Such a clean old man

(considerable talk about male genitals, man-on-man sex, masturbation, and excretion, mostly in street language — pretty much a dirty jackpot — so not for kids or the sexually modest)

In conversation with my caregiver Erick Barros on 5/18, he complimented me on my being well-groomed and smelling good; this was not mere pleasant social talk, but a significant professional opinion from an experienced employee of Bay Area Geriatric. Who has no doubt seen aged folk who have tended to disregard grooming and bodily hygiene in the face of pain and concern with more pressing matters of life; and especially some men who tend to see things through the lens of a normative masculinity that (as part of a rejection of anything that smacks of femininity) views disregard for grooming and cleanliness as an assertion of masculinity — the attitude that leads to all-male getaways where the guys defiantly don’t shave, bathe, or change into fresh clothing and generally behave crudely (as an escape from the strictures of women).

Now, I reject this brand of masculinity; my own brand of homomasculinity — there are many homomasculinities, mine is just one of them — happily adopts elements conventionally associated with women (without actually identifying with women), including a concern for appearance and cleanliness. So yes, I’m a neat and clean old man in part because I’m an old gay man of a certain sort.

And then there’s the matter of my smell, which has nothing to do with sexuality. As it happens, my sweat is naturally very strong and musky; I really like the smell, because it is mine, but it’s not to everyone’s taste. And my sex sweat (which uncontrollably drenches my armpits and crotch when I’m aroused) is knock-out powerful (like Essence of Locker Room, according to one of my long-ago sexual partners — who, fortunately, experienced the smell as Stink of Hot Man); but that’s truly not to everyone’s taste, so needs some sort of control.

Part of the solution is is an unobtrusive but pleasant deodorant. As I posted some time ago, I eventually fixed on Native brand deodorants — paraben free, aluminum free, quite subtle, usable on crotch as well as underarms, and available in a variety of scents — I’m currently using bergamot (an oil extracted from a variety of Seville oranges) & pine.

In any case, pretty much everyone is subject to the spectre of crotch stink, the unavoidable result of various genital fluids confined in a warm space.

And then guys specifically collect drops of urine in their underwear as a largely unavoidable side-effect of pissing. This reality of life is recognized in a boyhood folk rhyme that I’ll digress on in a little while, but what’s special about my case is that I live in Diuresis City, in which (quite successful) massive-diuretics treatment for the edema associated with my advanced kidney disease means that I have to take a whizz every 20 or 25 minutes during the day, and once an hour all night long. Which is hell of a lot of drops of piss soaking into my briefs, making them wet and really smelly. So my daily body care necessarily includes routines for washing my crotch and frequent changes of underwear.

So I come to Erick, and to you, as a clean old man.

Such a clean old man. Wait, that’s a joke, right? From the tv tropes site on the Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night (1964), directed by Richard Lester:

Paul [McCartney]’s grandfather is frequently referred to as “clean” [“such a clean old man”] because the actor, Wilfrid Brambell, played a character who was frequently accused of being a “dirty old man” in Steptoe and Son (which begat the American version Sanford and Son).

I revel in my presentation as a clean old man because I am reviled as a dirty old man on several grounds, starting with the basic fact that I’m a fag and consequently viewed by many as a sick filthy pervert (by nature a defiler of youths and an offense to God). And then I’m an unrepentant, vocal, and highly visible fag. Who writes in great detail about the practices of his life as a slut for every sort of man-man sex.

What could be dirtier than that?

But … I did it all with clean underwear. Unless, of course, my sexual partner of the moment actually wanted skid (that is, shit) marks, patches wet with piss and cum, and crotch stink — there are guys into all of these things — in which case I would do my best to oblige. But just off the shelf you’d get a fresh and clean guy with a powerful drive for enthusiastic sex with other guys, receptively inclined but always ready to improvise.

Ah, those were the days, now it’s all memories. But my high sex drive happily survives, so I can mine those memories to spur my jack-off sessions. (I can scarcely be called clean in mind and spirit.)

The boyhood rhyme. There are many variants, in two syntactic frames:

(A) you can X, but Y:

You can jiggle it and shake it and do a little dance, but the last drop(s) will (always / still) go down your pants / soak into your pants

(B) no matter how much you X, Y:

No matter how much you  jiggle / shake  it / your dick  and do a little dance, the last drop(s) (of piss) will (always / still) go down your pants / soak into your pants

The maximally dirty variant (in frame (B)), which I’ll call Pants Piss, is one of the things I learned at summer camp when I was a boy:

No matter how much you shake your dick and do a little dance, the last drops of piss will soak into your pants

Now, Pants Piss is dirty talk, but it’s not at all nasty; in fact, it expresses a small truth of life, and it’s useful, and comforting, information for a kid. There’s nothing wrong with you or bad about you if you get some wet spots of piss in your skivvies when you take a leak, just as there’s nothing wrong with you or bad about you if you get snail tracks there from leaking prostatic fluid when you get somewhat aroused (as I have done since puberty). That’s just life, kid.

 

2 Responses to “Such a clean old man”

  1. Robert Coren Says:

    I learned two different (shorter and less raunchy) versions of that rhyme back in junior high or perhaps earlier; the second one below is now many decades out of date with respect to terminology:

    No matter how you jump and dance,
    The last drop goes in your underpants.

    No matter how you push and squeeze,
    The last drop goes in your dungarees.

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