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I must confess that running a Personals Ad Club through the mail for several years can give a man an education. A wise friend, who’s an expert at meeting new friends through Personals Ads, always maintains that what you’re looking for is looking for you. If that’s the case, then be careful what you wish for, because you might get it. Or, if you want a surprisingly good time, don’t be careful.

STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT

    The Personal Ads business in the gay press has long been a booming phenomenon. Guys don’t buy The Advocate for the white section. They buy it for the Pink Section. The Advocate in its first days was supported by the Pink Section. In these latter days, the Big A now tucks the Pink inside its white as a separate section, presumably so readers can leave the “politically correct” (tee-hee) white section on the coffee table. Or is it so readers can take the Pink to the bathroom?

     Either way, somehow, I get the feeling the good old Advocate is a bit like Hester Prynne in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet “A”: she’s got this wonderful kid named Pearl, but the kid’s a somewhat embarrassing bastard that won’t go away, and, maybe, in the scarlet Advocate’s case can’t really go away, because of economic considerations of public demand.

     This is not to take potshots at The Advocate. This is more to the point of what the reading public wants and gets where it can: the PO boxes of gdlkg strangers, WM, BM, br/bl, stable, caring, nonsmkr into FF, BD, Gr a/p, no SM, fems, fatties, or fakes; pic gets same.

     The Advocate, straining perhaps for some degree of delicacy, if not for some degree of economy in inserting (pardon the expression) the ad, long ago turned sexual appetites into alphabet soup. Not everyone knows what VA, TT, CBT, and all the other initials stand for, and even if you do, it’s hard to jerk off to A-You’re Adorable, B-You’re So Beautiful, C-You’re a Cutie Full of Charm.

FILM LOOPS

     To overcome the Advocate Alphabet the surest bet for my own Personals Ad service seemed to be to give the Personals writers the chance to express themselves. (God! If you’re gay and can’t express yourself, what a bummer.) Besides, well-written Personals Ads, using whole words, give the reader something to beat off to while considering whether or not to answer the guys who went to all the trouble to confess their innermost fantasies in the public forum of what used to be the Miss Lonelyhearts Department. (These days of ckskng and FF, it’s ironically not their hearts that are the likely lonely parts.)

     My thought was that ads should be like the booths in a porn movie arcade. You open the door, walk in, drop your quarters into the coin machine, and watch the film loop of a whole sex scene unreel over your head--often while some stranger pushes on the door, which is also the screen, trying to get to you to do you.

     Consequently, the Personal Ads in my MANIMALS AD CLUB took a certain shape. Yes, I know, Manimal became the title of a TV series; and I’m glad it failed. Serves them right! I could have sued the producers for stealing my copyrighted portmanteau word, but lacking the cash and the inclination for a court fight, I preferred to think of TV’s imitation as being the sincerest sort of flattery, most likely from one of MANIMALS’ very own personals advertisers who worked for some production company hungry for ideas. Hollywood, you know, steals ideas wherever it can.

MONDO BIZARRO JERKOFF ADS

     Coming at you, right here, right now, are a few poignant, sexy, funny, nice, and nasty Personals Ads which might be considered MANIMALS Greatest Hits. At least the guys who wrote them and the guys who answered them had a good time.

     If these ads don’t get your dick hard in your Criscoed hand, and if they don’t get you off, then get thee to a monastery! 

●IOWA DEPUTY SHERIFF HEADING WEST. This deputy is the Real Thing. WM, 30, 5-9, 150, digs arresting big hunky men, taking you out to the lonely countryside in my patrol car, and fullfilling EVERY COP FANTASY you’ve ever had. The bigger you are, the harder you’ll fall. Also into wrestling and jockstraps. 

●SNOWWHITE GELATINOUS SPERM. Very few men possess extremely t-h-i-c-k snowwhite gelatinous sperm. But I love it. Especially if from UNCUT 10-inch joint. 

●TEAM CAPTAIN SEEKS TEAMMATES. Lockerrooms. Sweaty jocks. Ripe, thick, wetwool socks. Worn, tight-stretched grey workout cotton teeshirts. Pure hunk. Hot hairy jock. Video cassettes and jockstrap exchange. At 6-2, 184, 9-plus inches, I can captain any team and call the plays! 

●CLERGYMAN NEEDS TO SERVICE COCKS anyway they deem fit. I need to find out what real life is all about. Let me suck cock, ass, be your slave in all thing your way: fisting, bondage, discipline. Any cultures. Let me serve you. 

●STALLED VEHICLES AND CIGARS. WM, 30, 5-7, 165, goodlooking, versatile. Into cigarsmokers in the driver’s seat of stalled cars, trucks, vans. Firebirds and Camaroes are real autofetish treats. FLOOD YOUR ENGINE, TURN THE KEY, AND BLOW SOME SMOKE MY WAY TO KNOW WHAT IT REALLY IS TO TURN A MAN ON. 

●ARMSTRONG. BIG GUNS. Feel them: thick, big ARMS, muscle-bulked heavily from sweaty workouts, their huge girth sported in a teeshirt, or subtly concealed by shirt sleeves of well-washed flannel stretched across their mass, now stripped to reveal mounds of baseball biceps cabled with vascularity, and thick horseshoe triceps, growing bigger before your eyes, the pump of each successive flex further expressing the disciplined power of the life force that built them. With those Big Guns lifted high in full frontal display of arm muscle, feel them again. Feel the density of each striation as it’s gathered down into the depths of muscle armpits rich with the heavy male scent of bodybuilder muscle sweat. After a bit of smoke and popper, if you find your nose exploring the heights of those pits, if you can take that big muscular arm in one hand, and your dick in the other, and discover that between the stroking of the two that you’re cuming, then we’re both gonna have fun! I’m on my way to the gym now. If Big-Guns rap-n-jackoff makes you break into a sweat you can’t cool off by yourself, drop me a line! 

●BLOND MEN WANTED. Hairy blonds with moustaches or beards and hairy asses. Dirty biker blonds. All-American boy blonds. Long-haired surfer blonds. Muscular trucker blonds. Construction blonds. Pretty blonds. Straight blonds. Sit on my face. Let me lick your balls, suck your cock, or vice versa. I’m a WM pervert, warped, with strawberry-blond moustache, good bod, fast tongue. 

●HELL’S ANGELS/HARLEY TRASH. Very butch greaser Hell’s Angel type, lives to ride, will meet other Harley-Davidson riders, and men of HD interests: into face/arm sweat, grease, garage floors, leather in layers with Levi’s; mechanical devices relative to internal combustion, under-chassis, grease pits, mud. You must like and live the above. I’m butch and very big. If you feel you’re on your way to the world of the Easy Rider, you know that for a pleasureable time anything manly is possible. You must enjoy straight biker company and be able to fit into such groups undetected. 

●WM, FRENCH-ARAB, hunky, swarthy, very hairy, sweaty pits, solid athletic body. Americanized with memories of Algeria; raised in a professional soldier’s household; want to live out acts of French/Algerian amours and roughness. Oneway top. 

●HUSKY, BEARDED, LUMBERJACK DUDE. 32, 5-10, 175. Wears and gets off on longjohns, checkered or plaid wool lumbershirts, lumberjackets, heavy wool hunting coats and pants, thick wool socks, dirty Levi’s, construction and engineer boots. If you need to be kidnapped, hogtied, and gagged with sweaty bandanas by one or two hunters, lumberjacks, construction workers, truckers, or bikers in the woods or in abandoned backwoods cabins, write me. 

●MONEY-FUCK. GREED/LUST/AVARICE/POWER. Let’s fuck in a bed full of money. We’ll go out together and ask hot straight guys (construction/trucker/cops) if they can change a ten-spot with bills from their wallets riding tight against their butts, and with coins heated in their pockets hanging next to their warm dicks. You can move in close on a straight guy while he figures he’s doing a man a favor. You can watch the intensity of his face close-up while his big hands count out the change. You can touch his hands as he lays the bills on you. We’ll head home with mouthfuls of man-collected coins. Spit cash into each other’s mouths. Suck cock. Shove rolls of dimes/quarters/halves and silver dollars up each other’s ass. You haven’t dumped till you’ve dumped dinero! Let’s roll in greenbacks. Let’s JERKOFF worshipping the money. Money is the only power. Money is the root of all evil. Let’s celebrate our roots in a hot hard cash match. Let’s put our money where our mouths are. Why keep it under the mattress? Let’s put our cash on the sheets and celebrate male greed, power, lust, and the comfort of the almighty dollar. This is a very honest trip. You bring a couple hundred to match mine. All cash returned at end of night when we hose off the grease together. Gold Kruggerands and Maple Leafs a real turn on! No other foreign currency, and definitely no Susan B’s! If you’ve worked hard for the money, then let it work for your hard, pard! 

●NEW KID IN TOWN. (Photo inset of ad writer at age six sitting in a red wagon.) I’m a littler taller: 6’; a lot bigger: 190; a bit older: 37. Sort of a big Viking blond carpenter, newly divorced, trying to come out in San Francisco where my homomasculine inexperience seems a disadvantage in a City of Sexual Pro’s. Would like to meet some patient guys interested in whatever all you guys do. Really, I’m serious. Am masculine and interested in masculine men only. 

●BLACK MEN ARE DELICIOUS. CHOCOLATE TREATS. WM, 28, 6-1, 185, hairy, beard, seeks hot BM, 20-40, hung, tight round buns, demanding, dominant. Want to service your hot black dick with my hungry mouth, tongueing deeply your sweet dark buns. Want to feel your black rod in my hairy white ass. Turned on by very dark black men in jockstraps and Levi’s. Prefer young, classy, black business men; sweaty, muscular black construction workers; hot black jocks and truckers--especially married studs.