When the column first started, almost no one knew what to make of it. Gay sex advice, when it’s published at all, has that kind of “everyone-is-beautiful-in-his-own-way” and “isn’t-it-all-wonderful” kumbayah hogwash that makes even the biggest dick pigs cough up what they shouldn’t be swallowing in the first place.
At first, it was hard to get papers to carry “Need Wood?". “It’s too controversial,” said one editor, worried about all the headaches that come with controversy. “Can’t you tone it down?” Well, no. I offered to throw in a year’s supply of Advil and a bottle of Insta-Spine, but he declined. Years later, the column became one of the most successful syndicated properties in the gay press.
If you’re wondering why every letter addresses me as “Woody” when my name is Michael, it’s because you’ve never heard of Eppie Lederer, may she rest in peace. She was known in many circles as Ann Landers. I write the column under the pseudonym “Woody” because hell hath no fury like a gay man dissed. I just didn’t want to be the victim of a drive-by doiling.
But with this book, I’m throwing caution to the wind the way my readers throw their legs in the air—with wild abandon. Now everyone will have a shot at boiling my pets in an exquisite tarragon, rose petal and saffron demi-glace, with pecan-crusted hearts of palm and a delicate mint-fennel sauce.
You won’t really learn how to be a better lay with this book. I mean, there’s plenty on techniques but that’s not the point of the book. The point is to show the real struggles, the real problems, and our real behavior (or rather misbehavior) in the face of our all-consuming desire.
In other words, this isn’t a manual; it’s theater.
From the inane to the insane, from the sad to the bad, from the ingratiating to the infuriating, the questions and answers in this book will leave you laughing, crying, and sometimes spitting nails.
Many of the questions come from guys who are not “out” to their doctors, making honesty and forthrightness a scarce commodity during office visits. They’re also too embarrassed to ask their friends, particularly if it’s a painful and potentially shaming problem like having a small penis or being HIV positive.
The letters give you a voyeuristic glimpse of other people’s sex lives. The questions tend to run a lot longer than those in other advice columns because, in my humble opinion, the questions are often more interesting than the answers.
I said “often” not “always.” Give me some credit, for Chrissakes.
Critics—and there are many—loathe my column because they feel society at large already judges and ridicules gay men, and here I am joining them.
If I were making fun of men loving each other, they might have a point. But I don’t make fun of male love. I make fun of the way we go about getting it, maintaining it, losing it, and looking all over for it again.
Nothing is more entertaining to me than watching gay men rationalize the excesses of their vanity and their promiscuity. That’s why I relish whacking the piety piñata. I love watching the canonized candy that sprays out of it.
Look, when straight men don’t tell the truth about their sexual lives we call them liars. When gay men don’t, we call them “dissidents.” The HIV “dissidents,” for example, want to keep shtuuping everything that moves, but that doesn’t sound too good in the middle of a plague, so they adopt an absurd crusade against medical facts.
The homo holier-than-thou hypocrisy can also be seen in sex panic types who cloak their compulsive need for anonymous sex in public restrooms with high-minded talk of sexual freedom. The truth is, we won’t allow ourselves to be honest about our sexual natures. We won’t allow ourselves to say that we’re sexual beings, and that the organizing principle for most of us is to get us some man-meat.
We’re not allowed to say, for example, “Yeah, we hit on this idea to use abandoned warehouse space, awful music, and mind-whacking drugs to get laid more often.” Instead, we say bullshit things like “I go to circuit parties because it gives me a sense of belonging,” or because it’s a “difficult and necessary spiritual journey.”
We’re the only group I know that can make the pursuit of plain old dog-yard scrumping sound like some noble, spiritual quest for a better life.
Both gay men and straight men are afraid to admit we want to have as much sex with as many people as we can. Where we diverge is in the strategies we use to cover up our inconvenient natures. Straight men pretend they don’t really feel that way; gay men admit they feel that way but for righteous reasons.
I constantly get letters from people who marinate in what Phillip Roth called the “ecstasy of sanctimony.” No group drips with this kind of moist sexual self-righteousness like the kink crowd. Well, with the possible exception of the “Safe Sex Nazis.” Or the “Just Say No to Drugs” crowd, or the “Monogamy Mommas” or the … wait, I’m running out of groups.
My point, and I do have one, is that we’re humorless hypocrites when it comes to sex and I consider it my life’s mission to poke fun of the hypocrisy till it goes away.
When it comes to sex all of us, at some point, fall off the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down. Consider me the guy who helps you up, dusts you off, and shows you a better tree to climb. While making fun of you the entire time.
Hey, it’s enough that I’m helping. I have to be nice, too?
I get a lot of satisfaction from writing this column. What could be more rewarding than liberating people from their fears, their preconceptions, their hesitancies? What could be more rewarding than helping people achieve a deeper understanding of their nature, their problems, their struggles? What could be better than knowing you helped someone overcome their shame and have a more rewarding sex life?
Other than fucking them, I mean.
Chapter 1 How Your Dick Works: How to Work Your Dick
This chapter is about the brain between our legs.
You don’t need to write a sex advice column to know that the Great Male Decision-Maker suffers from a low IQ and a large appetite, a sometimes deadly but mostly comic combination. If you did, you’d know what most of the questions in this chapter are about. I wouldn’t have to spell it out in big, long, and (did I mention) thick, letters.
Yes, the size of the prize is what draws the most letters. So let’s put the subject to rest: Yes, size matters. To size queens. To the rest of us, it’s right up there with six-pack abs and chiseled cheeks—nice, but nothing we’d throw you out of bed for if you didn’t have it.
First, a fact: Condom manufacturers say only 6 percent of the male population needs extra-large condoms. You can imagine how that makes the other 94 percent feel.
If big dicks mean better sex then that means only 6 percent of all men have great sex. I don’t think so. And neither do you, but it doesn’t matter. We know great sex has little to do with size yet we obsess about it anyway.
Most of the letters I get about the subject are pathetic (“How can I make it bigger?” “How can I at least make it look bigger?”). The small number of people—size queens—who truly believe that bigger dicks mean better sex, have inflicted a terrible inferiority complex on gay men.
Nothing
