Beastmail: Notes on Family, Forgiveness, and Finding Your Kink
Letters on love, change, and coming home to yourself.
I am back in German class. Any adult who has taken a second language course knows how tiring it can be. So I’m being nice to myself this week and not answering questions. Time for more feedback!
If you're new here, feedback posts are where I respond to messages that are not questions. Readers often send me counterpoints, disagreements, and different perspectives. Many share personal stories. I appreciate these so much.
For me, writing is fundamentally a dialogue. I know some writers—some very talented ones—who disagree. I’d say we all can be split into two camps: writers who see what we do as a form of self-therapy, who write for the self as much as for others, and then writers like me, who think writing is, when all’s said and done, about others.
For the latter group, there is no “self” writing. What’s the point? Unlike many great writers (Joan Didion, Oliver Sacks, and George Orwell, to name a few), I keep no notebooks, no journals, and no “sketches,” as Kerouac called them. The intent behind everything I write is to make something others will eventually read. No locked diaries. Nothing for my eyes only. Writing is my effort to communicate with the world. So, when a reader responds, it feels like the cycle of my work is complete. Mission done.
All this is to say: Thanks for every message. Happy Pride to Berlin, happy (late) Pride everywhere else.
Love, Beastly
Hey there, Alexander!
I've recently discovered your writing, and I'm surprised by the impact it’s had on me.
I always struggled with accepting the fact that I'm gay since I grew up in a very homophobic city and household. But your writing is encouraging me to feel comfortable in my skin, and you've supplied me with more information on lgbtq+ than anywhere else I could find. I just wanted to thank you.
Thank you haha
I grew up in a homophobic place too, with homophobic people. I can’t say they necessarily got better or overcame their homophobia, but I got better: I got older, learned how to be the adult in the room, and learned how to love them.
Family is complicated, and no subject breaks my heart more. Not every gay man chooses to keep his biological family, and not every gay man should. But I did, and I think it is better this way. It has taught me the value of a kind of love and a kind of forgiveness that doesn’t make sense anywhere except in the heart.
Accepting yourself is a lifelong process. I am still doing it. I discover hidden bits of myself, more every year, as the certainties of my youth give way, now, to a playful experimentation and openness that has come with age. I love being gay. It is the best part of my life. I once saw it as just a facet, just one side of me. But of course it isn’t: it is the groove my whole life runs in, the only lens the world will see me through and thus the only lens through which I can see the world. It is the best part of you, too. You are so lucky. Thanks for being in my tribe. It is better with you in it. Although I may never meet you or know you in person, I love you, my friend.
— B
I have never contacted any author before now, but I felt I had to reach out to you. I am a 70-year-old gay man, widowed 4 years ago. My life was consistently suburban and vanilla. In the last few years, I have become increasingly drawn to the works of kink and particularly bondage. Having grown up in a world where shame was attached to anything sexual, I had a certain ambivalence - that is, a mixture of joy and shame - about my new pleasures. Your book was eye-opening and refreshing to read. Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your story.
Bill E****
Hi Bill, thank you for reading it. It’s uncouth to ask this, but those words would be great in an Amazon or Goodreads review (links to both are on my LinkTree). Please share my book with others, and good luck on your kink journey. Every kinkster starts with a vanilla life. The fun happens when we deviate.
— B
Not a question, no need to reply, but a mighty thank you and praise for your writing. As a 50-year-old white, middle-class, cis woman from the most vanilla suburb in England, I love reading your blog and learning from your refreshingly frank and vulnerable accounts. Embarking on my first affair with a highly driven, adventurous, much younger man, I found ‘what makes a good bottom’ equally useful to me as a woman exploring anal for the first time. You write with such warmth and reassurance that your advice becomes instantly relatable. Keep it up xx
That is kind. I love that my blog is read by people of all genders and sexualities, and touches everyone. I have wondered at times if I am doing a disservice to women readers by branding it as something primarily for gay men, but then I remember how few things exclusively for us there are in the world. I hope you continue to read and find helpful information here. I hope your relationship goes great, that you bottom like a goddess, and that he gives you the love you deserve.
— B
Dear Alex,
This is not a question but a thank-you note. I'll try to keep it brief!
This month, I've started having sex again after an abstinence period of 4 years. The abstinence was mainly due to a lack of confidence and a belief that I was physically unattractive. That was all in my head and still is, but I'm tackling it. And I think confidence is a virtual cycle, especially when a guy 10 years my junior tells me I'm "hot". I'm slowly realising there are guys out there - to my shock - that fancy me.
Your writing - your book and advice articles - have played no small part in me moving into this phase by helping me to think differently about sex and not be fearful of my sexuality. You recently wrote that guys in their 50s and 60s feel they are having their best sex. I just turned 49, so that is a great comfort.
Nearly 5 years ago I broke up from a 20-year relationship. The intervening years have been a challenging exercise in rediscovering my individuality. I now feel ready to truly explore my sexuality on my own terms, perhaps for the first time in my life. I find your writing encouraging in this regard. And I have to say, it is beautiful writing.
So, from me, a profound thank-you.
love, Simon
Simon, your message nearly brought me to tears. I am honoured by it. Thank you.
I don’t know why I and every gay man I know struggle, above all else, with ourselves, our mean self-images, our judgment and shame. But I do. A bad glance in the mirror is enough to ruin my day. Why does it still affect me so?
I wish my sense of self were not so fragile, but I take some comfort in knowing it is this way for all the men I love, all the men I have ever loved. A strange affliction binds us: we all want to be beautiful and judge ourselves too harshly, because that which we pursue is also what we desire in ourselves. It’s a head spin.
I think you are in a great part of life. There are many men your age in the same boat, embarking on a similar sexual path, and your job now is to find them. You need friends and supporters. You need lovers. The best guys will be all of those.
— B
Hello Alexander, I wanted to thank you for all that you do for our LGBTQI+ community. Reading your articles makes me feel more adept at being who I am, to like who I like, and to like what I want. Thank you for sharing a bit of your world with us, so we know we are not in the world alone.
XX - Ricky
Thanks, Ricky. I will be honest, lately I have felt I am not doing that much — or at least, not enough. I moved to Germany. It makes me feel like I abandoned the queer community in America to an extent. I miss it and feel disconnected from it, and I hope I can continue to help gay men from here.
Thanks for your kind words. You are not alone. No one is. That’s the great thing one learns from travel. There is an “us” everywhere, scattered across the globe, and it is wondrous to find. Berlin gay life is different from any gay scene in America, yet I slipped into it knowing the rules, mostly, because we cultivate that: a shared culture that always feels more familiar than different, always like home.
— B
What’s up, Alexander? I just read your article in “Out”. It was really insightful and I connected a lot with it. Thanks for being so straight up and honest, we need more authors like you ☺️
I wish I knew which article you read! I have written quite a bit for Out lately. Curious readers can subscribe to Out Magazine (which includes a subscription to The Advocate), support queer journalism, and read my “Last Call” column in print. It’s also available online, but nothing beats flipping through real magazine pages in a coffee shop.
— B
Hey Alexander! I just finished reading your book (post long-term breakup) and wanted to say how much I loved it! Thank you for your words; they were healing during a difficult time.
Sorry about that difficult time. We all have those. Breakups are brutal, but they can be important periods of life, times of reflection and discovery (or rediscovery). A breakup is a good time to explore meditation and mindfulness.
Thanks for reading my book. I am a working author, so I would appreciate it if you could take a moment to leave a nice review or five-star rating on Goodreads or Amazon (or both), which you can do anonymously. Reviews help book sales. But more than that, please share it with others. Readers keep a book alive.
— B
Hi Alex,
I don’t have any questions to ask, I just wanted to take a moment to let you know I think you’re amazing. Before 2020, I read your blog periodically, but I was more aware of you because my husband and my boy both had HUGE crushes on you. Then, at MAL 2020, my boy Jay found you in the lobby and brought you up to our room, where you would end up being the first person to fist me (they were and still are very jealous, by the way). Since then, I’ve read your blog more, read your book (couldn’t read it in public because you’d either make me hard or make me cry), and followed you on social media. I just read a post where you wondered whether writing was in your future. I just wanted to say that whatever you end up doing, I hope it’s something for the masses so I can continue to support you in whatever way I can because I truly believe you’re one of those rare, special people whose voice should be heard and remembered. Anyway, enough fangirling. Keep doing whatever it is you’re gonna do.
I have trained myself to copy and paste messages without reading a sender’s email address before deleting the email—to preserve that vital anonymity I promise those who write in to this blog—so I do not know the email address this message is from, did not see any name, and cannot figure out who you are. My memory is sharp but it doesn’t retain much from fisting dates at MAL.
All my hookups from big sex events, from Mid-Atlantic Leather (MAL) to Folsom Berlin, blur. I’m always nervous, always triggered to overuse drugs, and always a bit out of step with the crowd. I am kinky but not, strictly speaking, a leather or rubber fetishist, so there’s always some impostor syndrome at play too—some guilt for my camouflage among the harnesses and chaps.
It all becomes, in hindsight, just leather memories—a blurry palette. Please forgive me for not remembering. I keep the texture of it — darkness, sweat — but no names. I’m glad you kept mine.
I fisted you. If I did that, it’s because I wanted to make you feel good. I am glad you liked it. I am sure I did too. I am honoured to be your first hand. Welcome to this beautiful brotherhood.
Thank you for your kind, generous words. I have doubts sometimes, as I think every writer does, but they go, as they always do. I am a writer. I can do nothing else. I will do this till I die. Thank you for reading, supporting my work, and believing in me. It matters more to me than you can know. I hope your hole has only gotten sloppier in the last four years.
— B
Hey Alex,
I very much enjoyed listening to your juicy story recently at the Berlin Village poem night (oh and thanks for making me melt into my seat, Y'ALL! 🐷🫠)
I would like to order your book and maybe another for a friend. Do you have any possible coupon codes? If not, no problem. Just wanted to ask.
Thank you!
Ben
Hey Ben! Sadly no coupon codes right now. Unbound Edition Press (the publisher of my book) occasionally does sales, during which it offers discounts, but the press does not tell me ahead of time when these sales happen, so I can’t give you a heads-up. Follow the press on social media (Instagram, Twitter) and keep checking!
Thanks for coming to the reading last year at Village. I hope there will be more.
— B