Kissing

17 Aug 2025

Why Instagram Scrubbed My Account—And How It Can Happen To You

Late last month, Instagram scrubbed my account. Why? What were they wanting to achieve? A year of tip-toeing the line got me in trouble a couple of times—how much ass is too much? Why did visible dick print cross the line in one image and escape censorship in another? Why

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05 May 2025

Dirtybird Set To Return for Back To Baysics 2025

My first Dirtybird rave was the essence of underground. Like always, news of the party spread by word of mouth. You could keep the Facebook event page unsearchable. Your profile wouldn’t rat you out. Still, there was a physical vetting process, a practice we would do well to bring back.

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21 Apr 2025

Rattlesnake Weather Is Coming—And That’s a Good Thing

I grew up close to a swampy bend in the Missouri River crawling with its fair share of dangerous creatures. Indoors, only two arachnids you’ve surely heard of, the black widow and brown recluse spiders, warrant any concern. The black widow’s bite causes fever, muscle spasms and severe pain. Brown

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13 Oct 2024

Finding Gay Sex in Closeted New Mexico

For three more weeks, I’m staying at an artist’s residency in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It’s beautiful country here, roughly 7,000 feet up on a high desert at the tail end of the Rockies. Faceless and not, most men on the apps say I’m here for the best time of

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08 Jul 2024

The Darker Side of Pride

The days leading up to Pride weekend were like the drawback of a tidal wave (Pridal wave?). In preparation, we cut two industrial-sized buckets of limes, around three days’ worth. We stacked boxes on boxes of beer and seltzer in the walk-in, evacuating our supplies to higher ground. By Thursday night, we were ready. A coworker and I earned the privilege of clocking out early.

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09 Jun 2024

8 Complaints About Being Gay in San Francisco

It’s a sin when success complains. That’s how I feel as a gay man who moved to San Francisco from what Californians affectionately call “flyover country.” It’s pretty damn great, living here. So what if everything closes at 2am (#4) and there aren’t any bathhouses to go to (#5). Compared

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18 May 2024

Why San Francisco Needs a Gay Bathhouse

I made a new friend recently. He just moved here from New York. Having tried to visit the Eagle but finding it closed, he texted me one evening. “Does SF close down at like, 11pm? I’m used to NYC where we don’t even start going out until then.”  Oh honey.

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05 Jul 2022

Straight Men, Sucking D*ck Does Not Make You Gay

Cheers to the straight guys who have fooled around with me. I think of you from time to time, and I hope you’re well. You’re an integral part of my adolescence and early college years. I share our memories (anonymously, of course) with my gay friends to convivial laughter. They

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