BijouBlog

I used to wear loud pajamas with seventies colors that my brother said could “wake the dead,” even through my early twenties. I was used to I guess sleeping chastely, but I did not go completely in that direction, wearing a nightcap. 

I switched to sleeping in sweatpants as I matured in the adult world. I was already wearing them around the house all the time when I came out, but I never made the transition to wearing them out and about except when jogging. I don't know … I just feel like they are too casual for even mundane activities like shopping, and since they are my main sleepwear, I feel like I am going outside in my pajamas (I did that once when I lived in the dorms, but that's another story). 

Now it seems, the boundaries between sleepwear and casual everyday wear are more blurred. I've taught students who wear those flannel lounge pants (which for me are essentially glorified pajama bottoms) to class, and not just those who live in the dormitories. 
 

Thus, given the trend I mentioned above, seeing a guy in sweatpants on the subway or the bus is pretty routine these days, which leads me to my main point: one just doesn't notice the sweatpants. One notices the bulge. And if the guy is really hung, he “freeballs.” The loose-fitting wear allows some motion beneath one can see. 
 

Craigslist missed connections is replete with what I call the bulge gaze, usually quick and furtive, or furtively repetitive, in the gym, on the subway, in the Home Depot. I noticed the bulge in your sweatpants. Dude, you were freeballing when you got up from your seat in the subway. 

And combine the freeballing with the manspread, you've practically got enough vision of the cock to start creaming in your pants or sweatpants. 

I will share my one somewhat, and I say somewhat, erotic experience with sweatpants. I hosted a Halloween party many years ago. I dressed up as Joan Crawford as played  by Faye Dunaway in the Mommie Dearest jogging scene. (I must mention that men only wore sweatpants in the gym, and people, especially women, did not jog in public, in the 1930s.) I was wearing tight gray sweatpants. I slathered some mint julep masque on my face to combine that scene with the infamous wire hangers/forced bathroom cleaning scene. The costume was not a hit. The sweatpants were. 
 

A guest at the party, I think an acquaintance of a friend, was so enamoured of me in those sweatpants, that he pulled me into the bedroom and began feeling me over. He was not attractive to me, and I repelled his advances. I immediately complained to his friend, who basically told him he had to leave. Yes, my guest was drunk. Goodness, this sounds like sexual harassment, but I didn't think of it that way at that time. 

The next week I received in the mail (these were the days before the Internet) I guess what could be called a love letter or love poem. I apparently was so hot in those sweatpants. The sweatpants showed off my perfect ass. I received another letter and once more I complained to the mutual friend. 

Now I am thinking I should be so lucky to get fondled and stalked, at my age, but I must remember the guest was not cute. If it had been one of the other guests, the tall guy with the mustache wearing a tuxedo and harness boots, that would have been another story. 

I must admit since I lost 30 pounds I could probably buy a smaller size in sweatpants and maybe dare to wear them out to the Walgreens. 

Miracles do happen. Even when you are wearing sweatpants.

I enjoyed sex with this guy off and on for some time in the nineties (both “vanilla” and BDSM), and one time when we were making out in his van he began to blow in my ear. The action itself doesn't really get me a woody, but as part of the whole erotic foreplay it definitely added something to the experience as a whole. 

Now, the ear itself doesn't strike me as being particularly erotic, but what it is supposed to do, transmit sounds, can add so much excitement, especially in BDSM sensory play. I used to like (and still do, but I am the “binder,” not the “bindee”) being bound and hooded and hearing the dominant sound of boots walking around the dungeon, For me, the sound of power is the sound of hard-heeled boots, and I've noticed lately that men's boots and shoes usually possess rubber heels to mute the sound. Why? I wonder, when the same does not apply to women's footwear (that's another blog). 

And of course there's dirty talk, which can occur even in more conventional sex scenes. Or doing it with music in the background. It takes great mental concentration and keen listening to try and time your orgasm to the climax of Wagner's Liebestod (I know from experience.) 

Overall, some people experience reality through hearing, some are more visual, some are more tactile. Still, what about more directly physical interactions with the ear itself? 

Blowing in the ear combines both a tactile and a hearing sensation, but then there's also guys who like to nibble on the ear (something my cat does, in her case a sign of affection as well as impatience, play with me, feed me). 
 

Maybe it's getting down to something really primal, the nibbling, but the ear of course features significantly in so many other cultural contexts. 

As a child, I was fascinated by the pointed ears of Spock, and all those elves and fairies sported them as well. Perhaps just changing slightly a feature of the ear was enough to evoke images of otherworldly power and knowledge. (And to set the record straight, Tolkien's elves, regardless of the movie's visualization of them, did not have pointed ears. See Appendix F of The Return of the King.) 
 

And let's not forget the legendary Carol Burnett who would tug on her ear at the end of each show (one time I remember she pulled an earring off while doing so!). It originated as a signal to her grandmother because Carol in her early days at the Gary Moore Show couldn't shout out, “Hey, Nanny, are you watching?” She always knew her beloved “Nanny” was watching her famous granddaughter, and even after Nanny passed, she kept that signal as a way of connecting with that memory. 
 

Cutting off the ear was a punishment in the medieval and early modern periods, especially for offenses regarding religion. For example, in the seventeenth century the Puritan William Prynne was condemned to this punishment for heresy by the Anglican ArchbishopWilliam Laud, interesting, for one might think the other side would want him to hear their version of truth. But perhaps Laud thought it was appropriate because he led the faithful astray because they heard the Puritan's sermons. 
 

Are you still listening? One can hear, but not listen, so often in this frenetic culture where words disappear in cyberspace in a nanosecond. 

Take the time to really listen, and maybe try and remember and share your own unique, erotic ear experiences (but save the earwax stories, ew! I recently experienced an issue with that substance). 

And Bijou Video offers unique “dirty talk” audio CDs from those Old Reliablerough trade guys in the Sexcessories section of our website.

Check them out, along with other auditory delights at BijouWorld.com and BijouGayPorn.com. 
 

 

Randomly channel surfing on a blissfully quiet evening as I attempted to escape from the current political mudslinging, I came across a movie on Turner Classic Movies, Hollywood Canteen, from 1944. Yes, the supposedly good ole days, America's greatest generation, depicted in Norman Rockwell pictures. The movie definitely evokes a show (in more ways than one) of unity, in its context, a unity of the free world against the dictatorships of Germany and Japan. 
 

Two soldiers on leave spend three nights at the Hollywood Canteen (an actual place founded by Bette Davis) before returning to active duty in the South Pacific. Slim Green (Robert Hutton) is the millionth G.I. to enjoy the Canteen, and consequently wins a date with starlet Joan Leslie. The other G.I., Sergeant Nolan (Dane Clark) gets to dance with Joan Crawford and in a really funny scene, faints when she tells him she doesn't just look like Joan Crawford, but is Joan herself. (At that time, Joan had left MGM and had signed on with Warners, where Betty was queen; she didn't like the scripts her new studio offered her, and bascially went on suspension, only making a cameo in this piece as part of her support for the war effort.) 

Canteen founders Bette Davis and John Garfield give talks on the history of the Canteen. The soldiers enjoy a variety of musical numbers performed by a host of Hollywood stars, and also comedians, such as Jack Benny and his violin. Jack Benny actually does a “violin play off” against the really famous Hungarian violinist, Josef Szigeti. Soprano (later mezzo-soprano) Kitty Carlisle of Marx Brothers and later What's My Line fame sings Joan and Slim Green's theme song, “Sweet Dreams, Sweetheart.” 

Not much of a plot, but in the days before the 24/7 culture of celebrity, the parade of movie stars doing cameos seems unusual, but they do so not to build their own images, but to, like the country did at that time, present a united front during WWII. Looking back in retrospect, these were the days right before the Cold War hysteria, where Hollywood became the enemy, filled with Communists and Jews (pretty much stereotyped as being synonymous). 

A couple of other points that I found quite telling in retrospect. Eddie Cantor (he was Jewish, by the way) and Nora Martin sing “We're Having a Baby.” It takes Nora a while to tell Eddy she is pregnant (she can't say that word, of course). One can see that postwar baby boom essentially being advertised. The soldier will come home to a now stay-at-home wife in an apron and produce more little soldiers (as part of the banter, the possibility of a girl seems almost an afterthought). 

And those who make those babies are of course heterosexual. In this film, soldier boys Hutton and Clark are rewarded with girl kisses. In one scene, one of the comedians, whose name escapes me, jokingly kisses a sailor guy on the cheek. Of course, the sailor wipes off the cheek. It's a joke, of course. Boys don't kiss other boys. Boys are your pals. Hutton and Clark one could say are kind of in the bromance phase, but the separate twin beds and pajamas that could wake the dead in one scene reveal a world of male-male relationships far from today's sexually fluid, bi-curious bros. 

I also discovered that Bette Davis insisted the canteen be integrated, quite revolutionary for theat time period. In the movie, a quartet of African-Americans, The Golden Gate Quarter do a number (not as cringeworthy as some during that period), but they are an act, and they don't mingle with the guests and the movie stars. Still, the actual place was open to African-Americans and another significant ethnic minority in Los Angeles during that period, Filipino-Americans. 

Bette was always a risk-taker, and if she lacked Joan Crawford's glamour and charm, she never lacked for the sincerity of her convictions (which some people interpreted as abrasiveness). When she says at the end of the film that our hearts are with the soldiers, and that connection transcends, at least in that case, segregation, it isn't mawkish sentiment. She means it with certainty of Immanuel Kant's “starry heavens above and moral law within.” 
 

 

Every day for breakfast, except on weekends: a bowl of cold cereal. For me, the thrill of themed sugar cereals wore off quickly, even the Halloween-themed ones Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry (let's dump sugar and colored marshmallows in milk, yum!). 
 

For a brief while I enjoyed eating Captain Crunch dry, out of the box, as a snack, even as a young adult, especially during a hangover.

I briefly toyed with Golden Grahams and granola-based cereals in high school, but my aversion really developed when I had to empty a bowl of half-eaten milk-sodden Cheerios into the kitchen sink when I was babysitting my youngest brother. The family dog at that time got Cheerios for breakfast too, and that dog would eat anything, even her own poop. 
 

Let's just say I have developed an aversion to this staple of the breakfast menu, and it's not just an American phenomenon. The traditional English breakfast of eggs, bacon, kippers, tomatoes, beans, and fried bread (hello, cholesterol attack) didn't appear on the household table when I studied in London in the early eighties except when I stayed at bread and breakfast establishments (so, maybe it is strictly for tourists, perhaps). Guess what? We ate cold cereal with milk. 

Sometimes Muesli, a breakfast and brunch dish based on raw rolled oats and other ingredients like grains, fresh or dried fruits, seeds and nuts, that may be mixed with milk,was available, apparently very popular in Europe. I thought it resembled vomit. 
 

Even Dame Joan Sutherland, the late great Australian soprano, asked a house guest what type of cold cereal he wanted with breakfast. She was taken aback when he responded that he never ate cereal in the morning. 
 

The anti-masturbation crusader John Harvey Kellogg of Kellogg's Corn Flakes fame pretty much started this whole breakfast-cereal-in-the-morning fad which soon became a tradition. His “granula” treat was produced to prove that a healthy diet with plenty of fiber could keep one's hands off one's wanker. At that time, in the late nineteenth century, processed foods were becoming prevalent in American diets, especially in urban areas, and consumers embraced the convenience perhaps more than the health benefits. 
 

Well, John Harvey, I find it quite interesting another name for the now traditional image of the rooster on a box of Corn Flakes that evokes images of the sun rising on amber waves of grain on the fruited plains of American the beautiful is cock. Ha! 

And John Harvey would probably collapse if he found out about an idiosyncratic genre of gay porn, cereal porn. Yep, guys get off on watching hot guys eating cereal, like Dave Daniels in our title Morning, Noon and Night!
 

 

 

Maybe the fetish has got something to do with the guy's mouth, and maybe the act of eating cold cereal, because it involves ingesting something both solid and liquid. And of course, cum is often compared to milk. De gustibus. 

If you get excited by someone eating smoked salmon and spinach for breakfast, come over to my house. You can have all you want!

I date from the times when people could smoke in bars, or, in at least one place I worked, in the building. 

Yes, no one was exiled outside for furtive puffs. (But being a nonsmoker, I didn't think it was quite fair that the smokers could take smoke breaks. No one at that oppressive institution was allowed any official 15-minute breaks.) 
 

Two of my friends used to smoke, until quite recently, but their respective doctors ordered them to quit. (One of those persons gained weight after he quit.) 

I live in a building that used to forbid smoking (I used to sneak a cigar now and then). And where I currently work full-time, one cannot even smoke outside anywhere on the official boundaries of the institution. 

Yet persons still do it, and I'm not here to get into the health issues. I understand the cigar fetish, given that I move in BDSM circles, and I've also encountered in those circles the Marlboro cigarette fetish, with its obvious iconic macho male image connections.

You know, that mustached hunk, the Marlboro Man himself … 
 

No, I'm thinking of casual, social smoking, which was assumed well into the 1970s and 1980s. It seemed like everyone lit up, and not just Bette Davis (a notorious chain smoker) and Joan Crawford. 
 

I remember proto-hipster parties I attended in the 1980s where all kinds of smoking occurred, legal and illegal. And usually in kitchens! 
 

And smoking in bed after sex was de rigeur as well, and not just in the movies. 
 

 

And I've often thought that some intimate interactions, which don't always end in sex, seem to need a cigarette or two. In those smoke-filled kitchens, I've made mind and soul connections with all sexes (alcohol helped too, of course) on topics ranging from Jesus Christ Superstar lyrics to Nietzsche to retro roosters to Finno-Ugric languages. 

I don't know, there's something je ne sai quoi about a guy holding a cigarette, when he is not trying to be seductive. And it's not the phallic connection (I get that more from a cigar). It's sexy because it isn't necessarily trying to be sexy. 
 

He stimulates desire by claiming to be more interested in that cigarette. And the next one. He knows I'll hold out for that last one.