Beastmail: What Readers Say About My Book
Fan mail, fisting, and a few tender ghosts.
I haven’t done a feedback post in a while! I collected some much-appreciated feedback about my book over the past year and decided to respond to some of it. Other kinds of messages are here, too: about my butt, my ex, and sex toys. Let’s dive in.
I've just finished my second read-through; I didn't want it to end! I need to stop living my life trying to please others. This book has made me realize that I need to be true to myself. Alex has opened my eyes to possibilities I never imagined. The beast in me is ready to explode. Look out world!
This is the best response to my book I can ask for. Welcome to your life.
— B
Hi Alex!
I just wanted to let you know that I have finished your book. I really enjoyed it, I wish I could put it more eloquently than that.
I found a lot of it relatable, as someone interested in further exploring being a submissive to a daddy-type, haha. I think my sexual appetite is much milder than yours in the book, but I sincerely enjoyed it and felt a kinship with you.
Anyway, that's all! I hope you're well.
💜 Saoirse
Thank you so much, Saoirse. It is an honor to share this space with you. A review or star rating on Amazon would be deeply appreciated. Reviews are a great way to support writers—they influence the algorithm and increase the book's visibility to a wider audience.
— B
I was reading the latest issue of Out Magazine and came across your article. I was so moved by your final quote about “men of previous generations”. I am a retired nurse who worked on AIDS units and in HIV speciality clinics from 1982-2003. My husband and I lost several friends to AIDS, like so many of the baby boomer generation. I protested at many marches, both in Washington, DC, and Sacramento, California, advocating for budgeting and care for people living with HIV/AIDS. I was only one of many thousands of queer people and straight allies who fought on many fronts in the terrible years.
Thank you for recognising our efforts and acknowledging our invisibility in the LGBTQIA+ community. All the best to you with your book and the recognition you deserve for all you have done for our community.
Sincerely,
Greg *****
Hey Greg, I'm having trouble figuring out which article you’re referring to. If I knew which one it was, I would link it here for others to read. For curious readers, here are all my Out pieces.
Greg, your message is humbling and profoundly moving. I’ll be honest, I feel like I do not deserve it. You are the true hero here. Thank you for protesting and marching. Thank you for being an example of gay life to others. The work you and others did to advocate on behalf of the sick and dying led to the medications that have kept me alive for the past eleven years after my HIV diagnosis. You paid for my life.
Whether younger gays understand this or not, you are living proof that we can make it, that our lives can be happy and fulfilling, even with all the loss and trauma we endure—that we matter and make a difference in the world.
Gay culture can be cruel and unforgiving, and even when we are not trying to survive a plague, we still spread the myth that our value lasts only while we are young.
The ugly joke of "gay death" at thirty hits each of us differently, and we need proof it's not true. You are that. When younger gays see you, they see themselves, aged a bit. When they see you happy and in love, it means they can be, too. What a gift to us!
Especially when we are told all our lives that we have no future. Thank you, at this moment, for telling me the words between the lines of your message—that, if I survive this, I can be a happy gay man just like you someday. Thank you for that.
I hope I honour the legacy of your generation. I hope I’m enough. Thank you for this life. I really like it, and I owe it entirely to the activists of your time.
— B
How many responses did you get to that March 1 post? I’m not a regular reader of your blog, but I’ve read some of your other books. I’m writing, in part, because your guest appearance on Dan Savage inspired me. “That fun part of my sex life” for some reason got me. I love playing with ass, specifically with toys, but I can’t say I’m “experienced.” I enjoy fisting but haven’t done it much. I’m generally a top, and exclusively a top when fisting. My main fetish is sadism and combat, especially wrestling, but I would love to play with you and degrade you while opening up your hole. I love using toys, and I have big hands. I want to explore more kinks, and I’m coming to understand that a foundational kink for me is someone degrading themselves to be with me, someone who wants to beg for it. “It” in this context is any kind of contact, even more degradation. Or wants to earn even bigger toys. I like the way that domination spirals. Not really into fluids, but have gotten into it with a sub who loves it. I’m also interested in the way you describe wanting to commit to a more regular partner without wanting another boyfriend. I’ve stuck myself with semi-anonymous hookups, and I’m trying to get out of that, to be able to experience the intimacy of kink without needing to partner up or compartmentalise. I also grew up in a cult when I was a kid, so I can’t work with conspiracy theories or full-time roles. I live in Detroit and visit NYC regularly. Let me know if you want to hang out when you’re in town for the book tour. Or if you move to Berlin.
Man, that’s a hot message. It got lost in a digital holding pen of feedback notes, which—I admit—I often forget to check. I assume this offer has passed, and it's now a missed connection. I don't know what you look like, so I can't say if there was ever a chance, but I did move to Berlin, and I am exactly the kind of submissive you describe. Getting degraded and stretched while begging for it sounds like a perfect Saturday.
Yeah, it's hard to get out of the semi-anonymous hookup rut. It's fun, but you can only go so far in kink within it, because you are learning someone new every time. This can be thrilling, but it is undeniably exhausting and leaves me feeling disconnected and empty. I'm also trying to do more regular hookups now. But the boys must be willing to come back, and just as the lure of someone new tempts me—"Maybe this one will be the one I've been waiting for!"—it tempts them, too. I suspect that at some point, we'll all realise that many great things could have happened with those who passed through our lives while we waited for "the best".
I've only written one book, but I've contributed essays to two more, and my second book is scheduled for release in 2026. Thanks for following my work. Please message me again. I will try not to miss it this time.
— B
Hello!
I just read your book on Fire Island (a great place to do so!), and I stumbled across something that I have struggled with a great deal. The word pussy.
I am a trans man (he/him pronouns; I saw you asked that we share!)
And for the first time, I felt like I saw a cis man using pussy to describe his body and didn’t want to fight it. I didn’t feel like you were mocking or disrespecting anyone with a vulva. I felt like you were having a sincere experience and it made me want to be curious about dismantling how my dysphoria and internalized shame manifest in grappling with my body and with other queer men’s expression. Thanks!
Sasha
Hey Sasha, that essay about my pussy is from My Love Is a Beast: Confessions, but that book is not about Fire Island. You might be thinking of Fire Island: Love, Loss and Liberation in an American Paradise by Jack Parlett, who also wrote The Poetics of Cruising: Queer Visual Culture from Whitman to Grindr. Both of these are on my must-read list, but I’m not their author.
I did write about Fire Island a little bit in Confessions, and I wrote about it again in the essay I contributed to The Experiment Will Not Be Bound (that same essay will appear in an updated form in my 2026 book, too). However, none of these writings are sufficient to claim I wrote a book about Fire Island. That place is too precious to me (and now, sadly, too far away) that I would be scared to write more about it. Maybe that’s a sign that I should.
Your response to my "Pussy" essay makes me feel so validated. Thank you.
My journey with my body has evolved since I wrote it. I am now asking legitimate questions about my relationship with being cisgender. I still feel solidly male and comfortable in my masculinity, but since moving to Berlin, I have thought more about how I have so little connection to my dick. Being a man with a pussy—maybe even having a vagina — is no longer outside the realm of my imagination. I don't know where that idea leads, and right now I don't think it has to lead anywhere, but I like knowing I'm tugging on a fun, albeit challenging, thread.
I used to view hot, degrading pussy talk during sex just as a fetish, just degradation, and I think that's mostly how it's presented in my book. But having a pussy is also empowering, and now I see nothing degrading about it. So if it's not a fetish, not part of a degradation scene, what is it for me? I don’t know.
I think people who are open and explorative with their genders, bodies, and kinks have asked these same questions for a long time. I am grateful to be in a community filled with people who exist in grey areas between answers, who live in questions. This state of flux feels good. I'll stay here for a bit and enjoy myself.
Right now I feel male, but (mentally, at least) a dickless one. My top side lives in my hands, for fisting, and only one person in my life triggers a response from my cock. But that one person is important to me, and I'm ok with the fact that he's the only one I fuck (or want to fuck) with my dick right now. He's the lone exception to my bottom side, and right now, he's worth keeping my dick around.
If possible, please leave a review or star rating for my book on Amazon. And be on the lookout for my next one.
— B
Hi Alexander, My name is Ferry and I live in the Netherlands. I just read your article '25 tips for your first fist' and became curious about how fisting would feel, so this afternoon I will buy my first buttplug. Thanks to your article, I'm going to explore my sexuality beyond what I thought were my boundaries. So, thank you for writing it! And I want to compliment you on your artwork. I love it!
Kind regards, Ferry
Hey Ferry, I hope you bought a plug that is not shaped like a fist. I don't think those are very comfortable, especially not for guys who are still tight and want to learn how to take a fist. To become more comfortable with the sensations of fisting, consider buying a smooth, round plug, ideally teardrop-shaped or with a taper at the entry point, allowing you to slowly stretch open around it and then swallow it into your hole. That is the goal moment: the feeling of being full, filled. Pulling it in and out will be good training for your hole and a hand when it comes.
A real hand is nothing like one made out of silicone (or, worse, TPR or TPE). Hands can change shape and adjust to your anatomy. In any case, a hand should start in tucked, "duckbill" shape (not an actual fist) at the beginning of your fist training and the start of every fisting session. Most "fist" butt plugs I've seen are shaped like a closed fist. Don't buy those. They are not for beginners. I am not a beginner and I still don't buy those, and I don't know any fister who does. These closed-fist buttplugs look to me like an idea conceived by toy makers who have never actually fisted.
I’m glad someone likes my art! Thank you.
— B
Just wanted to say how amazing your book is. I’ve just been able to sit down and finally read it. The Chapter titled 'Thursday' is about how I found out, and how the years after went too. Sometimes it's good to know you weren't the only one who reacted that way.
Many of us respond to our HIV diagnoses that way. Glad you connected with my book. If it's not too much trouble, I would appreciate it if you could leave me a review or star rating on Amazon. I will love you forever.
— B
Alexander, I listened to your reading at Fist Fest, and I subsequently purchased your book. Only now did I realise that it was you who wrote the article, “29 Things You Should Look for in a Daddy.” It is one of my all-time favourites and I want to thank you for it. I feel seen, validated, and proud to affirm my Daddy qualities.
Thanks, Daddy!
— B
Your book is incredible! I just started it and I can say for sure, that nothing I’ve read has ever made me so turned on and leak this much precum
Thanks! Please, please include that in your review on Amazon.
— B
Hi Beastly - I messaged you before (have a slightly different Twitter account now because I was hacked and changed all my social accounts out of caution). But anyway, I checked Barnes and Noble all over the country and couldn’t find it, as well as airport kiosks all over the country (I travel every week), and could not find it. Finally ordered it from Amazon. But I have started to ask B&N to order it and carry it - they said they will order it for anyone who asks. I told them to please carry the book on their shelves as a service to gay shoppers. They asked me to write a letter to management with that request, which I did. I hope more patrons push stores for this. It may help. I said that the gay population has a lot of buying power and shouldn’t be ignored. Oftentimes, change can be achieved by using the power of the dollar. I hope others do the same and push on this, too. As I told you, it is a great book. I was wondering if you've ever heard what happened to Miguel? That part of your book really touched me. I imagine losing your country would be hard. He sounded like a wonderful, tender man, and I hope he is ok.
Great News!!! Hello Alex. I just wanted to share a couple of things. Finally, I found your book in a general bookstore! Even better, it was at an airport bookstore in Tucson, AZ, in a section called “Fresh Ink”. This is fantastic, and I was happy to see several other LGBTQ books there as well. I just wanted to share this with you. Also, I am looking forward to your next book. I also want to credit you a little for helping me expand my sexual boundaries. I started training my ass about six months ago and finally have been able to enjoy men playing in my ass. Probably will never be the power expert ass bottom but I can now take a good punch fucking and look forward to having a top playing in my ass with nice punch fucks. You inspired me to try it, dude. Still wondering about what turned out with Miguel in your book. Hope this text is a day brightener for you, my friend. Excited about your new book and would love to see you read it at an event sometime. Take care, be great!
For everyone reading this: this person is the dream reader. Truly.
Thank you so much. My book was published by an indie, queer-owned press, which means most big bookstores and bookstore chains will not stock it. It will always be a rare, oddball book that you must ask a bookstore to order for you, or order yourself.
A bookstore manager even told me that even if it was a mainstream success, bookstore owners might be hesitant to keep it on shelves because of its graphic sex content. Parts of it are too extreme for it to be a breakout hit.
Without being asked, you did the kindest thing a reader can do, and what I have asked many readers to do: you asked a bookstore to carry my book. You supported a writer. You used the power of your dollar. You told them this book matters. Thank you.
Miguel's real name is Jose, and there is even a post about him here. We are still friends. He is a very private person, so I won't give too many details about him, but after we separated, he finished his degree and got a great job in San Francisco. After me, he met a man who was exactly his type (big, older, furry bear) and they got married, which secured his ability to stay in the United States. He still lives in the Bay Area. I think he is happy, and that makes me happy.
When my book tour took me to San Francisco, he came to my reading. I'm sure at some level, we hold a little flame for each other, because that's how gay relationships work. Every man I've loved has a room in my heart. Jose has one. Brent has one. Mark has one. Even though all those relationships ended, their love stays. That's love.
I am a lifelong wanderer, never to stay in the same place long, and these little loves remain with me. Everywhere I have lived, someone there has loved me, and that makes me a very lucky man.
— B