Date: Fri, 4 Dec 2020 19:39:48 +0000
From: John The Artist <johntheartist@hotmail.com>
Subject: C'est La Vie Chapter 1

This is the fictional memoir of a gay man, told in the first person. Some
of the stories in this series are based on actual experiences, usually
embellished a lot, as well as completely fictional ones. They depict sex
between consenting adult males. If this offends you, do not read them.
These are my stories. Please respect the copyright. If you enjoy them, let
me know at johntheartist@hotmail.com.

Please Contribute to Nifty.org and keep this wonderful resource going!

In this chapter, the narrator explains how he decided to write about his
gay sex life, starting at the beginning. The real sex starts in the
chapters that follow. But do read this. The background will help if you
find you like the series and decide to keep going.

C'est La Vie!: Introduction

      This is the first installment in a sexual memoir of a gay man over a
period of forty plus years. It is my story.

      I remember, way back in college, reading a couple of books (not
gayÑsuch stuff was not readily available in the Midwest at the time)
that chronicled the sexual exploits of the "writers": Fanny Hill, by John
Cleland, the story of a woman of pleasure in 18th century England, and a
tale that was at once titillating (for those of a hetero persuasion)
andÑin the endÑmoralistic. The other was My Secret Life by Walter,
the supposed sex diary of a Victorian gentleman who had many sexual
encounters, mainly with women of a class below his.

      I thought back then that it would be great for us gay men to have a
similar account that would reflect our experiences and fantasies. I read a
lot of gay sex stories in the gay magazines of the time. I enjoyed reading
them and getting off on them because, unlike watching porn, they left most
things to my imagination. I could picture the guys just as I liked them,
and I could fill in the details with my own mind.  But I regretted that
they were mostly just "one-offs," stories about individual experiences,
without the context of a longer time, or developing the sexual persona of
one guy. I decided to remedy that at some point. I realized that I had had
some great experiences, and could write them up, maybe embellishing them to
make them even more erotic, to create such a book, but I needed more
experiences, and as the years went on, there always seemed to be more to
come, and I put it off until now. A couple of years ago, I said to myself
"Now or never" and started on the project, and while writing, relived in my
mind some of my encounters with other men, trying to put into words the
feelings I remembered having at the time. I hope that you, my reader, will
think that I have been successful.

      So what follows is a chronicle of my experiences since the time that
I began to have sex with other men, at age twenty, until now, when I am in
my middle 50s. By and large it has been a great experience and I wouldn't
trade it for another.

      You might ask "How could he possibly remember so many sexual
experiences?" Fair question.

      Number one, I have a good memory, both for visual details and
non-visual events (I am an artist, as you will see when your read this, and
most artists develop a good visual memory and a memory of feelings and how
to express them: it's their stock-in-trade). Number two, I have kept a
journal since I was a teenager, and many of the events that I list were
recorded there soon after they happened, while I still had a clear memory
of conversations and physical details. My journal has allowed me to
reconnect with each experience and reconstruct them.  It was fun, for the
first time in years, to go back and relive much of my life through my
journals, and to pick the events that I would put in this book.

      Since this is a memoir of my sex life, you might suppose that I have
spent all these years just having sex, and you will note that the stories
have particular years in their titles. Every year had many memorable
experiences, but some stood out more than others, and those are the ones
that I have chosen for this chronicle.

      Fortunately, I have done a lot of other things besides having sex,
including going to college and graduate school, forging a productive career
as an artist, having exhibitions and dealing with galleries, buying and
renovating a loft, in Philly, building and living in a summer house and
studio in Maine, having lots of non-sexual friendships with other gay men,
women, straight individuals and couples, enjoying other recreations such as
bicycling, skiing and hiking, traveling, and generally having a regular,
productive life with lots of professional contacts and regular friends.

      However, as with many gay men, sex has always been a major recreation
to me, just like a lot of people like to watch TV, or play golf, or go
bowling. I never had any "moral" or religious hang-ups about having sex
with menÑand lots of them. As long as it was consensual and we were both
enjoying it and not hurting each other, what could be the harm? Some folks
might call me promiscuous, which certainly has a puritanical ring. The same
people would probably not call someone who watches six hours of TV a day a
promiscuous TV watcher, but if that is how they want to judge me, so be
it. I always believed that God could not make such a fulfilling experience
that was so pleasurable if you were not supposed to do it. Rather, I felt
that celebrating the miracle of sex was something that He would want us to
do.

      Since I began having sex with other men in 1978, when I was 20 (a
late starter!), I have slept with 2324 different men, according to my
journal. That averages out to about 122+ men per year. Since my sex life
has included boyfriends and other repeat encounters, as well as nights at
the baths when I had sex with as many as 15 or 20 men, I actually have had
sex many, many more times than that over the years. Even three times a week
comes out to more than 150 in a year, not all that preposterous for a
healthy, sexually active gay guy. Think about it: you hook up with a hot
guy and end up spending the night. Three times in one night is not
anybody's record. Three times a weekÑwhich accounts for "dry" periods
tooÑfor 40 years comes more than 6000 individual sexual encounters.

      That may seem like a lot, but it is not all that it appears to
be. For example, after I first discovered sex with men in college, I tried
to make up for a late start and probably was making it with over well over
200 men per year. Then there were years that I had a steady lover. While we
were never monogamous, during those years the average went down a lot. Then
there was the yearÑ1998Ñwhen I turned 40 and was taking a sabbatical
from my studio while thinking about a new direction for my art. I decided
to celebrate the anniversary and have a lot of fun and hatched a project to
have sex with 1000 men in a yearÑwhich took some strategizing and
planning! That project takes up more than will fit in this book though and
I am busy writing it up in another.

      I was like many other gay guys after they discovered the wonderful
world of other men: cruising for sex, and generally enjoying the
result. When you read this memoir, you might think that all my encounters
were hot and rewarding. Not true. You meet all kinds of men on this
journey, and some of them are jerks, or boring, or into things that you are
not into: whatever. My experiences have run the gamut, like those of most
other gay guys. I have simply recorded those experiences that stand out in
some way in my mind, either because they were my first time with an
experience or exceptional in some other way. Clearly, I could not record
the experiences with all 2324 guys. The book would be interminable, and
most of the commentary would be tiresomely repetitive.

      There were periods in my life when I was committed to another man for
a long time (until I turned 56, the longest was nearly two years, broken
up, sadly, only by irreconcilable differences in our professional lives). I
have always wanted a life partner, but not until my mid-50s did I find
one. I envy my friends who have earlier in life, but also look at their
lives and realize that in many ways their lives are simpler: regular
professions that have regular hours and regular expectations. Being an
artist is really difficult in itself, and is not always compatibleÑin my
experienceÑwith a regular, routine existence that makes a long-term
commitment easy.

      Also, as I said, I have never been strictly monogamous. When I have
had long-term boyfriends, we have always enjoyed sex with other men, either
in a "don't ask, don't tell" mode, or because we have agreed on enjoying
other men together, in three-ways, four-ways, at sex parties or the
baths. I believe that most men, homosexual or heterosexual, are
biologically built to spread their seed the farthest possible. My view has
been to accept it, not fight it, and it has led to some friction with some
of my friends and partners. However, I have concluded that I am who I am,
and that is that.

      My sexual style has been pretty "vanilla" I must admit. In reading
the accounts that follow, there is not a lot of kink. That is not because I
have not experienced it but because my tastes don't run in those directions
so much. I have tried almost everything, from B & D to light S & M, to
water sports, to fisting, nearly everything at least once. I never really
got off on these things, or on domination, humiliation, power scenes and
the like. Porn videos with a prison theme never really turned me on. I'm
not into leather, though I have had some memorable experiences with guys
who are. I'm not into toys that much either, though I have had some great
fun with dildos and other toys from time to time, when there was a hot guy
in the picture too. No, my favorite scenes were just making passionate love
to another guy and the hotter the better.

      What about safe sex? By chance, I started practicing safe sex not
long after I started this life-style. Shortly after I discovered anal sex,
I came down with a painful urethral infection, the result of the
bacteria-laden environment of another man's ass. Fortunately, I had found a
gay-friendly physician (he was gay himself) and at his suggestion I started
wearing condoms, and asked my partners to wear condoms when I was getting
fucked. A few years later, the AIDS scourge hit, and I was grateful that I
had been doing that. For a while, I even sucked and got sucked with a
condom, until scientists showed that there was little or no HIV
transmission from doing that. Nevertheless, I have been cautious about
eating cum, and generally like to know the guys I am doing that with a
while before partaking of their generous donation. I did contract syphilis
once having sex in a darkened room at the baths. It was quickly taken care
of with a penicillin shot, but since then, I have been scrupulous about
inspecting the cocks of guys that I had sex with.

      What's hot? As I have gotten older, there are more encounters that
are hot. A few years ago, I never would have been attracted to older or
overweight guys. But I am advancing in years. At 40, as part of my 1000 Man
Project, I worked hard at the gym to develop a killer body, and that really
helped to make that a successful project.  As I moved toward 50, I started
graying, and found that keeping those washboard abs was harder and
harder. I'm in good shape, but I would be deluding myself if I thought I
could always look like a hot 30-something guy.

      So, I am finding, as I am no longer the hot catch that I think I was
when I was younger and, by necessity, I need to enlarge the field a bit and
now realize that a lot of those older guys have had a lot of practice and
really know how to make another man feel good. However, when you read my
first chapter, John Sill, you will see that I have pretty much the same
tastes and fantasies as a lot of other gay men. We almost all like trim,
muscular guys who are young and energetic, and with a big cock if
possible. That is why Falcon and Cocky Boys videos are so popular. I have
been lucky to have good genes, and well past 50, my body is like that of
someone closer to 40. The cult of youth is alive and well in the gay
world. I have not been above hiring an escort when I want one and don't
want the complication of cruisingÑonline or at a bar. No complaints
though; there are always alternatives, as you will see when you read this,
and I am getting to appreciate guys outside of the "gay-fantasy" norm. I
regret that I waited so long to do this.

      This narrative has two purposes: (1) to present the sex-life memoir
of a gay guy; and (2), to give you, the reader, something that you will
find stimulating and hopefully get off on. I don't have stories of jerking
off here, but I have certainly done my share over the years. I did not
record in my journal all the times that I jerked off or came, but cumming
at least of once a day and sometimes more since I was about thirteen is
probably about right. Is that average, more than average, less than
average? Who knows?

      All I know is that sex is wonderful, and for me, sex with another hot
guy is the best!

      Enjoy reading about my journey. I hope you find it as hot as I did
recalling the events and putting them to paper.