Author Archives: John

Music 2

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Today has been an interesting day.  Firstly I had an appointment with a new physio about an ongoing issue that I have with my lower back.  Being 6’2″ is a blessing and a curse.  But I think that we might have finally found the right combination of stretching and exercises to resolve the problem.  The one weird thing I have noticed over the years is that sex makes lower back pain vanish completely (at least for a while!).

So, as part of my “core” strength building program to help support my back, I went to the pool here at Olympic Park and swam some laps.  Not the three kilometres I would once have done, but I was happy with the outcome.  Tomorrow I will swim again and go a bit further.  I came home from that feeling like I had no bones in my body.  That delightful feeling of being completely exhausted physically and floppy all over.

So, having had a quiet evening (and iTunes taking forever to download a movie on my very slow ADSL2 internet connection) I decided to pick up the guitar and practice some of the tunes I have been learning.  Not having a piano down here in the apartment means that I have to wait until I go home again to continue that adventure and that’s not going to happen for another week or two until my back is in better shape.  It’s one of the downsides of motorcycles.  They are hard on your back if it’s not in great shape.

So, one hour and totally worn out fingers later I am on my way to being able to play the first line of Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata Movement 3 and the most excellent riff from Dire Straights Sultans of Swing.  The only downside: my left hand fingertips (which are all numb and compressed from holding down guitar strings) now fail to work reliably on my laptop track pad for some weird reason!

Anyway, my musical adventures continue and I am having real fun with them.  One day soon I may even be able to play a full song.

John.

Music

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I have never had a happy relationship with playing music.  Like most Australian children in the 70’s, the first instrument I picked up at school was a recorder.  I didn’t learn to play it well and eventually moving on to clarinet and guitar never helped!  Although I will say that I had a brief stint with the xylophone that was outstanding at around age 8!

Xylophone aside I just never managed to connect with playing music.  I was similarly handicapped when it came to mathematics.  Both were banes of my childhood.  I really wanted to be good at both, but unlike friends and family around me I didn’t have that musical knack, or intuition, or connection that they had.

Years passed.

Now, here I am at age 42 and the music is calling me!  Have you ever had that feeling of looking at something and thinking: “I know I can do that!”.  I bought an acoustic guitar some time ago and have enjoyed tinkering and teaching myself how to play it – and I genuinely feel that there is now something different in my brain, because for the first time I genuinely “feel” the music.  Guitar is still proving a significant challenge and one that I will continue working on, because guitar is such a great instrument to be able to play.  It’s portable, sounds great on its own and is always popular.

My new discovery though is that I love piano.  If you have read previous posts you will know that my partner has a piano (I made a post here about tuning the one key that was out of tune).  So two days ago I sat down and started learning to play the very beautiful classical piece of music (Beethoven’s Tempest 3rd movement) that featured in the remake of the movie Total Recall.  It’s a stupendous challenge for someone who A. has never played piano and B. isn’t great an patting their head while rubbing their tummy!  However I have discovered that I can still read music fairly well (even if I can’t make my fingers do what the notes say – yet!).  The result is that with about four sessions of practice over two days, I can basically play the first line and a half.

I am under no illusions that what I am doing is any good really, but I just LOVE being able to sit down in front of a piano and produce from it, something that actually sounds like real music.  It is a fabulous experience that makes life a richer and more enjoyable thing to live.  As I write this, my partner is playing the theme song from the movie Amelie (by the composer Yann Tiersen) in the living room (she is much, much better than I am), filling the house with music that is beautiful and of her own making, imperfections, hesitations and all.

There is something about live music and the people who can create it that has always captured me.  From seeing cover bands in Melbourne pubs when I was at university to an individual sitting down at the public pianos that occasionally get placed around Circular Quay in Sydney.  It has been one of my lifelong desires to join those ranks.  Even at this late stage in my life (relatively speaking) perhaps it’s possible.

I could segue into something about sex here and perhaps I should.  A comparison between learning a new skill like playing an instrument and learning about sex and what we can enjoy with our bodies.  I do think that it’s a fair comparison, since most of us never get the chance to learn about sex, we just go along with the general assumption that it is something that just happens and you don’t need to learn or practice.

Well, like any instrument, the human body needs to be tuned and the skills practised if you want to create really beautiful music.

John.

Fire and ice

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I travel over the Blue Mountains regularly.  A fair amount of the bush that I ride through over toward Lithgow was burned in the fires at the end of 2013.  I have been startled by the stark beauty of the resulting landscape, and now the contrast of the regrowing foliage on the trees.

So, on a trip back around Christmas I stopped and took some photos of the charred bush and my bike which I thought I would share.

daytona_1 daytona_2I was really delighted with how true to life these images are.

John.

The Sydney Skinny!

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On Sunday I was lucky enough to participate in the Sydney Skinny, for those who don’t know it, it is an open water nude swim in Sydney Harbour at Cobbler Beach.  It is run each year around late February.

You can see the website here: http://www.thesydneyskinny.com.au/

The swim has two distances: a 300 meter swim and a 900 meter swim.  It is arranged in “waves” of about 50 swimmers each and this year they ran more than ten waves.  It’s really popular!  It is also really fun.  The atmosphere of the event was truly delightful.  Everyone was very respectful, very relaxed, and appeared to be enjoying themselves.  It’s not a race, there is no timing and no prizes, it’s a challenge only to yourself, to swim, to be nude in public, to accept yourself as you are.  Not always an easy thing to do.

I am lucky enough to have been comfortable with my body, with nudity, for pretty much all of my life.  Not so for everyone who was there.  But I didn’t see anyone back out.  Everyone stripped off and everyone swam.  There is a real comfort in seeing other people around you happily taking off their clothes, and not treating it like a big deal.  Just doing it.  And having fun while they are doing it.  It’s such a different celebration of nudity and the human body (in all shapes and sizes) than the one that is given to us by the media and the rest of society every day.

It is how I think that nudity should be treated.  Not good or bad.  Just natural.  Something that doesn’t have to be commented upon, sexualised, or demonised.  So I think that at the end of the day, this is the value of The Sydney Skinny.  It lets us be ourselves and be comfortable with who we are when there is no barrier between us and the world.

If you want to try a different form of self expression and to get out in the open air then I highly recommend The Sydney Skinny.  It may be challenging for you.  It may be easy.  But I am sure that it will be fun.

John.

The pubic hair debate

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Pubic hair and the question of whether to have lots, a little, or none is a perennial conversation. It pops up every now and then and draws plenty of debate about fashion, manipulation of women, self esteem, and more.

You can see the latest installment in the Guardian here:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/19/year-of-the-bush-female-body-hair-cameron-diaz-pubic

These are all good questions to be asking and the debate is always worth having. But I believe that it falls short, because I have never seen anyone discuss the merits of pubic hair in regard to actually having sex.  Neatly trimmed pubic hair versus a wild bush may may give certain “signals” to a potential partner, but what about when the signaling is over and you are in bed with someone?

Well, the short answer is that pubic hair or the lack there of can make sex a very different experience for both partners.  There are other factors involved too of course, like the amount of lubrication involved (natural or artificial) and condoms.

If a woman has no public hair on her outer labia, then it changes the sensations of penetration for both her and her partner.  For her partner (assuming adequate lubrication) it creates a much smoother, more slippery sensation.  Not more intense, not less intense – or better or worse even necessarily – but different.  For the woman there may be less stimulation of the outer labia, since there is no hair to be pulling on them.

Pubic hair and its lack can become quite significant in longer sex (say more than 15 or 20 minutes).  Depending upon the position/s that you are having sex in, pubic hair above the genitals (so on one’s pubic mound) can be problematic.  If you have it and your partner doesn’t, or vice versa, then over time it can become abrasive.  Having “neatened” pubic hair in this region I have found on occasion that I will get a little skin irritation in this area if my partner has more public hair than I do.  Of course this is only really a problem when having sex in missionary position or similar where there is very close contact.

At the end of the day, I am not inclined to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t have. But I will say this: experimenting can be fun!  If you have never shaved, then I highly recommend giving it a go.  Try it and see what you think and don’t let fashion or anyone else tell you what is right for you.

If you do decide that being partly, mostly, or completely bare works for you, then I highly recommend laser hair removal.  It is quick, mostly permanent and getting to be quite cheap these days.  It has worked well for me and once done avoids the difficulties of ingrown hairs and the need for regular shaving.

John.

Thwarted!

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I have been a cyclist of varying degrees of fitness for most of my life, but in recent years, I haven’t ridden as much as I would like to.  Other exercise, like Pilates, free weights, walking, and interval sprints have been the norm.

But today I felt like cycling.  So, seizing the moment I donned the appropriate clothing and headed for the garage.  Only to find that some inconsiderate person had managed to steal the frame pump off my bike which was locked up inside my security cage in the garage!  Disappointing doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling.

It is upsetting to have stuff that you have worked hard to buy stolen from you.  But it’s worse having good habits like exercise interrupted.  Things can be replaced, but that ride is lost to me forever.

Thankfully I was able to walk and do some interval sprints instead, so I got my exercise for the day, but I was really looking forward to going for a roll.

John.

You can do a lot in a day …

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As Justin Timberlake’s character said in the movie In Time: “You can do a lot in a day”.

It’s true, you can do a lot in a day.  You can do even more in a year.  And we have a brand new one ahead of us.  The hard part is knowing what to do with it.  All too often in life we find ourselves trapped in the mundane requirements of existing: work, bills, stuff that never seems to add anything meaningful to our lives beyond day to day survival.

All too often we are suppressing the things that we really feel and want, to allow ourselves to get along.  All too often one of those things is our sexuality.  It is almost inevitable that sex will come last given the way our society treats it – something that is wrong, or that we should be guilty about.  But it’s not.

Our sexuality is a core part of who we are.  When we deny that part of ourselves we distort our personality and our lives, often in unexpected and detrimental ways.

When we explore our sexuality, enjoy it, and give it a fair share of our time and energy then we can relieve hidden pressures, feel happier, and actually be able to engage with the world more effectively in other areas of our life.

Why not make this the year that your sexuality is a priority?  You can do a lot in a year.  Or even in a day.

John.

 

Welcome to 2014

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Welcome to a brand new year.  It seems to me (via observation of friends’ comments on Facebook) that 2013 has been a hard year for a lot of people.  It was a challenge for me too on a number of levels.  But I got through it, and along the way met some fantastic people, had a lot of good experiences and I would like to think, grew as a person.

The challenges that I went through have made it hard to write regularly for a few reasons, but I hope to be able to get back to more regular posts this year.

So in saying farewell to 2013 I would like to thank everyone I met, or continued to see through my work.  At the end of the day, it’s all about you and you continue to make this the best job in the world.

Thank you and I hope that 2014 is a great year for you.

John.

Relationship choices and your sexuality

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Everyone knows that: “women want sex less and are less promisuous than men – and men all want sex all the time and with anyone available”.

It’s a standard assumption about male and female sexuality in western society.  It is also untrue.  When you work in my industry your come to realise fairly quickly that most of what society tells you about sex and other people is wrong – you probably felt that it didn’t apply to you anyway, but there is always the suspicion that you might be the odd one out.

Well, thanks to science we have a chance to look beyond the assumptions, beyond the religious dogma, indoctrination, and social expectations.

I read two different articles recently – linked below.  One of them explained that when women answered questions about their sexual history and experience more honestly (when they didn’t feel a social pressure to give “acceptable” answers and thought that lying would be detected) they reported having, on average, 4.4 sexual partners in their lifetime.  Men on the other hand reported only 4.0 partners on average.

This turn our normal perception of men as sexually promiscuous and women as sexually conservative on its head.  Continue reading →

Debunking the myths of sex work – from the Sydney Morning Herald

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The Sydney Morning Herald’s Daily Life column has an article about sex work today.  You can see it here.

http://www.dailylife.com.au/health-and-fitness/debunking-the-myths-of-sex-work-20130429-2iodn.html

I think that the article is a reasonalbe and sensible wrap up of sex work.  In summary “sex workers are people too, so why not be nice to them”.  Ok, that might be a little glib, but you take my point I hope.

For the first time every I have managed to get a comment published.  I was prompted to firstly by the question raised in the article of whether male sex workers (like myself) and their clients have a different experience of the industry and the general “shaming” that goes on against sex workers.

What has delighted me constantly over the years that I have worked as an escort is the huge amount of support that I have had from both clients and from the few people in my life who I have told about what I do.

So here’s my point, amplified by the many mindless comments on the artile linked above that dismiss prostitution out of hand: being able to come to someone like me for companionship, intimacy, and sex is a vital option for both men and women to have in our society.  Why?  Because all too often the nature of our society doesn’t provide those things for people.  Perhaps they have been in an abusive relationship (emotionally, or physically) and need someone they can absolutely trust to help them repair their self-esteem, or accept intimacy again, or have a disability that prevents them from forming a conventional relationship in the first place.  Or perhaps they just want and need physical company right now, but don’t have a socially acceptable relationship to provide it.

The reasons are many and varied, but you can be absolutely sure that when people start making blanket statements about prostitution being bad/demeaning/imoral etc that the person has never worked in the industry, and probably never actually needed the services themselves (“need” being distinct here from just having indulged).

This isn’t to say that a person has to have a specific need to use my services.  But it begs the question of why can’t we treat sex as something fun to do?  People in relationships have sex for fun all the time, so why shouldn’t someone who isn’t in a relationship choose to buy sex for fun?

At the end of the day I like seeing discussion of sexuality in the media.  It may attract the trolls and nutters to denounce it as evil, but every article raises questions and gets people thinking and talking about the issues.  Which has to be a good thing.

John.