Bastard Life

California dreamin

Neal Boulton — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:18:00 -0800

Ads We Love. Clever way to promote surfer sex? No, actually just wet suits thanks to the brilliance of photographer Jimmy Fok, who shot this saucy little scenario on a surfboard for ad agency The Furnace in Sydney. Sweet. Sex, that once again, sold me.-N.B.

Condom couples

Neal Boulton — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:50:00 -0700

Get It On by Superfad for Durex. This popular spec ad that has been humping wildly around the Internet will make you laugh about as hard as the executives did at Durex who we spoke with today. Our insider there told us that while the company decided not to run it-they loved it and saw it's brilliance. We felt the advertisement did a great job of demonstrating just how versatile we can all be: L, G, B, T or C.-N.B.

To suck-or devour

Neal Boulton — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:57:33 -0700

“I want to learn to give head like a man,” she said. “Tell me how it’s different.” In a drunken moment of openness, I had told her about my bisexual past, a youthful experiment that I was growing out of in my early thirties. Usually, when I was trying to pick up women in bars, I kept this information to myself. A lot of women were turned off by a man who’d had sex with other men, but then, once in a while, the truth crept out, and luckily, this particular woman-Tracie was her name-was intrigued, wanted to know all about it, was obviously turned on by the very idea. I supposed that one of the reasons my secret had slipped out was because we were getting along so well, and my guard was down. We were both singing along animatedly when an old song by the Smiths came on the jukebox, and the topic of conversation had very casually taken a turn from the singer Morrissey’s alleged asexuality to sexual orientation in general.

When I’d admitted to having had bisexual experiences, she asked me whether men or women gave better blow jobs, and I said-because it’s generally true-that beyond a doubt, men do. A man knows what it feels like to receive a blow job, and so it’s obvious that a man would have a better instinct about how to give one. It was clear to me that this got Tracie’s feminist dander up. She was very competitive, she said, and thought she should be able to learn to do this as well as any man could, despite the drawback of not having a penis of her own. Besides that, she’d been told by men that she was very good at it, but as far as she knew, none of those men had ever gotten head from another man. So the challenge was on, and I took her back to my apartment to discuss it further.

It was a short walk from the Greenwich Village bar to my place in Chelsea. We laughed and flirted all the way up 7th Avenue, talking about our lives, getting to know one another. She was a copy editor, and I was a techie doing various types of freelance computer work from programming to web design. She was a native New Yorker, and I was originally from Alabama. Her father was South American, which explained the slightly ambiguous ethnicity that I found exotic and interesting about her. Along the way, we made fun of people we saw who were dressed poorly or acting bizarre, such as one typically sees on a Friday night in Manhattan. A casual observer would have thought we were old pals, would never have guessed that we just met an hour before in a bar. When I opened the door to my apartment, though, I immediately came back to the reason we were here-a lesson in giving a blow job like a man.

“First of all,” I told her as I flicked on the lights, “you have to really want it, and not like you want a piece of candy. It’s not a lollipop. You have to want it like you want a piece of steak. You have to be ravenous for it. Typically, women suck cock. Men devour it.”

“An interesting distinction,” she said. “But no teeth, of course...”-Robert Peregrine

Jewelry pillow?

Neal Boulton — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:03:54 -0700

Ads we love. No one asks me, "Boxers or briefs?" anymore. But if they were to, I'd have to say that I'd slide into (or out of) any cut as long as I'd feel as comfy as the above advertisement suggests they would be in McAlsons boxer briefs at the end of a working day.-N.B.

Aesthetics

Neal Boulton — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:55:15 -0700

Haircut 100. Whether it's the landing strip, the triangle, or the cheeky little heart-this Daily Fresh advertisement seems to understand what we've known for years-the importance of pubic aesthetics. Nice.-N.B.

Sucking in the seventies

Neal Boulton — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:15:09 -0800

Magazines we love. In No H8, a fabulous essay photographed by JD Ferguson, styled by Timothy Reukauf, and cast by Douglas Perrett, the editors of Paper pay homage to the gay men "who started it all 35 years ago-from Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood to Castro Street in San Francisco"-with Irving Penn and Richard Avedon quality portrayals of the archetypal gay men of an era long lost-but not forgotten. On newsstands now, and worth it.-N.B.

Virtues

Neal Boulton — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 07:37:14 -0800

Ads we love. Drinking and smoking: we love it all of course, were it not for the fact that both kill erections, limit orgasms, and dull all of the sensations we want you to have-not to mention your memory of them. While we've never had the Nutrient Water advertised above, we agree with the message, because 'endurance' is a virtue.-T.W.

Art history

Neal Boulton — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:40:13 -0800

Ads we love. The calming pastime of art. Very nice.-N.B.

The power of advertising

Neal Boulton — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 07:09:58 -0800

Monica Lewinsky poses for fashion. This banned Kleenex, I mean, Puma ad might have worked better if it had been all over a blue dress we wonder.-N.B.

Out and about

Neal Boulton — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 07:07:35 -0800

Let your fingers do the walking. On your way to New York City for the first time (or tenth)? Not been out in awhile? Moving in? Or, just coming out and want to put yourself in the mix? When I came out in 1985 I had never been to a gay bar, let alone even knew where to go. I found my way by driving into town to where I had heard gay men lived, parked my big old navy blue nearly dead '75 Chevy, and followed two men who I thought might be gay and together into a nondescript club with no sign on the door. Luckily, I scored and found myself in a place called Badlands in Washington, D.C. (now Halo). The dance floor was all laser lights, poured in fog, and guys in leather harnesses snorting poppers while dancing the night away-suddenly, with me (I was only 17 after all). Today, knowing where to go for all of your LGBT desires is not as easy, which is why we recommend HX Magazine. A free weekly publication with hot covers, absolutely-right-now-content as well as event, party, and club listings, and an online component in which you can type in what you want and they recommend where to go. Sort of like the yellow pages, but pink. Online now, and worth it.-N.B.