Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number
Do you know what cribbage is?

Do you know how to play?

Cool! Chances are you are at least 30-35 years old, if not older.

I myself, am under the age of 25; and the story I’m about to tell you is about a card game, two older men, and one very interesting night.

When I was young, my first sexual experiences were ALWAYS with older men. Whether it be five, or twenty five years older, it always carried the theme of, ‘I am being taken for a ride’. (Creepily honest: One of my first sexual fantasies I can remember involved Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka.) It was nice, they were experienced, talented, mature, masculine, and the whole thing really helped me deal with my Daddy issue angst.

Thusly, the men I’m attracted to now are just that, men. Men with cars and jobs, stable incomes and close to no drama.

But let’s leave my gold-digger-ness for a later article.

So naturally while living with my grandparents (My Grandpa and his Husband who are in an open relationship.) I was surrounded by older men, and I am a HUGE flirt. One guy caught by eye early on. Let’s name him Roger.

One night he was staying the night at our house because he was doing something in town early the next morning, he lived far away so it was just easier for him to couch surf for a night here. During that night, my grandpa was feeling a bit off; he’s always had health problems, so he and grandma (who is, remember, a man.) went to the ER. As this was just a preemptory trip, Roger and I were urged to not worry and just go about our business.

While they were away, Roger and I chatted along (I’m a talker), learning more about each other. I was duking it out with my love interest at the time, who we will call Pillock. Pillock and I were arguing via text about things that didn’t matter, and my stress level was so high I began breaking out in hives.

Given that Roger is a therapist of sorts and was watching me as I slowly spiraled into a huff of angst and rache. (<- German for revenge. I’m one of those people who will fly off the handle and have a weekend bender rather than yell at my spouse.)

So about midnight or so, when we were on our second movie that I was only half watching, and I started to break out, all I really wanted to do was snuggle up with Roger and have him bend me over the couch until all my pent up rage got ‘released’.

But alas, nothing happened that night. I started feeling sick, so he took me to the store, and we bought some benadryl and a chocolate bar to make me feel better.

A few months later he got together with a guy, who in this article is named Corn. It took them all of two months to move in with one another at Roger’s place. It was an apartment with pool and sauna access. Remember that, it’s important.

Corn is in his 50′s and losing his hair. Roger in his 60′s and has stark white hair, ya know the guy you picture when i say old gnome? All white hair beard and shortness? Yeah just dress him in a nice shirt and some loafers and thats Roger. They are both very nice.

So, Roger and I began to instant message at some point after he got my cell phone number from Grandpa, so he always had someone to keep him up to date on his ailments.

We decided that we totally should have done stuff that night he was over at my place.

His offer was disguised as a night away from home and some relaxing sauna time, since he knew of my perpetual back tension issues.

I readily agreed, and Grandpa was thrilled that I could get some well needed stress relief with the aid of a trusted family friend.

Somehow as the night went on, I was enticed into a game of strip cribbage. For those of you who know what it means, Roger was getting a lot of 6, 7, 8 and 9′s. And the fact that I only wear one layer of clothing didn’t help much.So by the end of three games we were all naked.

I had never done anything with anyone over the age of 30 before this. And certainly not with more than one person at a time. I was rather nervous. But oh so excited!!!

Let me tell you my dear readers. Age really is nothing but a number.

I have a habit of playing coy when I’m with anyone who might assume by my appearance that I am less experienced than them. (In reality, I’ve been having pretty regular sex for going on 12 years now.) And Roger and Corn really took charge of the situation. I sat idly wondering how far we were gonna go, while they brought blankets and pillows out into the living room by the armful. We met on the field of battle (the blankets on the floor of the living room), which proved us all equally skilled. (What do you call a 69 between three people?) Nobody was viewed as beneath anyone else.

Oddly it was less dominant and submissive, more… grab something and feel good. Despite the age gap, they were just as passionate (and kinda dorky) in their sex as any teenager. Rather than belittling me for my lack of experience, they just laughed it off when I gasped at their cock piercings, and we all had a great time…

And that’s just the most notable of my stories concerning age.

Let me tell you, my dear, captive audience: age is a frame of mind. I have had dates with 56 year old women who are still as sharp as the thumb tacks they used on my balls that night. I have had affairs with men AND women in their 30′s who certainly snuggled and made out like they were just as young and immature as me.

I don’t see age as the number of lines on someone’s face. I see them as notches on the bedpost. The older you get, the more sex you have, the better you get at it.

I’ve never done an octogenarian, but I bet if I did, she would give an amazing hand job… Providing her arthritis wasn’t acting up.

Happy sexing.

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Now, I will begin this article by saying that I am not separating or segregating or even setting out to define sex or romance. But rather to explain to you, through my experiences, and I swear to use no amount of subterfuge, (though I may now be a bit delirious) what I feel when remembering either.

In my life, sex has been central. Since I was young, the physical has been nothing less than essential.

It began with another young man, and like every good thing can, our little experiment got a bit out of our unskilled hands. Since then, the sex has never left me alone, but when I lay myself in bed… My heart feels quite heavy… Filled with a subtle, lonely dread.

Romance was my escape.

I’ve been a hopeless romantic since I discovered love. Back in the times of high school, when the papers I wrote were all on scraps, I fell so hard into first loves stinging trap.

Like the diamond gates of hell, I stood with precarious balance on the very edge as I strolled so happily down the primrose path of dalliance.

My first love destroyed me, and my wretched heart, retching with pain and sophomoric art was ripped out a newly mauled maw in my chest, to be held with piercing claws against the breast of a wicked girl for five very long years.

My time in captivity can only be measured in fallen tears.

So now I am an artist, scarred by my past, and hoping that the pain that nearly wrecked me in every way back then, was not the last.

But pain, experience, and love all got together and gave me a invaluable gift.

Romance, at it’s best, will always leave a person with many marks.

But romance itself isn’t only pain and suffering…

(Sorry, when I drink too much I tend to get a little Shakespearian-y.)

Romance, to me, is when your heart sinks and sings. It’s what happens to two people when the circumstances and the feelings are just right to make you feel as if nothing else but you and they are all that matters. When you’re horrified of what comes next, but you’re too lost in what’s happening to care much. Romance is what stitches love into people.

Sex, to me, is less personal. It’s something you can even do with friends. I have friends who I can say I could never see myself with, but we’ve had sex. It’s like a really intense hug when you know a person well enough. Just a way to make each other feel good, and to say, ‘I love you.’

Allow me to be a cynic, mostly because you have no other choice: Sex, when you boil it all down, is purely physical. It’s a bio-mechanical reproduction method that is shared by every other mammal on the planet. Most adults know that we’re on the list of very few species of mammal that does it for fun.

And romance is an invention of the mind and soul. Right?

You see, in these little puddles of brain leakage I’ve been leaving all over the internet, I speak only for myself. These words come from the inside of me, therefore they are art, and art should only be made for the artist.

So, romance, to me, is one of the gifts chaos has given the human race. I am so thankful for it too.

Because this whole ‘broken writer’ thing I have going is very physically un-sexy to most. Guys like me can be as good as they want at sex. I have given women upwards of ten orgasms during one (very long) session. But I can’t attract them worth anything, without my pretty words.

(Wakes up later that morning.) Oh jeeze. My head…

Ok, three days and an entire fifth of whiskey later… I need to wrap this up without sounding like more of an idiot.

Alright alright alright. Um….

Sex and romance, porn and relationships.

Sex and romance are both two amazing things, and it’s great to feel one or the other, but it’s ecstatic in a literal sense when you feel both.

In our modern age, however, they don’t have to be hand in hand, and I think that is an important distinction to make. Are you feeling love? Or is your loin pointing the way?

Most people try to shove these very different things together because they’ve been taught that they should be. Like peanut butter and jelly, but unless you have the foreknowledge of your own feelings as well as your partners, you’re making a sandwich without bread.

And almost nobody wants a bowl of pb&j soup…
… (Though it does sound kinda tasty to me.)

Not the point. (Ok, sorry.)

But romance can do fine without sex, and sex is just as independent as romance.

Have you ever had a friend who was so close to you that sometimes you forgot you were different people, or so close you may as well have been dating, but didn’t? Did you have sex? (For the purpose of this rhetoric I am reaching out to the percentage of you that can say:) No?

Looking back, wasn’t that in a way romantic?

Isn’t watching a sunrise alone romantic? Isn’t it romantic when your great grandpa still holds the door for your great granny? (I really hope my great grandparents aren’t still doing it for many reasons including making this point I’m trying to make here valid.)

Haven’t you ever had fun, meaningless, no strings, no hard-feelings sex?

Of course you have, well, I hope you have, ‘cause it’s really fun.

In my meaningless opinion, sex and romance are simply two great tastes that taste great together, and apart.

I’m just happy to get a taste. Aren’t you?

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Five Reasons That (Good) Scary Movies Can Get You Laid

Now I’m not going to say that any horror flick will definitely warm or wet the taste of every person out there, but in my personal experience a few movies have quite the ideal combination of certain elements to stimulate arousal in a variety of different people types.

Reason One:  Everyone Loves to Be Scared

Not in the way that people find arousal in thinking somebody might be in their house, or that perhaps the man down the street, coming slowly towards you after your car mysteriously broke down on your way home from work, might possibly stab you and use your skin to make furniture… It takes a very special woman or a very lonely man to think that is sexy. It’s in the thrill of being out of control.

Movie viewing is not an interactive media, but it is an absorbing one under the right circumstances, and when the Scream Queen of the present sequel stumbles as she flees loudly from the fresh crime scene, you’re pumped. (Well, if the movie is good.)

But it’s like a roller coaster. When your blood gets pumping and the adrenaline starts flowing, everybody feels excited. And when you get excited enough you wanna get up and do something! Or someone.

Reason Two: Pretty Much Every Horror Movie Has Porn in It.

We all know that there will always be the standing archetype of the stupid girl running around with her tits out in every good horror movie. But even if the cheerleader doesn’t get inexplicably (but conveniently) naked, there is metaphorical porn in pretty much every horror movie. In Dracula, the exchange of body fluids and the penetration of young female flesh is literal. In Jason movies, we find him impaling sexy young women with a giant phallic symbol, plunging his hard machete into their moist quivering entrails. (Pay less attention to the literal aspect and that sounds really naughty.)

(Though the tits and occasional man ass are much appreciated, don’t get me wrong I love horror boobs.)

Next time, though, when you see someone get stabbed, impaled, or nailed/affixed to something by way of a weapon, remember, that weapon is a scare film penis.

Reason Three: It’s an Excuse to Cuddle

Ok, this one is so obvious it barely deserves a full paragraph. But any movie is an excuse to cuddle. Horror movies in particular though, because the movies themselves are designed to make the viewer feel unsafe, thus giving an extra incentive to be more cuddly. It’s even better if it’s a movie that’s less focused on the gore. When a movie is just plain creepy, that’s when you can get all close to your chosen couch buddy, that’s when you need the security of another person most.

Reason Four: The Opportunity to be a Protector

On the flip side of the ‘scary movie hold me close’ coin, there is the fact that when your partner clings to you, it grants you the ability to be their protector. They’re scared of what’s on the screen and you’re keeping them safe. You amazing, dominant, secure, and loving rapscallion you.

Whenever you feel the arms (or screams) of your lover grip your torso (or headache) like a vice, you can smile smugly to yourself. Knowing full well that you would push them to the ground and run your ass out of Elm St… But for the moment you’re a knight in shining sweatpants.

Reason Five: You Both Know Damn Well What You’re Getting At

Now, remember. As always, I’m only speaking for me.

But looking at the outside, it would seem that the percentage of people who are both capable of maintaining a stable and sexually healthy relationship AND are horror movie buffs is rather minor.
If you’re an average or close to average couple, and a scary movie is actually scary for either of you, I’m willing to bet there is a reasonably good chance that you aren’t watching it because you don’t want to frighten the fear of darkness into yourselves just before bed. It just like when you were all teenagers, you pick the movie most likely to get you into something heavy for date night.
Whether it be a boring movie you can make out to, or a scary movie so your sister will stay out of the den and you and Samatha can be alone, you know what you want when you make a movie pick that stands out from the norm, and so do they!

I guess if you look at it that way, it’s really not the scary movie that can get you laid, you just need a partner who isn’t extremely nerdy about horror movies, otherwise you are just gonna get pushed off mid-kiss so they can see the pivotal scene in a Romero film.

(It happened to me.)

Happy Halloween.

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Dear readers, this brain sludge puddle is a somber one.

On a long enough timeline, everybody gets cancer. If you live long enough, biology and statistics say that bad protein replication will eventually occur, creating cancerous cells. Which is scary, if all of us plan to live past 100 years.

But take into consideration the scarier fact, that one out of every eight women will develop invasive breast cancer in their lifetime. This is living on a normal timeline, without taking abnormal risks.

Breast cancer in American women is the most fatal of cancer diagnoses, and also the most common. One in four cancers diagnosed for an American woman will be breast cancer.

Now, you would think that given what media and common ignorance will tell you, that you either get killed by cancer, or you beat it and keep on going.

There are medications and radiation treatments, but they can’t possibly kill every cancer cell in a person’s body, they can’t even scan for individual cells. If you get treated, and you recover, the only way to tell whether or not you really beat it is to wait for it all to happen again. Some people are just genetically predisposed.

Though remission can happen at any time… Recurrences can happen at any time.

Hope… Can happen at any time.

My dear reader, I hope I haven’t clouded your mind or cast a shadow on your day. Remember there is always hope. Breast cancer is in the forefront of some great minds and hearts. There are research projects, charities with wonderful inspiring events, and there are most definitely, survivors.

… My friend Alisha is one of them.

She’s only 19 years old, and she is a breast cancer survivor. After all the pain and treatment, the struggle… One day when we were having lunch, she outright told me something that made us both double over laughing. After they’d removed a significant amount of her left breast, she’d woken up and thought, ‘Shit now I’m lopsided. Is there such a thing as a half priced boob job?’ That girl is amazing.

Some who may be reading this are also writers for Edencafe, and might’ve notice that this article seems a bit short. Well… Yeah. It is. I’m not doing this for any reason other than to just spread the word.

If you’d like to help, or maybe just learn a bit more about this issue. Please check out this site.
http://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/

(As a younger man, it took a lot for me not to sully this piece with cheeky immature semi-perversion… But now that I finished I might as well. I love breasts. And would love if every boob on the planet was healthy and cared for. Join the fight for yabos my friends!)

Well, honestly I started to play with my butt a long time before I knew it was sexual. Though not completely sure, I think I heard one of my uncles enquiring about my father shoving a thumb up his butt, and something about a monkey when I was still having trouble tying my shoes alone… (Ok… I still have trouble tying my shoes. Not the point.)

At some point that bounced around my young brain, and I tried it… In the bathtub… Several times.
I wasn’t all that impressed, it was interesting though, and it did make me more inclined to agree when I was asked to experiment by the older boy down the road several years later.

[Skipping the potentially illegal illustrations]

So I’ve always been a submissive person, at least to those I feel deserved it. This lead to me just offhandedly deciding that I was a bottom. I am, it’s only natural really.

During my first anal experience it wasn’t pain or pleasure so much as sensation; like any good scientist I wanted more data in order to formulate an objective opinion based on an average. So I had a lot more sex until I figured out just what was happening. And oh… It was good.

During that time I didn’t really have any sensation coming specifically from my prostate. It was more about the friction and the stimulation of my O-Ring. Hard and fast, deep didn’t matter so much.

The first time I realized just how important my prostate was to the act of solo anal play, I had a glow stick, and a random idea. I didn’t move it around all that much, but just having it press against a sweet spot made me finish hard enough to make my legs twitch.

My scientist brain, again, yelled EXPERIMENTATION TIME!!!

So I started trying all sorts of things of different lengths, shapes, diameters, and trying to hit that sweet spot again.

Incidentally, the neck of Heineken bottles are the ideal diameter for novices, but not at all the right length or shape. As well as, never attempt to fit an entire banana inside yourself when your parents go to the store. Especially if you are attempting to do so during a period of time where, for extenuating circumstances, your room lacks a door. You will either not have enough time, or it will get stuck, and you will spend the next full episode of Fraiser, sitting in the bathroom while listening to the soothing sounds of a quasi-British man yell about constipation. The irony hurt way more than the frozen produce item straining against my newly stress-tightened boy-button…

Where was I?…

Let’s talk about lube and rimming. Wet things. Let’s talk about wet things.

When I first started out I didn’t use any lube. I used stuff like soap or shampoo, because at that point I didn’t want to waste any money on my weird habit. I eventually learned the merits of using something for the purpose it was made for, rather than its stand in. The first times I had anal sex and was the bottom, I didn’t use any lube at all. I just had a lot of saliva, I suppose. Who doesn’t salivate when they are eating something yummy?

Eventually I had anal sex and was the person on top. This didn’t happen for a few years, though it was really neat. I was tint and hot, and the friction I was so fond of as a bottom was present as a top, just in a different area. Of course, the lube we used was the kind that comes in condom kits, so really the quality and scent were irrelevant, we were just desperate to do it.

I did experiment with flavors and stuff, though. One of my tops had strawberry lube, I didn’t understand why he liked it until he came, then started to lick my backdoor. I didn’t want to appear inexperienced so I let him, it felt so weird! I learned to enjoy it a little, though, it was like getting a massage on my butthole.

I’m still not in favor of it really. I’m never going to kiss someone after they rim me, because scat is one of the few things in the perv world I find a little too gross for my taste. But I can now say that I’ve been rimmed, and I have rimmed, but that is an absurd double standard.

I enjoy rimming women, but will not be rimmed, or rim, men without significant influence. I guess women are just more soft, more clean, and less dirty in my head. I know that’s wrong from a logic standpoint, but still. I actually enjoy rimming women.

Other wet stuff that is related to anal… Um… Enemas? I’ve never actually gotten a piss enema, but I’ve given them, and it was rather fun, mostly because piss and cum is the only thing that came out of my lovers. Prior to anal play we always clean them out fairly well, however because again, I do not like scat.

Over the years I have tried a lot of things, and have begun to hunger for something more… Mostly I’ve just become a bit more enamored with the size of the things I put inside me. I don’t want to have a lot of girth, I really have a paranoia of becoming loose, considering that I am in fact a bottom. More of the length, I love the feeling of being full. Though the most I’ve ever taken inside of me is about 8 inches of dildo, I’ve always wanted to be fucked by a huge black dildo or something, like two feet long.

I was never very apprehensive of anal play considering my weird experimental past, and really I can’t imagine why anyone else would be. Let’s say ten percent of the world population is gay, half of that is men, half of them are bottoms, that’s still 175,000,000 people!!! They can’t all be wrong!

I always tell people when they speak badly about their anal experiences, ‘Well you obviously did it wrong.’ damn teenagers nowadays, don’t even know how to have sex!!!

In any case, my random readers, embrace your butt. It’s there for a lot of reasons, and one of them is pleasure!

I certainly get a lot of pleasure out of mine.

Obligatory Article about Furries:

Well considering that I am a furry, and that this is a generally misunderstood area of the realm of pervyness, I thought it would be globally beneficial for me to write an article about what it means to me, what it means in general, etc… etc…

So why not begin with something rather crucial and simplistic:

Fursonas: A fursona is the persona which a furry gives to their player character. Whether it be role playing online, in artwork, or wearing a fursuit, the fursona of a furry is the personality you phase into when you go into furrymode.

I myself have two fursonas, one established, and one at the moment in the making. My first, and the one I’ve been with the longest, is called Puddles. He’s a loving, mellow sort of black dog with a short snout and pointed ears. He wears a collar that doesn’t have his name on it and sometimes a shirt and tie, depending on the event.

Fursona two is a bunny. Not sure of his name, or what he acts like, but I’m relatively sure he’s a party animal. (slight pun intended)

A single person can have many fursonas, or just one. Some people go through them in a similar manner as one might date another person. They have a certain character, they hang onto it for a while and it’s their main thing. Then after a bit, they discover something new, or just stop liking their present fursona and move on. Sad but true. I think I will be keeping Puddles close to me for a while, though. (His name is Puddles because I’m into watersports, but not the receiving end when I’m wearing the suit. It’s rather difficult to get the pee smell out of faux fur.)

Next Up: Why the fur? Fursuits

The question most people ask to furries while trying to wrap their head around this odd concept is a simple, ‘Why?’.

Which is expected, but difficult to answer. Asking somebody to justify their lifestyle or sexual preferences seems rather inappropriate when you apply it to things like BDSM or homosexuality, but not for furries? The best answer any one of us can come up with is that, ‘It just feels natural.’
Which is about as much explanation as anyone need give.

It just feels natural. Some of us relate with animals so much we just feel better when demonstrating animalistic behavior, or just dumbing down our human behaviors. Some of us just like the art, the dress up, the fetishism. Plushophiles have their own word because they aren’t exactly furries, their fetish is just plush fabric or plush animals.

I personally just like the role playing aspect and have always had a thing for both cartoon animal characters and clothed sex, so furry-ness was really just the best applicant to fill as many perverges as I could in one go. But I really liked the art as well once I got into it.

Fursuits are what I meant when I was referring to clothed sex in relation to furry. Fursuits are whole body outfits worn by furries, complete with paws and large animal head. They are worn at conventions, large events, or even small events such as furry parties. Sometimes they’re even worn at more… shall we say… personal, engagements. Yiffing or petting parties are like big cuddle puddles… or an orgy, depending on the group that is gathered. Do not believe the heretics of the all too familiar CSI episode, because this is not as common as it would seem to be. Trust me, I only wish us furverts were always secretly meeting in hotel rooms to bump uglies and rub against each others warm, soft, fuzzy pelts.

Ok… Tea is made, train of thought lost…
…
IN THE PUBLIC EYE (I announce loudly to nobody in particular, as I begin hammering the keys like a maddened Beethoven alone in my bedroom, in a blind attempt to force the words into flowing from my head.)

In the public eye, by which I mean the Internet and the general media, furries are, respectively, openly mocked or almost completely ignored.

I’m not 100% sure why such a large amount of the chansters out there seem to hate furries, it’s not like we did anything I don’t think. But I’d love to get to the bottom of why the flame word ‘furfag’ is thrown around with such cyber-anger.

As for completely ignored by the media. Please, if you will, attempt to imagine a time you’ve seen a furry, that is identified AS a furry, on TV without mentioning CSI. Anyone?

Hm? Ok yeah, there was that single episode of “1000 Ways to Die” but you can’t call that show ‘mainstream media’ anymore than you can a YouTube clip of a fat Korean boy breakdancing.

I find it interesting to realize how major media is either failing or refusing to recognize furry. We have conventions an awful lot, and they may not be huge, but the streets are littered with people wearing ears and tails in a major area, and nobody does a news piece about it? I mean, come-on! It’s not that I want the attention, but the feeling is comparable to somebody not offering you a cookie. Even if you didn’t want a cookie, it still sucks they wouldn’t give you one.

Neeeeext topic is: (Rustling around in a random burlap sack.)

YIFFING!!! (Actually I’m not sure if burlap sacks rustle.)

Yiffing is the act of something sexual in a furry context. (Come to think of it I’ve never even seen a burlap sack.) This can me anything from pawing, (Jacking/Jilling off, or ‘Fursturbation’ if you’re weird.) petting, (mutual masturbation and general rubbing.) and yiffing. (Full on sex of some kind.)
Yiffing is just the furry analog to all the creepy human on human sex. *Shudder* (Kidding. Seriously, when’s the last time anyone has ever seen a burlap sack?) Which is relatively boring and normal once you take away the costume or the role-play. Then it’s just two people doing it or rubbing each other while making squeaking or purring noises and the activity is using a false name in order to buy alcohol so he can spike his tea. When you take away the surface colors, we’re all very much the same inside.

Ok, so we covered what it is, how it’s done, what people think about it, my relation to it… And sex.

Wrapping it up then?

Alright.

Furry is said to be a lifestyle, or a sexuality all on its own.

Some people think of it as a way of life, the way they were born and the culture in which they feel most welcome and most comfortable.

I, myself, though I do own ears, and a tail, though I may be making a fursuit, and though I might love the idea of getting down with my girlfriend while she’s dressed with a cow; I do not agree with any of those things.

In my opinion, Furry isn’t a lifestyle, it isn’t a sexuality, it isn’t something you’re born with. Like anything else in the wonderful land of kink, it’s simply something we do cause we like it. And we like it, simply cause we do. No matter whether you wear fur or leather and studs, you do it cause you like it.

Have a yiffy day.

Seriously, what comes in a burlap sack???

[Prologue]
*Shuffles into the site in bunny slippers and a bathrobe*
*Sees a topic suggestion*
Cross dressing…
Hm… I could work with that.

Cross dressing! Something I’ve had a variety of experiences with. I used to be a cross dresser, am attracted to cross dressing, have hooked up with cross dressers, and as a member of the quazi-queer community, I know several cross dressers. Which from this point on I will be referring to as CDs.

Let me sure up the terms. CDs are not T-Girls. CDs are not Drag Queens. They are all in their own little subgenres. Cross dressers like to wear the clothes of their opposite gender, in order to emulate them, and to alter their appearance to please both themselves and others. T-Girls want to be the opposite gender in order to satisfy themselves. Drag Queens… Well… They’re just fun aren’t they? Drag Queens just want to put on a good show. Who doesn’t like to feel pretty? Though there are incontrovertible similarities between CDs and Drag Queens, if a CD gets up on a stage and starts singing or dancing, they are in fact, a Drag Queen.

Cross dressing has always been an area of interest for me. For one, I’ve always been a little gender confused; when I was younger I used to stuff my shirt and pretend I had boobs. It felt legitimately bizarre that I didn’t have any. I only recently stopped CDing because it has become impractical in my life to do so. As my body matures, my masculine features all increased in intensity, and it became harder and harder to cover my chin stubble, to hide my crotch candy, and to just be a passable girl.

The last time I really truly passed for a female I was 14. I was really cute. I just looked like a very awkward, goth-haired (It was a v-bang halloween wig, but so long as it matched the outfit and resembled actual hair, it wasn’t Elvira-esc.) teenage girl. Which was actually pretty good, because at the time I was a very awkward, emocore, teenage boy.

It wasn’t really about sexuality with me, at the time. The fact that I wanted to dress, look, act, and sound like a girl didn’t really equate to my liking of guys. Sure, I was/am bi/try-sexual. (I like to think of myself as sexuality-ambiguous, the gender of the person doesn’t matter, it’s how much we like each other.) But the fact that I felt pretty comfortable being a girl came more from the whole, ‘It just feels right’ thing. I was young, feminine, girly. Why not complete the package? Damnable puberty.

Cross dressing as a culture or community, is a very oddly shaped concept. Because the activity is mostly a private one, there are guides, online stores, chatrooms, forums, and sections of sites such as the gendersociety. But you don’t see big communities right off, like one would if you googled the words, ‘Furry Community’. I’m sure there are lots of ways CDs are networking though. How else would a novice boy learn to do his makeup from a trustworthy, experienced person whom he knows he can trust and be open with? Well, that’s how I did it. Her name was Tracy. He was really nice.

The societal view of cross dressing is that of fear of change, and the abnormal. By abnormal, I do not mean offense, it’s just a word to describe something that is apart from the majority. Several royals and celebrities from the past and present are/were cross dressers, King Henry III of France insisted on being considered a woman and addressed as “Her Majesty”. J. Edgar Hoover’s femme name was apparently “Muriel”. Alexander the Great conquered more land than anyone in the history of the planet and united several people over one majestic empire… and also liked to dress like a woman.

CDs aren’t really portrayed in the media, I’ve noticed. The movie “Psycho” didn’t really give them a good rap either. I would assume that’s because the culture has yet to mature enough for it to become a normal part of society, in that we can see it on TV and not have the entirety of some family-based group rise up against a commercial network and slay them, or just whine and complain until their normalcy and boringness is restored.

I think CDs are really cool. Taking ‘be yourself’ to the next level of awesomeness. If they can pull off being a chick, and even if they can’t, it’s amazing. It’s damn near patriotic!

If you’re a ‘normal person’, and are confused, or curious. If you’ve always thought about it and wanted to try, but were too afraid, I would suggest you investigate. The world isn’t as small as you think it is, there’s plenty of Shangri-Las out there. So for all the people out there afraid to let their true colors show, hold your head up high and let your flag unfurl, guys wearing skirts are all over the world.

Well, I usually have trouble figuring out how to start this topic off. Either in conversation or in debate, or even in arguments which got way out of hand, (Seriously, I just asked what you were thinking about for dinner!) it’s always really easy for it to get depressing while talking about body image.

In today’s world, which is saturated with TV commercials, beauty magazines, porn… And… well, more porn, it’s kind of like everyone’s brain is saturated with this twisted standard of what ‘beautiful’ is now.

I’m one of those people who thinks that the beauty of a person is on the inside, but I also hate the way I look and frequently find myself feeling negatively about my features. Crooked teeth and kinda chubby, hairy and… (Hurray for verbally abusive girlfriends from high school!) I will believe nobody if they tell me that my penis isn’t small.

It’s a miracle I’m still arrogant. However, that’s all about my incredibly large, huge, wet, pulsing, throbbing… Brain.

People seem to think they need to change the way they look in order to attain beauty. I’m less worried about the why, (We all want to get laid, duh.) more worried about the WHO. If you’re looking attractive for the sake of others, do you really need to please all those people just to feel good about you? Conversely, if you’re trying to look breath-takingly beautiful just for yourself, where are the instincts to do so coming from? We want to look good because we have the drive to attract a mate, right? But in the civilized age, we have the drive to look to… Make sure we don’t look bad?

I personally only alter my appearance with one purple color contact in my left eye, and five piercings, three on my left earlobe and two on my right. Aside from that, I dress like a bum, avoid makeup…

Oh, wait a minute. I shave on a regular basis and make sure to groom my soul patch. Damn.

My point isn’t exactly moot though.

My beauty is in my brain, whether it’s my low self esteem talking, or the fact that I really do believe that I am unattractive, regardless of what my girlfriend says, my brain is the best part of my body.

If you’ve caught on to the fact that I am obviously adhering to the ridiculous standards that I, in the beginning of this rant, poked with the stick of disassociation, gold star for you!

I find my body unattractive because of the fact that I compare myself to porn stars, and attractive white, lead rolls, in movies about coming of age and fighting for love when you’re an attractive white young adult in the city, with an incredible wardrobe, despite your thin wallet.

I do share a minor resemblance with a slightly more tan, slightly less wealthy Michael Cera. But I hate that guy, so it doesn’t make me feel much better!

Overall, the people who have influenced my body image most are hateful ex’s. Which would be a lot more lachrymose if I didn’t know for a fact that I’m happier than them today with my functional girlfriend, well funded family unit, several pocket sized technological miracles, and the infinite awesome-ness that is sex always at my fingertips. (Literally. It’s the little things that matter. Ultimately, I’m much better off anyway.)

In the end it’s all about relativity. Depending on how much you care, or who you compare yourself to.
I am quite the sexy man, when I’m being compared to Andrew Lloyd Webber.

And I bet you the earth mama, hippy chicks have never had a bad hair day in their life.

Image is important because other people see it. It’s what we display to the world. Self image is important because it’s what we see ourselves as, with or without the world looking. Sometimes when I’m feeling down, it helps to have an argument with my girlfriend about whether or not I’m attractive, I mean, why would she go out with an ugly guy, right?

Look in the mirror today. Look at yourself. I bet you’re a good person, I bet you’re really attractive. If you don’t think so, I bet you my toybox, that someone out there thinks you’re wrong.

If not, you’re probably more attractive than Andrew Lloyd Webber.