Skin Hunger and Maintenance Hugs

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Dear Papa Tony, I don’t know how to ask this in a clear or coherent manner because I’ve been trying to understand it for a long time, and I can’t seem to find other ways to describe it. I reach the same place in my head when I read nurturing blogs such as yours: I just wanna be held. What or why do you think that is? I’m glad to hear you’re doing well and thank you for what you do here.

Thank you for reaching out, brother.  It makes perfect sense to me.  I’m in the mood to tell some relevant stories before I get to the main point.  Please indulge a long-winded old man.
You are talking about Skin Hunger.

Getting Back to My Center

When I was going through self-torment during the time when I had just come out to my family, I called my oldest brother.  He did NOT want to talk to me, because he was angry with me for making our mother so upset.

I said “Never mind that - we can cover that topic later.  Right now, I have a special question that only you can answer; what was I like as a child?”  My question caught him by surprise, and he had to do some mental shifting of gears.

He warmed up to the topic right away, and really lit up as he proceeded:

“You were the sweetest little boy.  If somebody was sad, you were the first one to comfort them, even in the days before you started talking.  You were always the first one to dance and sing, any time, any place.  You were a silly, hilariously funny clown. You were never a brat, and you always hugged people as you walked past them, going the other way in that long hallway in our house.”

I thanked him joyfully and kindly, which really threw him for a loop.  He was expecting me to be the bitter, cynical and angry queer leather punk who had come out as gay in a very confrontational way.

He didn’t know it, but he had just helped to drastically transform my life.  That brief conversation was a major pivot-point in my life that helped me to become the man that I am, forty three years later.

Starting Over From the Beginning

I came from a very bad beginning, and I was very damaged.  After trying to kill myself several times, I had been spiraling into despair.  I was right on the verge of accelerating my downfall, just like everybody predicted about evil queers.  If I was going to hell anyway, I may as well go hardcore.

But my conversation with my brother was my desperately-needed lifeline.  I could CHOOSE another path.  I decided to live my life in a childlike (not CHILDISH) way, in MY style, based upon my natural wiring.  I was born to be bountiful, joyful, playful, light-hearted and frisky, but that had been beaten out of me.  My first phase was over, and I could start all over again.

I would treat everyone like they were a beloved sibling.  I would look for the good in others.  I would learn (eventually) how to cry without shame, whenever I needed to.  Therapy helped.  A LOT.

And, I became entirely available for hugs.  Not stiff, awkward “A-Frame” hugs, where you only make contact at the shoulders.  I am all about the full-on, joyful and authentic embrace.

I am a pretty perceptive man, and I would never impose an embrace upon somebody who didn’t want one.  That would be creepy, and I don’t want to ever be creepy.  I might offer a hug by using body language (holding my arms open a bit, with a quizzical look on my face), or I might say “Are you the type that hugs?”

This makes it their choice.  They can decline, and I don’t mind.  I do not attach my own self-worth to their decision.  That way, I don’t lose heart and stop reaching out as the years go by.

For me a hug is a time to be glad to know somebody, or to meet them for the first time.  In the Mankind Project, I learned how to “hold space” with somebody - to be fully present with them, because they are important and valuable.  I breathe with them during the hug, and give an honest blessing that is in my heart at the time.

My hugs are legendary, according to the folks who know me.  Even posing for a picture always involves an embrace.

The Distinction Between Bounty, and Scarcity

When my husband and I were first dating 28 years ago, we were at a country-western gay dance bar.  His friends approached him and asked “What’s it like to be dating a SLUT?!??”

He was baffled, and said “What do you mean?”  They said “Look at him, over there.  Everybody is hugging him!”  He came over and told me about it, asking for my opinion.  I laughed and laughed, but not in a mean way.

I said “I am not promising these people penis, nor am I promising them money.  I am bountiful by nature.  I feel that there is enough love in the world for everyone.  Who WOULDN’T want to be admired for being kind?”  He liked that.

Yes, I have been a slutty, unapologetically sexual being my entire adult life, but that’s a DIFFERENT story. 😈

“Scarcity” is a zero-sum game.  If I can deny something good for somebody else, then that means that I get to keep that good thing for ME.  If they fail because they didn’t get what they need, then that’s no skin off MY ass, right?

Nope.  I am ALL about “Bounty,” where we can cooperate, share, and create enough love, respect and trust for everybody.  Over the decades, a few folks have made a foolish assumption about me…
I am sweet and trusting by conscious choice (”Happiness Is  A Choice That We Make Every Day”), but I’m also nobody’s doormat.  If I detect somebody trying to take unfair advantage of me or others, then I put a definitive stop to that action, toot sweet!

The Distinction Between Sex, and Intimacy

Sex is easy.  It’s everywhere to be found.  With a bit of practice, we can ATTRACT someone.  The trick is learning how to RETAIN them.  With my bountiful nature, that has never been a problem.  Men are drawn to me, because I am free of the usual inhibitions about intimacy.

There are four heterosexual men in this photo.

Periodically, I teach classes.  I teach Tops, Doms, Sirs, Masters and the like.  It’s delightful, and gives my life purpose.  One of the ice-breaker classes that I include in a semester is called “Sex vs. Intimacy.”  Men NEED that class.  We can be so emotionally stunted because the larger culture forces us apart, and we don’t get the cuddles, support and intimacy that we crave with other males.

If I am teaching in a group situation, I always find ways to make it an intimate experience, by having others be in contact throughout the session.  This is incredibly easy to set up, because the men gladly want to join in, at long last.  They just needed the invitation.

Other Resources

I have heard very good things about various Men’s Groups, such as Body Electric.  If anyone can recommend more, please provide some links in your comments below.

93 Percent Of Straight Men In This Study Said They’ve Cuddled With Another Guy.

Folks are even paying for hugs.

Maintenance Hugs

This is where I bring it all back to your original question, brother.  If it’s hard to find the words, then it means that you have not yet upgraded your social circle.

So, be what you need.  If folks around you aren’t in the habit of hugging, then it’s clearly time for you to be a bountiful soul.  Let your beautiful light shine, without withholding or shame.  There will be folks who don’t understand.  We can’t live our lives at the effect of other people’s opinions, and be emotionally healthy, too.

Over time, you will find that the majority of folks are starving for hugs, trust and honest friendliness, just like you.  Folks respond beautifully to the sensitive ones who create the affectionate theme for others in a conscious way.  I have proven this, thousands of times.

When I was growing up, there was a saying:

“Human beings need a MINIMUM of seven hugs a day, just for maintenance!”

I agree with that opinion.  I do my best to live by it, decade after decade.

The Importance of Male Embrace & Touch

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serviceorientedsub:

The importance of male touch cannot be overstated. Sadly, as we grow into adulthood, we are told to let this go. We horse around as kids. We play sports that bring us together. We belong to frats. We have best buddies we sit on a couch with and do nothing but chill.

Then men are expected to leave this aspect of their lives in order to spend all of their time at work or with family.

Gay men have the advantage here. We get to have more physical contact with our friends and buddies. i wish i could convince the straight guys of the world to commit at least two hours a week to being naked or physical with other men. There doesn’t have to be sex involved. It will refresh your soul and remind you that you are part of a brotherhood of animals.

see the MEN i worship: http://serviceorientedsub.tumblr.com/

Touch, like bondage and pain, is a tool to connect us to our bodies. It has tremendous power to heal us and bond us

Papa Tony:

“Skin Hunger” is a real thing. I have taught many men’s classes on the distinction between “sex” and “Intimacy.” Mostly, the men are gay, but in this particular class there are a few heterosexual men in the picture:



I am able to connect well with a lot of straight men. Word gets around that I have no interest in being all “Hands and Glands” with them. So, I will attend pansexual kinky people’s social events. The ones who approach me for my patented embraces are the male dominants. Over and over, multiple times in one evening. They lay their heads on my chest and give out a deep sigh.

What makes my hugs so popular? I don’t do the “A-Frame” hug: HiHowaya-slap-the-back-dismiss. ick. I do an actual embrace. They last at least five seconds, sometimes more. I breathe with them. During that time, I am being PRESENT with them. I am glad to know them. I “hold space” for the entire time, treasuring their presence in the world. I’m not thinking about tomorrow’s schedule. I am with them because I like them.

I also will bless them with whatever is true for me. If I admire that man, I tell him so, and in a detailed way. The gay-male kinky community doesn’t have many elders who bless. There are even fewer in the hetero-kinkster side of things.

Kinky Doms are expected to KNOW things automatically, as if wisdom was built into their “Y” chromosomes, and it is NOT. Being the One In Charge can be stressful, when you are trying to hold it together all on your own. So, a loving hug from a kindly brother is always, always appreciated.

Memoirs of a Gay Leather Elder 03: Sexuality

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This is me, at the age when I was organizing 

neighborhood nudity events for boys.

Early Days

As I have said, I was raised Catholic, from 1955 until 1975, when I renounced all of that, and came out as gay.  I was the first member of my family who ever came out of the closet.  Since then, multiple other relatives have been emboldened to come out as well, but I had to deal with being the first.

Sex was a shameful, sinful problem in the culture when I grew up.  When I was twelve (and quite tall), my mother walked into my bedroom without knocking, and found me masturbating.  She shrieked "YOU'RE GOING TO HELL!" and slammed the door behind her.

That was 100% of my sexual conversation with either of my parents.  Ever.

I could go on and on about the repression, shaming and disgust that I grew up with, concerning my body and other people's sex lives. The Catholic programming was intensive, and never went away.

Despite all of this, I knew what every other boy on my street looked like naked, by the time I was eight years old. Writing this, I realize that this wasn't surprising.  As an adult, I have hosted over 3,000 social events (here is a small sample), and I have been a natural, easy "Julie the Cruise Director" all of my life. I'm good at giving folks permission to have a good time.

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I was thirteen years old in this photo.

The Invention of Masturbation

Even as a boy, I could convince the neighborhood boys to gather in the moonlight, and be sinfully naked together.  Later on, I invented masturbation for the first time in human history(!), and taught it to them as well...

I was always the smallest boy in my class, since I was the youngest.  This lasted all of the way through sixth grade. In the three months between sixth and seventh grade, I shot up to a height of six foot three.

I had a father who wanted nothing to do with me, and three brothers who were around ten years older than me. They were long-gone from my life by this time, so I was on my own, without any wise male mentors.

So, I discovered that Prell shampoo, used as a lubricant, felt GREAT when I stroked my penis. It didn't take long before white stuff came out of my cock, which was quite a shock. This coincided with my rapid growth, so I naturally assumed in my ignorance that the two were connected:

Stroking one's penis made people TALL!  It surely must have kicked my hormones into high gear. I wanted to share the news with every short person on earth, so that they could be tall, too!  I had invented a wonderful thing!

In my excitement, I told my friend Steve, who enjoyed mutual groping with me on a regular basis. He was a small boy, so he was pleased to hear about my breakthrough.  A week later, he reported back that I was merely "masturbating", and that it was a common practice, according to his older sister. This grossed him out, and he stopped hanging around with me.

Incidentally, I also learned that Prell shampoo was a TERRIBLE lubricant.  This was in the days before folks figured out pH-balanced shampoos, so Prell was alarmingly alkaline.

My penis started shedding skin in one piece, exactly like a snake. Until I figured out that grease made a better choice, my dick molted a LOT.

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Even the DOG was female. No male role-models. I was nineteen.

My Sexual Crisis

I was a very good boy. My older siblings told me how good and sweet I was as a toddler, and I had a sunshine-y nature from the very start.  I wasn't even a rebellious teenager. I was my momma's favorite child, out of ten.

I had starting having sex with women from age fourteen onward.  I had to fantasize about my best friend to maintain an erection, and there was no joy in it.  Technically, I am bisexual.  However, in the 1970's, you had to make a CHOICE… one or the other...  GAY or STRAIGHT, and I didn't want to make that choice, because I knew how mercilessly bullied and tormented those effeminate gay guys in high school had been.

Then, I joined the Navy. Suddenly, I was constantly around naked men in the locker rooms and showers, and I was constantly struggling to convince myself that I was straight.

After boot camp, I was shipped off to the Great Lakes Navy Training Center in Illinois for electronics classes.  It was my first time away from home, and I had no friends.  I was lonely, shut-down and horny, without any hope of expressing my desires.

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Taking Drugs.  Lots Of Them.

This was back in the days before Random Drug Testing in the military, and it was the 1970's.  Drugs were everywhere, widely accepted, and in common practice.  In my misery, I started going hardcore. Uppers, downers, LSD, mescaline and marijuana.  Anything that I could get my hands on.  I was shoving my feelings down, trying not to face up to who I wanted to be.

I nearly overdosed at one point, yet I kept going.  Then, I tried what turned out to be PCP mixed with smack, and it was as close to dying as I have ever been in my life. Projectile vomiting.  Inability to breathe, unless I forced myself. Blind panic. Blacking out, and waking up surrounded by anxious roommates, who thought that I was dead.

After forty years, my memory is faulty, but I believe that my own paranoia was the reason why nobody called for military medics.  I recovered without medical attention, after a couple of days (it was a long, holiday weekend).  It was a close thing.

Afterward,  I was fundamentally traumatized. I had hit a wall. This epiphany made me STOP trying to end my life through the slow suicide of drugs. A whole life of shaming came crashing down on me all at once, and I couldn't go any further in this direction.

So, I gathered up my courage and went to the Navy base psychiatrist.  To my great good fortune, he was a wise, supportive gay man.  He told me that I was homosexual, that it wasn't going to change, and then he gave me the "It Gets Better" speech.  In 1975.

He told me everything that I needed to hear.  He contradicted every bit of the toxic programming that I had grown up with, and it all poured into my eager, grateful ears. It turned out, there was a CULTURE out there, where gay men supported each other.  It wasn't about isolated perverts, going to hell.

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THE Most Momentous Decision of My Life

I was FURIOUS with the culture that I had now left behind.  All of that Catholic repression, shaming, ignorance and unkindness now seemed to be the very worst possible environment for a sensitive queer, and I wanted nothing more to do with it.  I was no longer a good boy - I was a pissed-off rebel.

The Navy shrink had saved my life with his kind mentoring, and I made a powerful vow to keep seeking wisdom, and to never stop.

I was painfully aware of how little I knew of the ways of the world.  I had no street smarts, and this made me angry.  I considered my entire life up to this moment to be a waste of valuable time. It was time to create my new reality.

Decades later, I still have angry feelings that remain,  In my current opinion, Catholic school in the 1960's and early 70's was no better than a madrassa.

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A happier man.  I was finally on the right track.

The King Of Sensual Massage

I decided that I was going to make up for lost time.  I started offering my three roommates in the Navy barracks backrubs, and honey, I did a GREAT job.  Word soon spread throughout the base:  "Lindsey in Barracks J" gave sensational massages. I would hear a knock on the door, and a stranger would be standing there, rubbing his neck, grimacing with "pain" and needing my expert touch.

I'd sensually put all of my desires into it, switching between tender and powerful, and back again.  It was pure seduction.  All of my repressed passions would be dedicated to THRILLING this handsome stranger.  I'd finish his back and neck, slap his ass and tell him to flip over, and he'd be sporting a boner, just like I was.

In a short time, I'd be fucking his ass, and he'd cum at the same time that I did.  I have always a real fetish for that.  It's a variation of cum control.

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My First Boyfriend

This went on for months, with dozens of lonely men, and my electronics school grades went UP.  I wasn't stuck any more.  Then, a cute redhead named Philip showed up at my door. We became boyfriends.  One of my roommates kindly swapped rooms with him, so that we could spend more time together.

In fact, ALL of our roommates were supportive of us. They thought that we were a cute couple. Several of our roommates told us that they had had sexual experience with men. This blew my mind, because the world of sexuality turned out to be a lot more interesting (and less isolated) than I had ever imagined.

I had no previous experience of having a man respond gladly to my romantic feelings (as opposed to plain old sex), and it was heaven!  We didn't hold back at all, when we were alone.  Our pleasure together was clumsy and ignorant, but we had a lot of catching-up to do, and we had a blast.

"Skin Hunger" is definitely a thing. Orgasms are nice, and I recommend them strongly.  However, in my entire life, I have been most pleased to share intimacy, above all. With my innate perceptive nature, I have always striven to play a man like a violin, sexually.

Philip and I could sleep together in the same narrow bunk every night, and it was heaven.  Nobody minded.  As soon as the roommates went away, we'd be naked and swarming over each other, caressing and touching everywhere. After learning how to attract sexual partners, I had shifted to my next step, which was learning how to retain a man in my life, for romance.

After six months of thrilling "honeymoon time," the Navy suddenly shipped Philip off to another part of the world.  That was the end of that relationship.  I still miss that man. Ever since, I have had a special attraction to redheads.

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The Anal Warts That Probably Saved My Life

My next boyfriend was a tall drag queen named Lamarr.  Back in those days, it was hard to find accurate, kindly wisdom about sex.  So, I was a little grossed-out about Lamarr's anal warts, but we worked around them.  As a result, I caught a nasty case as well.

I went to the Navy Hospital to have them removed, and was treated contemptuously, with anger and shaming: "It's a FILTHY disease, and you can only get them in one way".  This same attitude extended into the surgery room.  I was laid legs-up on a conductive metal plate, and the warts were electrically burned-off, inside and out, with unnecessary and vindictive violence. They never came back.

Six months later, I was still hemorrhaging large amounts of deep, red blood with every bowel movement.  Every time that I took a dump, it's was like shitting a rose bush.  To this day, I still have extensive scar-tissue that is very delicate.

And now, decades later, I believe that this was a blessing.

Up to that point, I had been bottoming periodically, I had a sensational ass, and my nickname was "Thunder Buns," so a lot of men wanted to give it a ride.  After surgery, there was no WAY anybody would get anywhere near my ass.

This was the late 1970's, and when I joined the Leather community shortly thereafter, I started attending hundreds of large, well-attended parties, where I would have sex with strangers for days at a time. I was doing everything that they did, except for two things:

- I was so paranoid about drugs after that last near-overdose, I wouldn't even take aspirin, much less get stoned like everyone around me. I'd be the only sober man out of 120 at the fuck-party.

- I would NOT let anyone fuck me, so that was strictly off of the list.

As an exclusive Top, I was vastly less likely to catch AIDS (once in 15,000 sexual contacts), during the days when nobody knew what was coming. I did get syphilis once, gonorrhea twice, and crabs a few times, but I had those treated, and haven't had any form of sexually-transmitted disease since 1981.  I know this, because I compulsively had myself tested for decades.

This is next part is not a brag - It's just my true history:

I had sex with thousands of men during the late 1970's.  After so much repression and shaming, I wanted to take a full measure of my abilities, and desirability.  I craved external validation, and I used sex like most men use a handshake… to initiate contact.

I will talk about that more, soon, and often.