LGBT

We have PAPERBACK! + REVIEW offer

smallFINALPAPERBACKCOVER-22769060_cover (1)

My cover design for the paperback version

Sorry to SHOUT BUT I’M REALLY EXCITED! Oh, fuck I started SHOUTING AGAIN BUT I CAN’T HELP IT!

Really, really sorry about my lack of control. But it’s not every day that you PUBLISH A PAPERBACK !!!. Oh, god. This is really embarrassing. Just try to bear with me as I tell you a little bit more about MY PAPERBACK WHICH IS NOW ON SALE!!!!.

This is what my friend Shaun Proulx, life-transforming guru extraordinaire and architect of the #ThoughtRevolution, tells me is a “soft launch”. Well, I’m going to take his word for it, as what he doesn’t know about gorgeously shameless self-promotion and roll-off-a-log success wouldn’t fit on the smallest, fiddley-ist hors d’oeuvre Martha Stewart could stamp out with her heirloom cookie cutter.

In fact, he’s been cheekily dubbed “The Gay #Oprah”; word has it that Ms O’s acolytes occasionally forget themselves and refer to their bossatrix as “The Big, Black, Obscenely Rich and Heterosexual Shaun Proulx, Except Shaun Doesn’t ‘Balloon'”, which earns them a great, big, corrective “love tap” from the CEO. I can picture her now as she hauls back and, with a follow-through like a Wimbledon champ, cracks the back of that jewel-encrusted hand across each penitent face while screaming, “This is gonna hurt you more than it hurts me! KIDDING!!”

The book is for sale on Lulu.com, who are the gentle and helpful publishing midwives to this elderly primo gravido. Once I’ve approved the physical copy, it will be sent for possible distribution on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other so KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED! I AM SO EXCITED!!!

Sheesh.

May only, get 20% off. Click on the cover image above to go to my product page on Lulu.com and to purchase.

REVIEW OFFER

If you’ll go onto Lulu.com and write a review, I’ll send you a PDF of the paperback final version, free of charge. Shoot me an email at david@davidroddis.com with subject line: Paperback review offer and I’ll get it off to you within a day or two.

Decay ‘n why: The SEX issue.

After thoroughly enjoying my long hiatus, I’m

raring to go and full of p and v, whatever that is, and I like to imagine you’re just teasing a guy when you look up from the task at hand—topping up the ink levels in the mimeograph machine, or barnstorming your fission statement, I think I heard that right —and say to your co-workers,

“Hey, he’s back! Could somebody shoot me in the head while I’m sleeping?”

Incidentally, those of you still stuck in the Creativity Pod with your caramel lattes long grown cold can spare yourself the effort with the mission/vision thing. Now that The Donald has ushered in the end of days with all the finesse of a three-hundred-pound WalMart bouncer on Black Friday, we’re well aware that they both go “making a shitload of money while selling useless crap to bored consumers, polluting a lake, then going bankrupt so we don’t have to pay those pensions”, except “vision” starts “We see ourselves…” while “mission” kicks off with “Just try and stop us from…”.

And incidentally to the incidentally, allow me to prise those lattes from your hands and replace them with “partially recycled” plastic bottles made from virgin petroleum and filled with tap water labelled “mountain springs” at eight dollars per gallon—three times what you pay for gas in your car.

Gaia, that old hippie chick, withered breasts dangling at kneecap level, now slouches towards Bethlehem, not to be born but to expire with one final, raspy sigh in the Valley of The Shadow of Non-biodegradable Plastic (on the bright side, the discovery of mountains in Guelph should dramatically cut the costs of a Toronto family ski trip, come nuclear winter).

But enough about you.

I was going to call this post “The In’s ‘n Out’s of Gay Sex”, but—

1. The In’s ‘n Out’s double-entendre is terribly overdone, at least in my mind, whose peak of ambition is to make eight-year-olds laugh;
2. I’m still searching Merriam-Webster for the correct plurals for In and Out and I don’t want anyone to think I’m one of those louche non-reader’s who believe’s that everything with “s” on the end, or even not on the end, ha’s an apo’strophe; and,
3. I figured it would be entertaining to lure you in with just “sex” then pour cold Eau Sauvage all over you with “gay”.

And never worry, if you don’t get the jokes I will explain them to you, which is probably why, around 1995, everyone stopped accepting my dinner invitations and started humoring me instead. So to all of you who responded with:

“We’d love to, but we’re so tied up getting ready for the millennium!”

may I just say, “Dudes? Like, soooo totally??!! Random???!!!

The older you get, the more you will experience being humored. To discover if this awful fate is yours, I suggest the following experiment:

Go ahead, tell your rapt listeners for the hundredth time how Beethoven wrote his greatest music while deaf, which is why deaf people love it;

or how much better rhubarb pie was before they put the strawberries in it,

or, if a genuine coup de théâtre rather than thigh-slapping humor is the order of the day, demonstrate how to rewind an unspooled cassette tape with an HB pencil.

Next, casually look away for a second, then quickly and unexpectedly look back at them. (You may want to remove your neck brace for this.)

Not pretty, is it? Their eyes will be spinning in their sockets like slot-machine fruit and, if you’re fortunate enough to have ruined the afternoon of more than one millennial— which I now just assume is anyone younger than me— they may very well be exchanging knowing looks, which in my case would translate to:

“He’s doing so well today, but if he puts up his hand and calls you ‘Miss Smedley’, dial 911.”

Today’s post is about the eternal push-pull of str8 male—gay male and what these two demographics can learn from each other.

KIDDING! Today is about the Paradox of Gay Male Desire … (“Learn from each other”! Man you shoulda seen the look on your face..!)

But first, a musical interlude. You can sing it yourself, I’m out of budget.

Follow Str8-Fellow Dick Road!

Follow Str8-Fellow Dick Road!
Follow, follow, follow, follow
Follow Str8-Fellow Dick Road!

If ever and ever a dick there was
A Str-8-Fellow Dick’s the one! Because?
Because because because because because!

Because of the wonderful things it does!

There! Wasn’t that refreshing? Now settle down.

It’s important to realize that gay men do things, sex-wise, that straight people have never, EVER, done, or even THOUGHT about.

That’s our “donnée”: Gay sex is weird and repugnant. OK? Hold that thought.

And in this era of equality and acceptance—where in Canada two guys can tie the knot, have group sex at the wedding breakfast and divorce before dinner; where in Nigeria they now cut you up into only 10 pieces with a machete instead of 12—weird and repugnant though it be, man to man ugly-bumping is now something we actually talk about.

Tabernac de bavardage! Whatever that means! And because straight people have never EVER done anything except lights-out, close-your-eyes, missionary position sex in a state of holy wedlock with the same person for all time, or even THOUGHT about anything else, this of course, now that we’re actually talking about repugnant gay sex, makes repugnant gay sex super enticing.

Let the logic of that sink in for a moment. OK, ready? Jeezus! We haven’t got all day, here!

Let us now add to this Kinsey smoothie some bitter, roasted nuts in the form of The Paradox of Gay Male Desire, admirably formulated on a napkin by Albert Einstein in 1972:

Paradox of Gay Male Desire, napkin formula created by Einstein while eating at “Fred’s Garage and Live Bait Also Now We Do Burgers!! Except Sundays!”. (Private Collection, Zurich).

(Where gg= happy gay guy with possible addition of one or more fuck buddies, divided by having to wear the bra, with panties optional, and minus the angry girlfriend, multiplied by a straight guy and an exponential number of dudes who just came to watch.)

Or, as Einstein put it in layman’s terms:

“Every gay guy wants sex with a straight guy – but if the straight guy has sex with you, he’s no longer straight! Just ask Alan Turing! Hey, anybody wanna Fresca?”

Now, it’s obvious that your average str8 dude, once he starts thinking about all the manmeat in his life, all that dick sloshing around in those boxer shorts or old worn-out Stanfields, and available at the office, at the golf course, at the gym or during confession, and then starts thinking about all the things he can do with it—I mean, those little monsters in our pants are unruly but at their best moments undeniably impressive—well, Murgatroyd, at that point it’s just a matter of time…

(… continue to » Part II )

ℵ

In Defence of Deviance

Toronto’s PRIDE 2017 celebrated diversity and inclusion. Yet some people—even some gay men—still think that’s a shame.

Men, men, men! Not a flicker of humor in a back room full of us! Forever shooting our wads, then rolling away from the damp spot and falling asleep; forever forgetting that ejaculation is for Christmas, but a snuggle is for life.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the Toronto Pride Parade, June 25, 2017. [From MSN.com]

I’ve come fresh from Pink News online, the British gay rag that’s the equivalent of Canada’s Xtra (but with better fashion and that string of pearls that you didn’t buy at Winners, but inherited from Great-Aunt Prunella) where the headline read—and you may want to sit down for this bit, lest you collapse onto your vitrine filled with Lalique crystal—

Men tell homophobic jokes because of their own fragile masculinity, study finds.

Well, slice me to ribbons under the Queen streetcar! That gem ranks as news right up there with “Sun Rises in East” and “Dog Bites Intruder, Then Pees on Carpet”.

Personally, I’m gobsmacked.

So imagine our surprise when a whole Ford F-150-full of fragile masculine egos came out to defend themselves against the “feminists” who designed and conducted the study.

madonna quote (Feminist in this context fulfills the same function as Nazi does elsewhere, describing as it does not an actual specimen of the genre but a scarecrow, only dressed up in dungarees and a tool belt instead of black leather and jackboots; and instead of translating as “someone I disapprove of on principle”, it reads, “women I’m extra scared of”.)
Take a gander, or maybe a gender, at this response:

The folks who are most threatened and defensive are the writers and editors at PN who relentlessly push effeminacy and gender deviance whilst denigrating traditional masculinity and manhood. It’s almost as if they know that they are failures as men and want to use sexual orientation as an excuse. But decades of studies have shown that effeminacy manifests only in a minority of gay and bi men. So sexual orientation is no excuse for their personal failure to function as men.

And here’s my response to that :

“

“Gender deviance”? Holy Krafft-Ebing,

where’s my laudanum? I may have an attack of the vapours!

Pride 2014 / Photo by David Roddis.

I did live in Britain for 16 years and I read Pink News all the time. But that was pre-Internet, so perhaps their relentless pushing of effeminacy was less effective; I’m pretty sure I have at least half a testicle lying around somewhere.

A man is a man is a man, to rewrite Gertrude Stein; if you got the right bits and feel comfortable with them, that’s all it takes. If you don’t feel comfortable with them, that’s called “gender dysphoria” according to the bible of psychiatric diagnosis, the DSM-5, and the word dysphoria in the new edition refers to the anxiety caused by SOCIETAL pressures and the prejudice coming from those who do not accept “deviance” – and what an extraordinarily, umm, nostalgic word choice, by the way.

Nostalgic, or bathetic to the point of laughter, conjuring up as it does the kind of sleazy soft porn novels my dad would have read in the ’50s: “They’re wild! They’re dangerous! They’re: DEVIANT DAUGHTERS!”

But back to your ridiculousness: Men learn how to be men; it’s not innate and it’s not written somewhere in a manual. We learn from fathers, mentors, leaders, heroes (and sometimes the wrong heroes: the most superficially impressive instead of the wisest).

The problem is evident: We men more often than not learn from walking, talking, blustering, posturing models of manhood who have mastered nothing but bravado. We think they’re the reference, but in fact they’ve had a few of the most important pages ripped out.

It’s as though we’re seated at a formal dinner and, at a loss, look to the distinguished older guy on our right; then, following his brave example, we mix our petits pois with the mashed potatoes, then shovel them in with the grapefruit spoon.

Not pretty.

To call a man a failure because he does not fulfill your checklist of “real manhood” tells us perhaps a bit more than you would have us know. That checklist is nothing other than plain old garden-variety homophobia — dressed up in its “Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells” best, maybe, but homophobia all the same.

Normal is the average of deviance — Rita Mae Brown

In fact, what you have angrily and perversely crossed off your list is exactly what a man needs: everything you label “effeminate”. But a tablespoon, or more, of “effeminacy” does a man good. Women, you might have noticed, have a refining effect on men; or perhaps their presence helps men lower their guard and discover their own sensitivity, intuition, esthetic sense, all those things we’re taught to push aside by other men who are afraid and unsure of themselves.

So, put a little more mascara on, sweetie. Slip into your silk peignoir and take a night off. I hereby relieve you of what must be a thankless, lonely burden: of being the self-appointed arbiter of what’s butch. Us real men will decide that for ourselves.

Real men are works in progress, and we haven’t explored even the first ten percent of what we might become.

”

HAPPY PRIDE ~

Dedicated to every drag queen in
plexiglass pumps who ever threw shade;

every Quentin Crisp who “didn’t know how to
be any other way”; and

to the little boy who chose the Kewpie Doll
as his prize at the fair—me.

Never change.

Pride 2014 / Photos by David Roddis

» Link to the Pink News article (opens in a new window)

“I Feel Like I’m Dressed Really Faggy Today” : A Meditation. ++PLUS++ The Reviews are in!

Director’s notes:

This video is, like, about that moment when you’re, like, walking downtown OK and then you suddenly go all wtf I’m dressed really faggy lol ! LMAO!!

And you want to go home and change but, like, you have no home and the world feels dangerous? Like WTF???!!!

©Male Camel Toe Productions, a wholly-owned subsidiary of slowpainful.com

Thank you for watching “I Feel Like I’m Dressed Really Faggy Today?!”~

I thought it would be a cool, kinda “groovy” thing if I updated this page with some of the reviews and stats for those of you who are, you know, independent film nerds and stat wonks.

So far, the other person who watched it besides me—

—btw, I am taking the unusual step of not including myself in the viewing stats, which marks a radical departure in my methodology, which to some of my more wonky, nerdy friends constituted inflating the stats artificially.

Oh gawd, saying words like “methodology” makes me break out in a thin film of greasy perspiration all over my upper body, and I get that red “map” thing on my chest. I look almost exactly like Julianne Moore in one of her raunchy scenes from “Boogie Nights” and yet I’m not even fair-skinned with red hair and freckles!

What was I saying?

Oh yeah, stats. Well the other person who watched said, “This is, like, totally RANDOM?????!”.

Her name was Katt and she was a kind of cool chick who wandered in with my str8 roommate and then wandered out again after a day or so.

So, up to now the critical consensus is “awesome!” (which is me) and “random” or “totally RANDOM?????!” [sic] from the chick. This could get, like, TENSE! LOL!

~

Now, and with a big, obvious sigh of relief, back to me.+PLUS+ My penis for President! +AND+ Shop slowpainfully.

Many of you have been clamoring for more information about me

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I mean it. LITTLE SMOOCHING NOISES. Read the EULA, bitch!

as well as a semi-nude, duo-toned selfie that shows off my dreamy eyes, but that you still wouldn’t be afraid to show your Great Aunt Lorna who used to do the trick with the ping-pong ball, professionally.

Well, no, actually that’s a blatant lie, no one has even remotely asked for anything like that. Or anything, to be honest.

Thanks for the “target audience”, Adwords! Like, way to steal my two bucks!

Anyhoo, here’s the dreamy-eyes pic – and please remember to make little smooching noises when you kiss the screen, per the End User Licensing Agreement – and the requisite “fun” facts about me so you can ignore the whole shebang at once.

I figure I can at least save you some time. You’re welcome!

“FUN” FACTS, SORT OF ABOUT ME :

From the many options currently available, I identify as “probably male but we’d have to check”. As we’re in saving-precious-time mode, I’ll assume.

Assuming “male” has at least the same, probably better, prediction value than, say:

knowing someone’s astrological sign;
a Facebook poll targeting only your fellow white supremacists, IF you remember to ask them; or
your empirical knowledge, built upon centuries of previous observations and confirmed by you over an entire lifetime, that the sun will unfailingly rise tomorrow—always assuming it’s not the evening before the Jupiter-sized asteroid.

Come to think of it, “male” tells you a heckuva lot, even when extrapolated to I, who never leave the house; even when considered agnostically as to gay or str8. So this way, I can do my confessional bit on the generalities, without actually revealing anything about ME that’s differentiating in the specifics.

Which is a whole lotta conniving and sweat of the brow for something that no one’s asked for. Seriously.

But hey. I’m a lapsed Buddhist, which means I take the same zen-like care with everything, lest I show attachment to one thing, which is apparently a bad thing.

For example, I labour day and night over this blog like five Prousts booty-bumping crystal and with the same zen-like care I would give an actual job that supported me well enough – OK, supported me at all – that I could resume opening my bank statements, Canada Revenue demands and those mysterious letters post-marked Manitoba without hiring someone from Craigslist Adult Entertainment to open them for me, sum up the content, then tie me up and verbally abuse me so I’m too distracted to continue crying.

It’s not exactly breathlessly original. I’m sure you’ve all done the same at some point!

So, assuming “male” and moving right along, here’s what you already know about me:

I’m Male, therefore:

I buy expensive electronics and fiddle with them until they break because I’m too retarded to read the manual.
~

I call women “bitch” if they try to do anything that doesn’t involve
1. being emotionally available and nurturing to me 24/7, or
2. a blender.
~

Although I’m too retarded to read the manual, I’m still an expert in whatever it was before I broke it. Be sure to pay me total attention while I pontificate, or I’ll become angry, then sulk.
~

This:

2017-05-07 11.56.31

Moving right along:

I’m impressed by anything as long as it’s excessive and gross—
if I’m straight she uses basketball hoops for a bra,
if I’m gay, he transports it in a wheelbarrow.
Either way, I’ll take a selfie with my bowel movement because it formed a question mark, and will probably not wait until after the main course to show you.
I also really like Mahler.
~

I fall asleep right after you bang me, especially if I know we both faked it.
~

Show emotion and I’ll use logic to explain why you can’t actually be feeling that. Don’t show emotion and I’ll fake-diagnose you as Asperger’s (male) or “cold bitch” (see above).
~

I apologize for telling you to “fuck off and die loser!!!” by waiting a week, then texting you “sup dude” at three A.M.
~

It’s only OK for me to cheat, not you, because “I’m faithful in my heart”. You, on the other hand, are just an evil tramp.
~

I can, and do, write my name in the snow. But not in cursive, which would be “faggy”.
~

By the way, as a male, my penis is more important than Pope Francis and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II combined then promoted to Customer Care Supervisor at Bell Canada. If I’m too long in the bathroom one morning, it’s just possible I’ve dressed it up in little coronation robes and a mitre and am halfway through the service for “Eucharist”.

In fact, come to think of it, I think my penis should be elected, by a clear, unequivocal vote of a minority of the eligible population, President of the United States.

You could do a lot worse. Ya know??!!

Come buy my wares!

Yes, I’ve opened a shop on Facebook. There’s only three products there as of today, but oh I think you might just like ’em.

This launches my brand AuntieMeme™. This is a clever portmanteau of “opposite of a meme” and “Auntie Mame”, which is both pretty fuckin’ gay and a fair bit of joke explaining, but I desperately want you to “get it”.

CONTEST UPDATE: Enter my contest, with still a week before closing, and, should you win, with all the attendant brouhaha, you’ll ADDITIONALLY receive one of the posters signed by yours truly. Now I ask you. Could there be a greater incentive. This is what former marketers such as myself call a “value add”. But you can’t enjoy a “value add” without a “contest enter.” OK?

Have a look by following this link, and please support my vast and far-reaching efforts to Give The Gift of Polite, Strained Laughter™.

Shop SlowPainful.com on Facebook.

A Slow, Painful Death Would Be Too Good For You (and other observations) *

* dyspepsia, served hot

LGBT

We have PAPERBACK! + REVIEW offer

Decay ‘n why: The SEX issue.