My best off ever in Thailand (don’t tell Noom) was my first night with Nut, the little Burmese muscle dude who used to work at Tawan. He was new to the bar then, had only worked a few nights, and I was one of his first customers. Eventually he became one of the stars of the bar and built his body into a solid ball of pure muscle. But on our first night together he was more of a youthful Adonis. Athletically built, but not overly so. He was gorgeous. And while it was years before he admitted to being Burmese, his smile exemplified that which Thailand is famous for from the get go.

If I think about that night hard enough (no pun intended) I can remember the sex. His body takes no effort in recalling. Even if my memory primarily remembers it dressed in a pair of tighty whiteys that fit like a second skin. But what I really remember about that night was his innocence, his sense of humor, and his personality. We spent most of the night cracking each other up. And spent far more time talking than we did having sex. Naked, but talking nonetheless. Which was pretty amazing in its own right since he spoke but a handful of English words. Not to mention that usually when I’m in the presence of a hot naked man, I revert to using sign language.

Years later when his vocabulary had improved he told me he had a brother back home who was gay. That would be gay in the Thai bar boy sense of the word. Which is effeminate. Borderline ladyboy. And a bottom. By then I’d accidentally offed his younger brother a few times from Tawan, tried out his older brother once just for the bragging rights, and met the remaining sibling in Bangkok who didn’t quite measure up to Tawan’s reputation and worked at a local bank instead. The point being that Nut was straight. And the perfect example of the sexual fluidity of bar boys. Even on our first night together when he was still new to having sex with a man, there was no hesitation, no displeasure, no concern. He was curious, ready, willing, and up for anything. (Pun intended.)

Well, almost anything. We didn’t do anal that night. He didn’t say no, didn’t refuse, didn’t even flinch when I turned him over. But his body tensed up and I could tell it was something he really wasn’t in favor of. No problemo. His ass was a thing of beauty and just playing with it for awhile was enough. And I’m not into rape anyway. Not that I didn’t turn him over again on each of our subsequent times together. Just in case. And one night he surprised me by giggling, “I never!” and then promptly sat himself on my hard cock for a ride.

But on our first night together, instead he mounted me in an entirely different way. After using that single word as a question, he turned me over and then began walking on my back as a massage. Had he told me his plan in advance I probably would have turned him down. The idea of a full grown man using your back as a treadmill is not exactly the definition of pleasure. Unless you are a masochist. But it was pure heaven. He may have not known much about sucking dick – in fact he stopped me a few times while I was doing him to try something I’d just done, giving it a go and then raising an eyebrow at me for confirmation he’d gotten it right – but had mastered the art of giving non-sexual bodily pleasure. And by the time we pulled the covers over out naked bodies to sleep, he’d improved greatly in his sexual bodily pleasure giving skills too. Years later he’d stop what he was doing, smile, nod upwards at me and say, “You.” Just in case I didn’t remember who’d taught him that move. There are some souvenirs that can last you a lifetime.

The only jarring note of the evening was soon after he’d asked for my help in replacing his English word of water with the more specific one of shower – and then pulled me into the bathroom by the hand to watch him take his – he shot a questioning look my way while mimicking shaving himself. Not his face. Which didn’t need it. He was instead interested in manscaping himself. Entirely. And couldn’t quite understand the look of horror that idea elicited in me. Most Asian guys don’t need much in the way of manscaping in the first place. A bit of trimming is usually all that is necessary. If at all. It’s one of the things that I like about Asian guys. All that smooth, golden-brown skin set off by a small patch of jet black hair. That gets me every time. Shaved bald, not so much.

I remember spending the night for a sleep-over with a friend during the summer before we were to begin junior high school. Even though I was still a few months away from discovering all the wonderful things a dick can do, they still fascinated me. As they do most boys at that age. Which meant sleep-over was a euphemism for playing doctor which was a euphemism for checking out each other’s cocks. We’d played doctor before. But this time – horrors of horror – he’d begun spouting pubic hair. I’d already reached that stage, which didn’t matter to me one way or the other. But seeing it on him was traumatic. And I realized that all the boys I had the hots for would soon be sporting hair down there too. Gross. Life, as I knew it, was over. I couldn’t fathom the idea of facing a future having to be around some dude with pubic hair.

But it gets better.

Unlike some (ahem), along with my friends’ bodies I too matured. As did my tastes. And by the time I did discover all the wonderful things a dick could do, pubes just seemed an acceptable part of the package. It was a few (blissful) years later in high school – in my swim team’s locker room to be exact – that I ran across my first case of total manscaping. Which coincided with my first case of running across uncut dick too. Both on the same guy. I’m not sure which bothered me more at the time. But since then I’ve come to love one, while the other still just seems like something is missing. ‘Cuz it is. Men are supposed to have pubic hair. And I’m just glad that on our first night together Nut asked before shaving his. Or my memories of that night would be far different.

I think women are to blame for the whole manscaping thing. Brazilian wax jobs have been around for decades now and seem to be yet another part of their regular beauty routine. I don’t know why. From what I’ve heard they are painful. And if I had a vagina, I’d want to hide that disgusting thing as much as possible. I don’t get why straight guys seem to like bald pussy either. But then there are a lot of unfathomable things about how straight guys think. Maybe it’s that they really don’t care. Maybe it’s just that in their pursuit of pussy, when they finally land one they’re just too excited to even notice. But how that idea transferred over into mens’ crotches is beyond me. Regardless, it’s a trend that needs to stop.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m in favor of some trimming. And even shaving nether regions when warranted. When I run across a photo of a porn star from the ’70s who used to get me instantaneously hard, these days the first thought that usually crosses my mind is, “Huh. He really could use a bit of a hair cut.” Smooth, naked inner thighs are a thing of beauty on a man. Thinning the herd can be a plus. Hairless balls thanks to the gentle, loving application of a razor – if not in jarring contrast with what’s above – are a good thing. Bald below the belt, not so much. And while a few days worth of stubble on a man’s face can be sexy, the same down below just looks off. Like he needs to take a rain check and come back when his bush has grown back out. Please.

The good thing about the advent of nude selfies is that there are tons of photos of naked men all over the internet. But straight or gay, recently more with a cropped bush keep cropping up. To a point where it seems everyone under the age of forty shaves himself bald these days. And if it isn’t shaved, it was not long ago. I can almost understand that trend among the gay community. Gay guys, for some odd reason, tend to focus on dick. Even when it is their own. But straight guys are not supposed to be that preoccupied with penis. And unless the Hundredth Monkey Effect extends to mankind, someone is to blame for passing on the word to straight guys that they should take a razor to their private parts. Because, generally, the rule is that we keep sharp objects away from that area.

And don’t get me started on the horrors of razor burn. I’m just glad guys haven’t followed the trend among women to landscape their pubes into landing strips, triangles, or little hearts. If that’s a fashion statement I have just not yet seen, please keep that bit of knowledge to yourself.

Both of my parents come from a farming background. Or were children of the ’30s, which is the same thing. I thank the gods daily that they moved to California before having my bothers and I, or I’d be trolling for tricks on Farmers Only.com these days. Nonetheless, they couldn’t completely escape their upbringing. Which wouldn’t have been a problem except that meant attempting to impart some of those values in us. My grandmother – because unfortunately PETA wasn’t around back then – bought each of us a little baby chicken for Easter one year. And less than a year later my father decided it was time to teach us what pet chickens are meant for: the dinner table.

Back in those days beating your unruly child with a belt was referred to as effective parenting skills. So making your five-year-old chop off his pet chicken’s head with an axe wasn’t the child-abuse it should have been considered to be. They do, by the way, run around the yard for a few minutes after you’ve beheaded them. Just in case you didn’t experience the same joys of childhood that I did. Step #2 of that wonderful day was immersing our former pets’ bloody carcasses in a pot of boiling water, and then plucking off their feathers. Which, as a five-year-old you do with tears in your eyes while saying bye-bye to what earlier that day had been your beloved pet.

I don’t think that day turned out quite as my father had expected. That’s the danger of raising your kids in California instead of some fly-over state. And probably explained our not-so-happy reaction to the night he brought home our first puppy. It did teach him a lesson though. And when it came time to provide us with The Sex Talk, instead he allowed us to learn what we needed to know on the streets. As the gods intended. That street for me, obviously, was a bit bent. Nonetheless, the sight of those former pet chickens’ freshly plucked bodies on their way to the oven still plays in my mind. Even if The Silence Of The Chickens wouldn’t have made for quite as catchy of a movie title, I could still empathize. And having that bit of childhood trauma refreshed anew whenever I slip some hottie’s pants down to find someone’s been playing around where he shouldn’t . . . sorry, but there’s just nothing sexy about a man who has been fleshly plucked.

Google tells me 95% of college-aged men manscape to some degree. 73% of all American men do. Which means 22% of American men are too fat to be able to see their pubic area, or they’d be reaching for the scissors too. Google also returns 4,000,000+ search results on manscaping. Nowhere in those numerous bits of advice does it say don’t. And few fail to address going totally bare after providing the more useful advice about the occasional trim job. Gillette even has a YouTube video providing instructions on how to shave ‘down there’. The internet can be a dangerous and evil thing.

Most who do, claim they manscape because it makes their dick look bigger. It doesn’t. That only works if you have a micro-penis. And even then bigger is still small. What it does do is make you look like you have some strange tropical disease.Or that you haven’t yet mastered puberty. Or that you recently discovered you had crabs. And even if the claim that manscaping makes your dick look bigger is true, no one else cares how big your dick looks. What we care about is how big your dick really is. And that’s more about the sense of touch – or taste – than it is about the sense of sight.

Despite the majority of bedable-aged men manscaping, a survey by Manhunt of its 27,000 members showed most guys prefer the hair on their partner’s body to be left the way it is. In fact, when asked which areas of their partners’ bodies they preferred being shaved, less that 20% voted in favor of a bald crotch. The highest thumbs up for shaving went to the penis shaft. ‘Cuz no one is really in favor of pubic hair stuck between their teeth. Balls came in next. As they often do. And the taint and hole came in tied for the third most popular area to be shaved bare, because they are usually connected in most men’s minds anyway. If Dan Savage wanted to make himself useful for a change, he’d start off every address he gave to a college crowd with the reminder that men prefer men who don’t shave their better parts bare.

Having spent the majority of his life repressing his love of dick, my boyfriend (finally) Dave also spent most of his life trying to ignore his dick. Or anything to do with dick. And Dave’s a hairy guy. Not hirsute. Just hairy where he should be. ‘Cuz while I could fall in love with a baby chicken as a five-year-old, as an adult falling in love with a man with a pelt on his back would just be ridiculous. In any case, the idea of taming some of his bush just never entered his mind. Until my dick did.

Fortunately when it comes to dick, these days he’s making up for lost time. So he didn’t balk when I pulled out a pair of scissors and a razor and told him to drop his pants. And as tempting as it was to prune his pubes into the shape of my initials, I just went with cleaning things up to a manageable level where necessary, and removing it where it wasn’t. Besides, I thought just in case I ever grow to hate his guts getting him used to me holding his balls in one hand while I hold a razor in the other might be a good idea. He liked the results of my singular attempt at the hairdresser arts. I think. It’s hard to tell. Thanks to those years of repressing his love of dick, he pretty much likes anything I do to his these days. But he did like that he no longer had to suffer through having hair inadvertently pulled out by its roots during the heights of passion. ‘Cuz it taint always about how you manscape but rather where you manscape.

Along with a lot of hair, Dave has a lot of confidence. Which I generally find attractive (the latter, not necessarily the former). But he’s still feeling his way around those things he still thinks of as gay. So while his intent was to go it on his own, he flinched. And came waddling out of the bathroom one day with his pants around his ankles and a razor in his hand. He’d been planning to surprise me. And going with a complete manscape job. Yikes! Granted, that brought back those pleasant memories of my best off ever in Thailand. Along with an accompanying erection. But before he could confuse the two, I let him know shaving his groin nude would be the best way of cutting out relationship short. ‘Cuz while boys will be boys, real men have pubic hair.