, M.D., a hottie doc if you ever saw one. Thanks guys for making me sound like I knew what I was talking about.
Lastly, I’d like to thank Dan Savage, the master of the rip-and-chew advice column. No, Dan, you’re not imagining it. My column is a complete rip-off of yours.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 How Your Dick Works: How to Work Your Dick
Chapter 2 Safe Sex Doesn’t Mean a Padded Headboard
Chapter 3 Cruising: How to Stalk Your Prey
Chapter 4 Kink: Putting the “Fuck” Back in “Fucked Up”
Chapter 5 Relationships: How to Fit Large Feelings into Small Openings
Chapter 6 Anal Sex: Cracking the Case Wide Open
Chapter 7 The Utter Cream: How to Milk Your Man
Chapter 8 Drugs and Alcohol: Substance Abuse or Seduction Technique?
Chapter 9 Odds and Ends
Can’t Get Enough Wood?
If you’re looking for warmth and compassion, you’ve picked up the wrong book. Try Chicken Soup for the Cock; it’s three aisles over.
This is a sex advice book with fangs. It’s a collection of columns appearing in over twenty gay newspapers under the title “Need Wood? Tips for Getting Timber.”
Throughout the four years I’ve been writing the column I’ve managed to ENRAGE just about every gay group in existence. There’s a reason for that. I make fun of people who aren’t used to being made fun of, I’m judgmental as hell, I leer (if it’s possible to leer in print), and I brag a lot.
Oh, and I give accurate medical advice.
That’s what enrages critics the most, I think. Yanking threads off the fabric of gay piety would be one thing, but I do more than that. Thanks to my panel of board-certified physicians, therapists, and psychologists I club my politically correct victims with medical facts, not just common sense. And if there’s one thing the easily offended hate, it’s being clubbed with common sense.
I write this column the way men talk about sex—brutally, with a sense of entitlement, and a breathtaking gift for the gratuitous insult. Sound familiar? It’s you and your friends at brunch.
When the column first started, almost no one knew what to make of it. Gay sex advice, when it’s published at all, has that kind of “everyone-is-beautiful-in-his-own-way” and “isn’t-it-all-wonderful” kumbayah hogwash that makes even the biggest dick pigs cough up what they shouldn’t be swallowing in the first place.
At first, it was hard to get papers to carry “Need Wood?". “It’s too controversial,” said one editor, worried about all the headaches that come with controversy. “Can’t you tone it down?” Well, no. I offered to throw in a year’s supply of Advil and a bottle of Insta-Spine, but he declined. Years later, the column became one of the most successful syndicated properties in the gay press.
If you’re wondering why every letter addresses me as “Woody” when my name is Michael, it’s because you’ve never heard of Eppie Lederer, may she rest in peace. She was known in many circles as Ann Landers. I write the column