Category Archives: Gratuitous Nudity

21 Years of Navel Gazing

Way back in 2008 blogs were changing their dirty reputation into something that would crest and soon enough ebb as all social media tends to do over the long arc of time. For me, it was a little boost and boon of viewers and readers, but not something that I particularly cared about or sought out, as this site has never made me a dime. I’m here because I like to create and share and work out my own demons through whatever expression I find works best. 

This year is the 21st year of ALANILAGAN.com, so yay for me and everyone who has helped along the way (and there are many, as I still know little to nothing about programming or HTML or even if that’s used anymore). Last year we had our celebratory 20th anniversary, as seen in the following list of links that honored two decades in the navel-gazing/blogging business. Revisit them as you like on this snowy Sunday.

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#TinyThreads: An Insignificant Series

When you get soap bubbles in your ear and even the Q-tip doesn’t end the popping sound. 

Madness and nakedness – sounds about right for this season.

#TinyThreads

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Gratuitous Chris Meloni Post

Celebrating his birthday (#62 if you can imagine such fitness at such an age – I cannot, given my struggles at #47) Chris Meloni is a prime example of someone at their, well prime. This birthday-suited post from Matthew Rettenmund at BoyCulture reminded me of the sacred hotness of this date. Meloni has been featured here as Dazzler of the Day before, but it’s always nice to honor someone on their birthday. Check out his smoking-hot Peloton ad below where he works out in the nude because when you’re Chris Meloni you can work out naked and no one’s going to complain about anything. 

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Unhappy Ass Wednesday

My own ass is undergoing its own issues as I continue to expel the remnants of the nasty stomach flu that is going around and felling people right and left. To that end, a few other good men will have to step up and show off their assets for this special Ass Wednesday post

Let’s begin with a man whose very name is indicative of his talents: Stuart Reardon. He’s never been shy about turning the other cheek, and it’s only right that he should lead things off here. 

Orlando Bloom gives good peach (and some censored eggplant) in this previous post

Chris Salvatore has already dazzled us twice here and this butt-baring shot reveals why. 

Finally, Nicholas Hoult is tasked with bringing up the rear of this post, and as evidenced in this naked post here he is more than up for the task. Happy Ass Wednesday everybody!

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Sipped or Spilled, The Tea Here is Always Hot

Sometimes I sip it, sometimes I spill it, but regardless of its outcome, the tea here is piping hot. That’s because I put it in the kettle and don’t take it off the stove until it whistles, all sputtering steam and screaming from painful heat. This is the way you get to the truth of the matter, the way you force it all out. Putting oneself on exhibition and show in a public website is treacherous business at best, especially when everyone is so ready with an opinion or critique. Dragging friends and family and former lovers into the storyline is risky too, even if their influence and import in my life is unquestioned. When tea gets spilled, it can be an awful mess – but a glorious one, steeped equally in history and histrionics.

My journey here hasn’t been all pretty poses and posies, as evidenced from these photos taken about two decades ago, in which I had a goatee for God’s sake. Mistakes have been made. Stumbles have been taken. Failure has become an art form. But so has living – and in a way this blog is a living and breathing work of its own art – a new form of expression in the time of social media. Sometimes messy, sometimes too emotional and personal, and sometimes just an utter disaster, all the foibles and fumbles of life’s imperfect zig-zagging have formed the backbone of its two-decade trajectory.  Throughout it all, I’ve managed to document the days in regular fashion, treating this space as some sort of online diary, a repository of what has happened – the good, the bad, and the goatee-ugly

Tea time has been held on the regular, and for a number of years I posted at least once a day for 364-days each year (we always went dark on 9/11). That sort of consistency takes discipline and effort, but this has been a labor of love, something I’d do for two or two million hits. In the end, it was more of an exercise in journal-like analysis – a place where I could seek out refuge or solace in words, in putting things down just to get them out of my head. To that end, it has and continues to serve a purpose in my life. 

The beauty of it being a public place is that others have found something that resonates with them, and so my tea has become tea for at least two. Every once in a while I’ll hear from someone who wants to say hello and say that they too have felt what I expressed in a post or photograph. At those times, it feels like we have shared something, that we are not entirely alone. 

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Made You Look

If there’s a song that personifies what my website has been doing for almost an entire double-decade, this may be the one. Courtesy of the adorable Meghan Trainor (who doesn’t get enough credit for her song-crafting skills) give a listen to ‘Made You Look’ which is all about the bait-and-switch of the superficial versus the substance, and that battle has been gloriously waging here since we first went up way back in 2003. 

I could have my Gucci on
I could wear my Louis Vuitton
But even with nothin’ on
Bet, I made you look (I made you look)

Given that timeframe, this blog has been doing its thing since before Instagram, Twitter or FaceBook even existed. Those social media outlets took the work by storm, and I use my accounts mainly to drive visitors here, to these blog posts, and the daily writing and photographic rituals that have been cathartic artistic outlets. How to get noticed in an increasingly-fractured and splintered world, where content turns over within seconds, and the average lifespan of a website is under three years. The lifespan of a personal blog is probably much lower. Simply being here, almost twenty years now, is a feat in and of itself, and the recipe for my success is simply making this a labor of love and creative expression. That said, it’s always more fun when guests visit, and to make that happen I’ve employed a simple thirst-bait-and-switch formula, where provocative images draw the viewers in, and then the words, ideally, get them to stay for a bit

I’ll make you double take
Soon as I walk away
Call up your chiropractor
Just in case your neck break
Ooh, tell me what ya, what ya, what you gon’ do? Ooh
‘Cause I’m ’bout to make a scene
Double up that sunscreen
I’m ’bout to turn the heat up
Gonna make your glasses steam
Ooh, tell me what ya, what ya, what you gon’ do? Ooh

Sadly, I realize that ideal scenario is preciously rare; it’s a losing game trying to convince even my closest friends to stop by these parts. That used to bother me, before I understood how it drove my pathology and inspired me to create things that were worth reading, that would get even those weary and worn down by my antics to take a moment and check in. That was also the sort of guy for whom I fell, over and over: the one who wanted nothing to do with me. When the people who matter most to you don’t seem to notice anything you do, you learn to thrill the world, or you give up on it. For all my jaded cynicism, I haven’t given up on anything. 

When I do my walk, walk
I can guarantee your jaw will drop, drop
‘Cause they don’t make a lot of what I got, got
Ladies if you feel me, this your bop, bop
(Bop bop, bop)

And so, in my hoodie and underwear, and even less down below, I invite you to slow your scroll, stay for a spell, and visit some posts from the past month or so, such as this last letter I wrote to the first man who kissed me. Lately I’ve been revisiting some unresolved events in the past, as much as to make some fuller sense out of them as to burn them in honor and release. I’ve also been working on my meditation journey, something that has brought out a calming sense that has transformed some of this blog. There is still room for gratuitously shirtless posts, but the more exciting work is found elsewhere, such as in this post on sex and death. Other posts share other artists that inspire me. Or highlight a work of art that should inspire everyone. Or simply revel in the family I’ve learned to embrace and appreciate as we all get older, and the gift of a godson. Every once in a while I will write something that feels life-altering, and life-affirming, and despite all the ridiculous hubris I’ve littered throughout this website, it will cut through the sparkle.

I could have my Gucci on (Gucci on)
I could wear my Louis Vuitton
But even with nothin’ on
Bet, I made you look (I made you look)
Yeah, I look good in my Versace dress (take it off)
But I’m hotter when my morning hair’s a mess
But even with my hoodie on
Bet, I made you look (I made you look)
And once you get a taste (woo)
You’ll never be the same
This ain’t that ordinary
It’s that fourteen karat cake
Ooh, tell me, what ya, what ya, what you gon’ do? Ooh
When I do my walk, walk
I can guarantee your jaw will drop, drop
‘Cause they don’t make a lot of what I got, got
Ladies if you feel me, this your bop, bop
(Bop bop, bop) ohh

This little bop reminds me of a simpler time, back when the internet was a safer, softer, sillier place. It gives off a sense of superficial glam, only to reveal something sweeter and slightly more substantial – the hat trick of what has kept this blog going. A bit of a tease, a bit of a please, and a bit of the bee’s knees. Nothing too serious, unless you look beneath the surface. Most won’t bother making it this far, but for those who do, and those who continue to return, I’ll do my best to make it worth your while. If I happen to fail, which will sometimes occur, then I will play this song and try to remember the fun in life, the frivolity, and all the foolishness that once made the world go round. 

I could have my Gucci on (Gucci on)
I could wear my Louis Vuitton
But even with nothin’ on
Bet, I made you look (said, I made you look)
Yeah, I look good in my Versace dress (take it off, baby)
But I’m hotter when my morning hair’s a mess
But even with my hoodie on
Bet, I made you look (said, I made you look)
…Even with nothing on, bet I made you look…
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A Lust for Naked Life

For my final act this summer, I give you this magical case of the disappearing suit, because this fall I am metaphorically burning all my past trappings to ash. That begins with the onerous albatross of forty-plus years of fashion and sartorial splendor coming off, an exercise in revelation that has been one of the greatest lessons I’ve tried to glean through this blog for the last two decades. Taking it all off here has never been about gratuitous nudity, all category names to the contrary; it’s easier to be physically naked than emotionally so, but this summer we let go of all inhibition – something that could only happen at this mid-stage of life.

Climb up the ‘H’ of the Hollywood sign, yeah

In these stolen moments

The world is mine 

There’s nobody here, just us together

Keepin’ me hot like July forever

‘Cause we’re the masters of our own fate

We’re the captains of our own souls

There’s no way for us to come away

‘Cause boy we’re gold, boy we’re gold

And I was like…

Take off, take off

Take off all your clothes

Take off, take off

Take off all your clothes

Take off, take off

Take off all of your clothes

When I was a kid, I’d have no problem running through the neighborhood in my underwear, and even came off a brutal pantsing relatively unscathed. Once our teenage years hit, and adolescence and puberty piled shame upon shame for nudity and nakedness, I was supremely self-conscious, not even wanting to doff my shirt for a summer swim. It was the descent of societal propriety, ending the God-given freedom of the natural state of being nude and putting in its place the buttoned-up armor of my ultimate mask: a wardrobe. That ‘robe’ and ‘war’ should play such pivotal parts in the mixed-up way I was pursuing my path in the world seems oddly fitting now, even if it never really fit me then. 

They say only the good die young

That just ain’t right

‘Cause we’re having too much fun

Too much fun tonight, yeah

And a lust for life, and a lust for life

And a lust for life, and a lust for life

Keeps us alive, keeps us alive

Keeps us alive, keeps us alive

Through the ensuing years, my wardrobe took many varied forms, and eventually skin itself would provide just another guise, another layer of armor. Sometimes it would prove the most potent outfit of all. Nothing set more tongues wagging than a peek at what was underneath. It became a study of human nature, and a treatise on what a gay male could get away with – the power balance, the disconnect between reality and perception, the crux of supreme insecurity and almighty confidence. It was more than a battle within myself – it was setting up to be a lifelong war. Only now, as I begin to look back at the totality of the past forty or so years, in the way that middle age and the slow acquisition of a modicum of wisdom reveal such things, can I see faint glimmers of the long arc of these travels – and the journey I’ve been taking in front of the whole world, at least the little bit of the world that decides to visit me here. We cannot truly know where we are going until we figure out where we have been. 

Then, we dance on the ‘H’ of the Hollywood sign, yeah

‘Til we run out of breath, gotta dance ’til we die

My boyfriend’s back

And he’s cooler than ever 

There’s no more night, blue skies forever

‘Cause we’re the masters of our own fate

We’re the captains of our own souls

So there’s no need for us to hesitate

We’re all alone, let’s take control

At the closing curtain of this wondrous summer, I’m doing a reverse Gypsy Rose Lee act. Taking the damage off and leaving it behind. Letting it burn. As F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.” We hang onto things for too long, storing up our hurt and heartache, waiting to wield them in some other form, to make us feel better in some harmful way, when really we should be letting it all go. That’s a frightening concept to embrace. Old habits become sources of comfort, and no one wants to be uncomfortable. But even the brightest of summers must come to a close, and the fiery opening of fall must begin…

And I was like

Take off, take off

Take off all your clothes

Take off, take off

Take off all your clothes

Take off, take off

Take off all of your clothes

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Naked in the Garden

According to Wiki-freaking-pedia, today is World Naked Gardening Day, which is hilariously described as “an annual international event generally celebrated on the first Saturday of May by gardeners and non-gardeners alike.” As a gardener, I’m all for celebrating gardening events, though I will say that gardening while naked is foolish at best, and quite dangerous at worst. But as the past has proven, it’s not that perilous to take a few photos pretending, and this is the sort of harmless quasi-holiday that deserves more celebration. Particularly in a time when staying home is the new going out. 

 

 

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Mindfulness Amid the Mundane

The post-shower towel shot serves several purposes. First and foremost is the clickbait aspect that typically gains more viewers when anyone takes their clothes off. Second, there is the bait and switch aspect for which this site should be better known. A post fronted by gratuitous nudity that ends up being about meditation and mindfulness is one of those twists that keep me interested in this nineteen-year-old website. Third, taking a shower is a mundane everyday moment that is ripe for mindfulness, so these photos go along with that idea, and give me a chance to expound upon a beginning practice in meditation and mindfulness, which some friends and family have asked about. 

I’ve been making my way through Matthew Sockolov’s ‘Practicing Mindfulness’ book, a collection of ’75 Essential Meditations to Reduce Stress, Improve Mental Health, and Find Peace in the Everyday.’ The most recent meditation I tried is ideal for anyone looking to begin a meditation practice, and I wish I’d happened upon it sooner in my journey. It’s about resting the mind, which seems to be the most difficult part of meditation for almost everyone I’ve talked to about this.

Sockolov recommends this easy ten-minute practice as a way to calm the thoughts that invariably creep into our heads as soon as we stop moving and sit still. In today’s world where information and distractions are thrown at us non-stop from the moment we wake to the moment we fall asleep with our phones in our hands, still mindlessly scrolling like automatons, this is especially challenging to do. We are conditioned to be in a state of constant stimulation, and that is wreaking havoc on multiple levels. The best and easiest way to break this cycle, and the addiction of the phone, is to step away from it, and insist on carving out time and space for simply sitting still in silence. Not the most comfortable place for anyone to be anymore, but if you give it a chance you may find the rest of your life begins to calm down too. It worked for me. 

Begin by finding the time and place to do this. If you are one who worries about time (like my Virgo self), set a phone alarm for five or ten minutes so you’re not constantly looking at the minutes passing by. Find a quiet place of solitude, even if it’s just a bathroom to escape. Ideally you have somewhere better to go where you can be comfortable. The practice is to sit or lie down and begin deep breathing. One slow breath in and one slow breath out. Then again. And again. 

Once you are doing this, you will find a number of thoughts start creeping into your head. What you are making for dinner, what time you need to pick the kids up from practice, what you need to get from the store, what outfit to wear for next weekend’s get-together, who you need to call back, who you don’t want to text back – a myriad of life’s nonsense will suddenly impede on this moment, and that’s ok. Allow the thoughts to come, acknowledge them, and let them pass by. Eventually they will stop. If they don’t, it’s good to find something else to focus on to maintain the quiet posture. Sockolov advises on holding a couple of phrases in your head: 

May my mind be at ease.

May I be at ease with my mind.

On each slow inhale, you can focus on the mantra ‘May my mind be at ease’ and on each slow exhale repeat it again ‘May my mind be at ease.’ On the next inhale think of the next one ‘May I be at ease with my mind’ and doing the same on the exhale. It provides a basic framework and focus that may help in pushing other thoughts from the mind, and achieving that divine blank space in your head is the purpose here. When worrisome thoughts are eradicated, it’s difficult to worry. This magic is something I wish I had discovered earlier, because it bleeds into the rest of life. 

If you can manage five to ten minutes of this each day, you will find it easy to increase by a minute or two until you’re getting in a good fifteen to twenty minutes of meditation, and that’s when things get even better. It allows you to be more fully present, and leads into the practice of mindfulness, inhabiting the most mundane moments of the day, such as a simple shower, or the act of getting dressed. These things are typically rushed and blown through without thought, other than worrying about what comes next. By being present to the task at hand, you may find a joy in the process itself, and focusing on each step of a task is another way of pushing worrisome thoughts from your headspace. 

{Naked selfies not required in a shower situation; I’m only here to illustrate and illuminate.}

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Feast of the Ass Day

Listen, I didn’t make this up. It’s Feast of the Ass Day, some religious commemoration that takes place on January 14, to mark donkey shit or something – not literal shit, I mean that as donkey stuff. It’s religious, I swear. See here. At one point the Catholic Church condemned the celebration, so I’m all for it. Feast on, my assified friends! 

In these parts, and on this website, Feast of the Ass means something wholly different. I won’t get into specifics, but you get my drift, you get my notion, you get my causing a commotion. At such a time, and in such a world, let us celebrate the Feast of the Ass in our own special way, delighting in its pagan leanings, finding joy in its absurd silliness, and remembering how nonsensical humans have always been. We can try to make order and sense out of things by playing with religion, but in the end we’re all just a little bit mad, and I’m so happy it should be so. 

In that spirit, sass out with your ass out!

(Also, these photos are from decades ago, which is when I really should have been celebrating Feast of the Ass Day. Better late than pregnant.)

 

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Day-Glo Words on a Day of Worship

As someone who loves writing, I usually like to tell a story or ten behind the photos I post here. On this day, I’m going to let other more capable artists tell hints of what inspired these pictures, while letting the pictures speak for themselves, no matter what they might say. 

“A funny person is funny only for so long, but a wit can sit down and go on being spellbinding forever. One is not meant to laugh. One stays quiet and marvels. Spontaneously witty talk is without question the most fascinating entertainment there is.” ~ Diana Vreeland

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” ~ Oscar Wilde

“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death–ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.” ~ James Baldwin

“I just feel like we as a human race tend to fear that which we don’t understand. It’s cause for a lot of bad things and bad behavior to exist on the planet. Artists have a way of touching people and changing minds in a way that sometimes other mediums don’t.” ~ Billy Porter

“The letter, written in absorbed solitude, is an act of faith: it assumes the presence of humanity: world and self are generated from within: loneliness is courted, not feared. To write a letter is to be alone with my thoughts in the conjured presence of another person. I keep myself imaginative company. I occupy the empty room.” ~ Vivian Gornick

“History isn’t something you look back at and say it was inevitable, it happens because people make decisions that are sometimes very impulsive and of the moment, but those moments are cumulative realities.” ~ Marsha P. Johnson

“Some people are born in the mountains, while others are born by the sea. Some people are happy to live in the place they were born, while others must make a journey to reach the climate in which they can flourish and grow. Between the ocean and the mountains is a wild forest. That is where I want to make my home.” ~ Maia Kobabe

Strike a pose. There’s nothing to it.” ~ Madonna

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Tell Me You’re Naked Without TELLING Me You’re Naked

This is admittedly a bit of a click-bait-and-switch post, because some people only enter here with the titillating possibility of gratuitous nudity. There is never judgment about such intentions – a click is a click is a click – and clicks actually don’t mean anything on this profit-free non-monetized website. Yet as I approach the latter half of my forties (well, not so much approach as exist within it) I find the desire to share some practices that make life better the older I get, and one of the main ones is deliberately making the effort to maintain a degree of mindfulness at all times. 

We rush and we work and we go through the motions of any given weekday with the express intent of simply getting through it, getting on with it, getting it out of the way so we can enjoy the weekend – and then we never quite make of it what we wanted to make of it. Even those weekends that do turn into something magical and memorable, are quickly forgotten within the first few moments of Monday morning mayhem, erased instantly as if they never even happened at all. How do we capture that and make Monday more like Sunday, and Tuesday more like Saturday? For me it’s in finding the little joys of mindfulness, and taking breaks and pauses to reconnect to the peace and silence that meditation can conjure. 

Does that mean stopping your work day and heading to the nearest spa for an extended massage on your lunch hour? No – though I wish. That’s not really practical or possible for most of us. But can we pause in our day to do some deep breathing, to get away from the desk and take a walk, to simply stand up and step outside for a moment to find whatever joy is at hand and in the air? Absolutely. It’s about being mindful and slowing down the racing thoughts that too often occupy our mind when we could and should be focused on being as present as possible. 

It begins with the very start of the day, in the otherwise-mundane motions of a shower. After 46 years, I’ve pretty much mastered the seven-minute shower, and for most of those years it always felt like a race – against the clock and against the cacophony of thoughts running through my head as the day began. In what should have been a peaceful and calm entry into the day was usually a rushed and jumbled mental marathon that left me spent by the time I turned the water off and started toweling off. The shower was efficient and effective in getting me cleaned and waking me up, yet it did little to set my mind at ease.

When I started reading up on mindfulness, the morning shower seemed the most basic place to begin. I slowed down my thoughts by focusing only on the present moment – the water, the heat, the soap, the scent – and all of the sensual aspects of a shower were enough to quell the bustling freight train of worries that would usually be barreling through my head. If done with enough concentration, it worked quite well, and eventually the concentration required became more habit than concerted effort, which is when mindfulness really takes off and starts bleeding helpfully into other areas of life. 

It doesn’t happen with every shower. Some days you just have to get in and out to make it into the office on time, and you have to tick through the duties of the day just so you won’t forget something. But for the most part, my mornings are more peaceful, and the rest of the day more energized, when I practice such mindfulness

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A Peek at David Beckham’s Naked Butt

We have Victoria Beckham to thank for yet another moment of magnificence, as she posted this cheeky pic of her husband David Beckham showing a peek of his naked ass. Beckham’s booty has been celebrated wide and far, and in posts like this and this and this. He’s also been a favorite here as evidenced by this linky-licious post exhibiting his various attributes. This is the closest we’ve come to a true David Beckham nude posterior, so gratitude must be given to Victoria

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The Birthday Suit Post: My Ass Hangin’ Out

“If you thought that I was ratchet with my ass hangin’ out, just wait until the summer when they let me out the house, bitch!” ~ Lizzo

It’s never too late to find a proper summer song, and while I decreed this glorious piece of pop by Mika as the summer song for our poolside escapades, and this classic ballad to open and close the season, it is ‘Rumors’ by Lizzo and Cardi B that now occupies the premiere summer bop position for these later August days. It is precisely the type of cheeky jolt we needed, and the perfect premise for posing with cheeky abandon. It is, after all, my birthday – and this is my birthday suit

THEY DON’T KNOW I DO IT FOR THE CULTURE, GODDAMN
THEY SAY I SHOULD WATCH THE SHIT I POST, OH GODDAMN
SAY I’M TURNING BIG GIRLS INTO HOES, OH GODDAMN
THEY SAY I GET GROUPIES AT MY SHOWS, OH GODDAMN

As I quickly approach whatever unplanned birthday shenanigans may come to pass, it seems only fitting to celebrate in my birthday suit, which I’ve largely neglected to do in recent months just because it’s been done to death. The categories for ‘Male Nudity’ and ‘Gratuitous Male Nudity’ come with a long list of accompanying posts and links – proof that an examination of the physical body in all its unadorned fashion has proven as ubiquitous as flowers or Madonna in these parts. During the last couple of years, however, my interests have careened to other places and poses, changing the overall arc of this site, but every now and then a song calls for some sort of exhibitionist celebration, and rather than retreat into the shyness that social isolation has only emboldened, I’m challenging my online self to return to the glory that once provided so much clickbait.

SPENDING ALL YOUR TIME TRYNA BREAK A WOMAN DOWN
REALER SHIT IS GOIN’ ON BABY, TAKE A LOOK AROUND
IF YOU THAT THAT I WAS RATCHET WITH MY ASS HANGIN’ OUT
JUST WAIT UNTIL THE SUMMER WHEN THEY LET ME OUT THE HOUSE, BITCH

The last couple of years have seen the aforementioned turn for this blog, something that can only be appreciated and understood more fully and accurately with the benefits of hindsight and time. The way a person changes and evolves, the shifts and gradual gradations of movement a person makes – these are slow and incremental, often going unnoticed on a day-to-day level, and only more fully fathomed when months and years begin to pass and a bigger picture is revealed. This is one of those moments when I see how many corners this site has rounded, how vastly different it is from just a few years ago. The good thing is that I’m generally happier with the way things are, more fully confident and genuinely secure in the person I’ve become. It’s not something that can be completely taught, and it’s not something that can be accomplished with the help of anyone else. The essential nature of such growth is based on an autonomy of existence – from there, and only from there, can one invite anyone else into their world.

(TALKIN’, TALKIN’, TALKIN)
GIVE ‘EM SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT
SICK OF RUMORS, BUT HATERS DO WHAT THEY DO
HATERS DO WHAT THEY DO

Meanwhile, people are left to conjecture and whisper, sit and spin, and the rumors and the water will swirl about, encircling and clouding the proceedings if one lets all that stuff become anything more than what they are. My teenage self consistently reveled in the rumors – both in starting and being the topic of them – more often than not at any expense. Anything to enliven the doldrums of an adolescence in Amsterdam, New York. Anything to brighten up a summer. If I had to be the subject to add some drama to the stultifying non-events of our upstate New York world, so be it. “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” You know the routine. Was it right or wrong? I don’t think it’s possible to say. The answers to all of life’s questions are rarely so clear-cut. Sometimes the mere rearing of a question is an end unto itself, the very symbol of a question mark a curvy symbol of nothing more or nothing less than possibility.

ALL THE RUMORS ARE TRUE, YEAH
FAKE ASS, FAKE BOOBS, YEAH
Y’ALL BE RUNNIN’ WITH FAKE NEWS, YEAH
CARDI AIN’T POPPIN’, NO, THAT’S A MACHINE (HUH?)
NOBODY LISTEN, THEY BUYIN’ THEM STREAMS
THEY EVEN POST IT ON BLOGS OVERSEAS
AND LIE IN A LANGUAGE I CAN’T EVEN READ
THE FUCK DO THIS MEAN?

Doffing clothing and diving into the warm water of a pool is about as innocent and scandalous as summer gets these days. So much of hype and hoopla and controversy lives solely in the heads and minds of those of us with nothing better to do. I’ve jumped into that wet and messy quagmire, and for quite some time got quite a bit of enjoyment and entertainment out of it. Now I’m just looking for something closer to peace.

But before we go all ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ here, there’s still room for some butt-baring, ass-shaking, booty-bombing extra-ness, the kind of show that once dominated this silly site in ways that now feel more quaint and innocuous than they ever did before. Perhaps the rest of the world finally caught up with my antics, degrading its prim and proper stance and sullying itself in the sort of primal urges that supposedly made sex and nudity such dirty concepts in the first place.

LOOK, I’M A BRONX BITCH WITH SOME POP HITS
USED TO POP OFF WHEN THEY POP SHIT
BUT I’M CALMED DOWN AND I’M LOCKED IN
AND MY RECORDS LIVE IN THE TOP TEN
LIZZO, TEACH ME ABOUT BIG GIRL COOCHIE
LAST TIME I GOT FREAKY THE FCC SUED ME
BUT I’MA KEEP DOIN’ WHAT I WANNA DO
‘CAUSE ALL RUMORS ARE TRUE, YEAH

And so, we celebrate the body in all its wondrous forms and manifestations. We celebrate creativity and self-expression in all of their messy and mistake-laden turns. We celebrate the love and the kindness and the fun that make living in this world halfway bearable. Far too often, I’ve lost sight of that, allowing myself to be pulled down into the whirlpools of self-doubt and nagging insecurity, into the dim hollowed-out places where the echoes of vicious whispers are given life only through my own imaginings. We are our own worst enemies, when there are real ones enough out there, ready to believe the worst they can conjure about you – especially when it’s never really about you in the first place. I fell prey to such projection in the past, but no more.

On the verge of another birthday – my 46th if you can wrap your head around such a round juicy number – I slip into my birthday suit, dive into the water, make a splash, and laugh hysterically when I break the surface.

WHY YOU SPENDING ALL YOUR TIME TRYNA BREAK A WOMAN DOWN
REALER SHIT IS GOIN’ ON BABY, TAKE A LOOK AROUND
IF YOU THAT THAT I WAS RATCHET WITH MY ASS HANGIN’ OUT
JUST WAIT UNTIL THE SUMMER WHEN THEY LET ME OUT THE HOUSE, BITCH

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Summer Like Childhood

“Those bitter sorrows of childhood!– when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.” ~ George Eliot

Summer is like childhood in so many ways. It holds its innocence ever so briefly, cashing in on its wonder before it realizes its worth. It is temperamental yet resilient, stalwart yet delicate. It can begin and end in fiery fashion, or enter and leave in peaceful calm; every childhood is different, every summer is different. And always – always – it is gone too soon. 

It feels like we’ve already said goodbye to this summer. Maybe we never really finished the mourning of spring. In truth, it almost seems like I’ve been in mourning since last autumn, when things had to fall completely apart before rebuilding into something better. It was a lot of work, and it remains a lot of work, but it is work I have grown to love – work I’ve always loved but never quite realized as love. “It gives me purpose, gives me voice… to say to the world… this is why I live…”

And so our summer draws to its close. It’s something we will never get back, no matter how much I attempt to pin it down here, no matter how many words I put together to keep it intact. Summer, in its everlasting elusiveness, slips away unscathed, while we are left with the scars and the sunburn, and even they will fade until we no longer remember what it was like to swim in the night and not feel a chill. 

“I think it is unnatural to think that there is such a thing as a blue-sky, white-clouded happy childhood for anybody. Childhood is a very, very tricky business of surviving it. Because if one thing goes wrong or anything goes wrong, and usually something goes wrong, then you are compromised as a human being. You’re going to trip over that for a good part of your life.” ~ Maurice Sendak

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