This is the fictional memoir of a gay man, told in the first person. The memoir began with the series C'est La Vie!, which covers the years 1970-1997. This series covers the year the narrator turns 40, 1998, and launches an ambitious project to have sex with 1000 men that year. 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!
This first chapter sets up the scenario for the following chapters. Yes, there's no hot sex in this chapter, but there will be plenty from now on and it's worth reading this one for the context of what follows. Enjoy!
1000 Men: 1998 A PROJECT IS BORN
Summer 1997. I'd turned 39 in April.
I am an artist, and I was spending the summer at my little cottage and studio in Maine, trying to work. It had been a good year for me, but exhaustingly busy. I had just finished mounting a museum exhibit of my last ten year's work at a small but respected Midwestern museum. Over the next year and a half, it would travel to several other cities, including San Francisco and Atlanta. It had been organized by my gallery in Chicago and my dealer there was a major advocate for my work, playing a big role in building my career as an artist. She was promoting me very successfully, and, as a result, I now also had galleries in New York and Philadelphia who were selling nearly everything that I could give them. In short, I was doing very well and riding at the top of my form.
On the other hand, I was really sensing that I needed a major change in artistic direction. It was like the museum show defined the end of one period and I needed to start another. The problem was that--judging from past experience--I just had to let myself ruminate until the next big thing happened. I have never been successful at making changes happen; they just seem to have a life of their own.
So here I was in Maine, not really feeling like painting, and too restless to really enjoy the sweet Maine summer and my friends there. I needed a distraction.
One day I was talking to a fellow artist who was planning for the millennium. He planned a project to do 2000 paintings in 2000. Bingo! Suddenly I had my project: to have sex with 1000 men in 1998, the year that I would turn 40.
In a gay man's life, 40 seemed to me to be a milestone, where you cross over into something that seems suspiciously like middle age, a nasty word in the gay world. I'd been having sex with men since I was twenty--yeah, I was a bit of a late starter--my body was in good shape, my hormones were also still plentiful, if not the crazed brew they were when I was twenty, and I figured that I had enough maturity, and good enough looks to attract a variety of guys and enjoy the encounters without a lot of heavy emotional baggage.
And, I thought, if a guy comes along in this who I really want to commit to, there is no reason that I can't abandon the project. Let's keep our priorities straight, right?
But what would sex with 1000 guys really mean, and how would I do it? I mean, that meant having sex with an average of a little more than 20 guys per week, 3 per day!
Was that possible? I did a little thinking and calculating and I decided that it was.
I was still as horny as I was at 18--maybe more so--and the smallest thing could prompt me to have an erection: a fleeting memory of a lover, a hot guy passing on the street, even some unexplained things. I almost never went out cruising that I didn't score easily, and when I went to the baths, it was not unusual to hook up with 5 or 10 men on a Saturday night without really trying.
I wasn't getting any younger, and I was acutely aware of the cult of youth among the gay community. In a few more years legend said it would be getting harder. However, I was lucky to have been blessed with good genes and still looked many years younger than 39. Christ, I had actually been carded at a bar a few times when I was 33! Much to my delight, I was finally losing the baby-fat in my cheeks and getting a more chiseled look that stood me in good stead at the bars and baths. I was slim, in good shape, and strong, but my body was far from being that of a porn star. Slim and toned, I guess you would say. So I decided that this project might be feasible, if I strategized right.
The first thing that I had to answer was what might seem like an obvious question: what should I count as having sex with another man? Did I have to cum each time? Was kissing and stroking having sex? I needed a few rules.
I quickly threw out cumming as a requirement. First, I had no problem cumming two or three times a day for a couple of days, or even four or five times in a day if I was really horny, but I knew I couldn't keep it up all year. Anyway, I had had some terrific sex with guys who climaxed when I didn't and vice versa.
So here were the rules I decided constituted having sex:
1 - My cock in another guy's holes--mouth or ass.
2 - Another guy's cock in one or both of my holes.
3 - Rimming or getting rimmed.
4 - As long as the above rules were adhered to, two guys at once, one in each of my holes, would count as two.
5 - Mutual masturbation, as long as one of us came (this was my only exception to the cum rule). Just touching another guy's cock, or stroking it seemed too easy to qualify.
6 - No fisting, water sports, bondage, pain, or such. These things never appealed to me, and I didn't want to start now.
7 - Each man had to be different. I have a really good memory for faces, so that would not be a problem as long as I avoided glory-hole sex with guys whose faces I had not seen, or orgies in a totally dark room; or blindfolds, or anything of the kind. Glory holes and orgies were OK as long as I could see my partner before or after our encounter. I decided that if I wanted to have sex with a guy more than once, that was OK, but it just wouldn't count.
The basic rules settled, I decided to figure out how to maximize my success.
The first thing to do was to work on my body to make it a real man magnet. I already belonged to a gym in the gayborhood in Philly, and sometimes had sex in the steam room or shower after my workouts, or met guys that I would go home with. However, I had to have a body that would work more effectively at the baths, the beach, and in the bars. I talked to one of the trainers at the gym and asked if he thought I could develop a hot body with nice pecs, washboard abs, a nice firm ass, great shoulders and arms, and hot, muscular legs before the end of the year, and then have a program that could maintain my new physique through the following year.
He said, "Sure if you're willing to work hard at it. You will need to work out at least five times a week, but we can do it."
So, at the beginning of September, I started to work on the new body. It was hard work, but in a couple of weeks, I started to see some progress, and I was definitely able to press more weight and lift more easily. By the end of September, I noticed I was turning more heads at the gym and hooking up without any effort when I went down to the beach. I knew that by the end of the year, I would have a body that a porn-star would envy.
The next thing I decided was that I needed a really cool place to take guys that I picked up, and that it needed to be convenient enough to my cruising sites that I could take several guys a day there. Also, I didn't want to drag so many anonymous encounters back to my place. I was living in a great studio loft in the historic district of Philly, but I thought, "Wouldn't it be great to find a hot guy at Woody's or one of the other bars, get back to my place in a few minutes, and be back for more an hour later?" So I decided to find a small apartment in the gayborhood and sublet my loft for the year. If I wanted to make art--and I thought I might go the year without--I would rent another studio, or work small.
I found a nice one-bedroom place right in the middle of the action, and I quickly arranged with a friend for my loft to be rented by a visiting faculty member at one of the local art schools. The apartment had a small living room, and a spacious bedroom. I contrived to make the bedroom into a shrine to sex.
I found a used king bed in great shape and put it on a platform so that it was as at a height that I could fuck standing on the floor while my partner was lying on the edge of the bed. Normally, I don't like such a large bed, but I thought if I'm going to do three- and four-somes, it will come in handy.
I painted the rooms a sexy dark red, warm, luxurious and seductive, and got some lamps with dimmers so I could set the light level just as I wanted it. I got a huge mirror to mount on the wall next to the bed, and another one on the ceiling over it. Over the dresser, there was still another mirror as I remembered the great fucks I had had with my partner standing, hands braced on the dresser as I fucked him from behind, while watching in the mirror. I installed a big TV and brought my collection of porn videos over.
In the living room, I had a love seat (naturally!), an easy chair, an upholstered armless side chair (I love to ride a guy straddling him while he is sitting it a chair!) and I got a six-foot-long bench that I had upholstered in leather, about 18" wide, to use, with a couple of trays on top, as a coffee table and a place that I could lie down while I was ridden by my partner or vice versa.
I finished the apartment off with some paintings I had done many years ago of hot young men in sexual situations. Most had been sold a long time ago to enthusiastic gay collectors, but I had kept a few of my favorites. When I was done, I had a comfortable sex pad that I could get to in about two minutes' walk from the main bars and baths. I moved my things in at the beginning of December, and did a few trial runs. How much easier it was to pick up guys, not only with my new physique, but when hot sex was only a couple of minutes away!
Next, I thought about another problem: it's not that there were not enough guys in Philly for my project, but there were a lot of regulars at the bars and baths, and it was obvious that after a while, it would be harder to find fresh meat.
I decided that my exhibition might be an opportunity to visit some other cities for a few weeks each and tap into a fresh supply of men. There should be no problem in San Francisco and Atlanta hooking up with lots of guys, and the other venue was close enough to Ft. Lauderdale that I should have luck there too. I would get my gallery to rent me a small apartment at each place. They were more than willing to do that, since I could hang out at the show some and do some events for them without having to be flown all over. I also decided that in the spring, when the San Francisco show opened, I would drive cross-country to the opening, stopping along the way to sample the baths, bars and men across the US, and maybe explore the truck-stop and rest-stop scenes which I had heard could be pretty hot.
Last, I decided I needed to document my project in a diary, so that my count would be accurate. I found a small bound diary for 1998 with the date on each page. It was small enough that I could easily take it to the baths with me, or on my travels, and record my progress. I would simply number each guy sequentially and, at the minimum, put down his age (or my guess), a little description (like white, 6', 200 lb. bear, normal cut cock, sucked me, fucked him), but that if I was so moved, I could expand a little and relate more if there was a really extraordinary experience. I also decided to note whenever I came. I was curious to see what that count would be at the end of the year.
I was enjoying my trial run on my apartment for the first couple of weeks of December and getting ready for Christmas with my family. This year I could do it right, because of my success, and I enjoyed the time shopping without the usual pressure. Also, I had decided to host a big celebration at my loft for my family, so I laid in the supplies, and got really domestic and baked cookies.
The second week of December, I got an invitation from an old friend in town to come to his New Year's Eve party, which was legendary in the gay community. I knew that I would end the year with a hot guy and start the new one with him--or another. I looked forward to the new year with a certain amount of trepidation: could I meet my goal?; would I run out of energy too soon?; would I get bored with so much sex?
Well, to the last question, I decided it was a resounding NO. I couldn't imagine ever getting bored with having sex with other men. I decided that that would be the day that life was no longer worth living. To the other questions, I just would have to give it my best shot (pun intended!).