Life Unplanned

Trevor “accidentally” got his job in the IT department at a university during his master’s program. He studied accounting in undergrad and was getting a master’s degree, en route to a CPA designation, when he was offered a role in the tech department. And even though he completed his accounting program (and took on the corresponding student loan debt), he enjoyed his campus job enough that he stayed.

Fast forward to today, he’s nearing retirement. He’s been steady like a rock. It’s amazing to see someone only 48 years old having retirement discussions. Loyalty to his employer over the years has gotten him remarkably close to the finish line. In fact, within just two years, Trevor can retire with a full pension.

Unfortunately, his partner is nowhere near that same milestone. His husband works at the same university, but because he switched jobs over the years, his “retirement calculation” reset and he’s got over a decade to go.

For Trevor, having a steady income is great, so what’s the point of rushing to the finish line if there’s no one waiting at home for him just yet?

Trevor comes across loyal, maybe even to a fault. But he’s grounded and self-assured, and I admire that.

Despite being gay, Trevor had a girlfriend in college. One morning, Trevor woke up next to her with a morning erection. Without asking him, she initiated sex. Trevor hadn’t consented to it.

They stayed together on and off for a while afterward, even maintaining a regular sex life. But Trevor still remembers that first experience and the fact that the decision had been made for him. Eventually, their relationship ended. When she later tried to win him back, his answer was a firm no.

His life was already moving somewhere else.

Growing Together

His first college boyfriend was kind, fun, social. He offset Trevor’s IT-guy shyness. The boyfriend introduced Trevor to a friend. Someone Trevor would peek around the computer monitor to quietly say “Hello” to, before ducking back into his own introverted world. But the social interactions didn’t stop. The three of them were fast friends. They did everything together, until Trevor was dumped. His boyfriend wanted to see other people, to explore sex, intimacy and dating. Their third-wheel best friend tried everything in his power to keep his friends together, but it didn’t work. Trevor and the friend still hung out. They grew closer over time, until one sweet day in 1998, his friend sat him down and said, Trevor, is there something more for us?

And there was.

The two started dating and have been together ever since. They’ve grown up together, explored new cities, balanced careers, and rooted themselves in a long-term, monogamous marriage.

Monogamy works for them. They know couples who are open and even people in a throuple. Trevor doesn’t judge it, he just doesn’t particularly want that added mental load in his own relationship.

Trevor is the more reserved of the two. His husband will go out for social nights two to four times per week, while Trevor is perfectly content staying home. He describes himself as an “indoor cat,” which seems especially appropriate considering the couple actually has several cats.

The strength of those years comes with drawbacks: nightly television, phone scrolling, silence, routine. Work brings its own exhaustion. Some nights his husband is in bed by 8 p.m. while Trevor stays up playing video games.

Trevor yearns for a rekindling.

Sparks still fly, though. A recent Las Vegas trip took the couple out of their monotony for a few days and away from the routines of home. The result? Something shifted in the bedroom. Trevor lights up remembering one particular morning together. For a moment, the routines and exhaustion of home disappeared.

That spark in the hotel bedroom that reminded them, “Hey, I’m still here, and I still love you.”

Something to Look Forward To

Both Trevor and his husband turn 50 next year. A milestone birthday to be celebrated abroad. They’re hoping for London. Friends may join. It’s something to look forward to.

And while the trips and the hobbies and the interests keep things interesting, Trevor still keeps his imagination going, especially after hours. We talk about self-love, embracing his inner daddy and bear qualities. He didn’t always lean into his body type, and that impacted him. He’s always been on the chubbier side, and living with Type 1 diabetes adds another complication to his relationship with his body.

But he seems more comfortable in it now.

He’s confident. Sitting boldly, naked in front of me.

He fantasizes about a scenario where he’s naked, safely restrained, and blindfolded for hours while a trusted handler oversees the situation and makes sure his boundaries are respected. Or maybe he’d be the handler. Either way, there’s something nice about the thought of a rush, of letting go of the routine, letting someone else control the situation.

We spend time talking about how consent would actually work in a fantasy like that. The boundaries, the logistics, the difficulty of safely manufacturing a situation designed to feel uncontrolled while actually being anything but.

In practice, Trevor is an “edger,” a “gooner,” someone who takes his time with his body, enjoys himself, and keeps his body and mind on the edge of euphoria for as long as he can.

The above fantasy surprised me! The shy, techy, video-gaming husband envisions the extremes.

Maybe that contrast shouldn’t be surprising at all.

Trevor has built a life around things that last: a university career spanning decades, a pension slowly approaching, friendships that have survived changing seasons, a plethora of four-legged children, and a husband he first met by cautiously peeking over a computer monitor almost 30 years ago.

There’s room inside that stability for fantasy. For exhibitionism. For letting go. For becoming the daddy bear he didn’t always see himself as.

Something to stimulate, but when it’s all over. When the edging stops. There’s nothing better than coming back to a solid, steady, healthy reality.

Especially when you’ve spent nearly 30 years building it together.

[Meet Kay, 37, California]

Kay and his family arrived in the United States from Taiwan over 20 years ago. At the time, he was in his formative high school years, yet the colossal move evoked little to no emotional impact on him.

If he had to guess, Kay was just trying to adjust. His entire life had been picked up and placed elsewhere: a new country, a new language, and an entirely new set of social cues. The transition moved so fast that all he could do was assess quickly and try to fit in.

And fitting in didn’t come easily. Kay was slow to make friends. It took him until senior year and even into college before he found a solid social circle. But even then, Kay was putting on a façade. He laughed at jokes he didn’t understand. He always made sure to grab the room’s attention. He thought being loud and taking up space made him likeable.

But a college spring break trip to Arizona turned into a pivotal introspective moment for Kay. He had done what he always did: put on a show, people-pleased, made a scene for the sake of being noticed. A friend sat him down and told him to stop. The performative personality was obnoxious and off-putting.

Kay remembers crying… in the middle of the desert.

It dawned on him that no one really knew him. Worse, he didn’t know who the real Kay was either.

All the feelings he had pushed down when he moved to the United States were coming to a head. He needed to release the pressure.

He subsequently found himself in AA for substance issues and focused his efforts at the time on dealing with this strong need for codependency. He didn’t want to rely on how others reacted to him. He wanted others to accept him for his true self, even if he was still figuring out exactly what that meant.

A City Planning graduate, Kay lasted all of one year working in the public sector before realizing it was not for him. City Hall moves slowly, and he didn’t particularly like all of the writing involved. He transitioned to a few other roles in his 20s as he figured out what he wanted to do. Sales roles were fun. He enjoyed selling things, but the burnout from those jobs, especially on an emotional level, was intense.

An old coworker eventually had another “check yourself” moment with Kay, similar to his spring break realization. She told Kay to find a more stable job, something routine he could solidify himself in.

And so he did.

Kay put in the effort to earn a difficult language interpreter certification. He’s been in the role for over a decade now. It’s challenging but rewarding. He enjoys bridging the gap for those who need it, especially in healthcare settings, helping people get the care they need.

There’s something fitting about that. The kid who once laughed along at jokes he couldn’t understand now makes a living making sure other people are understood.

In classic Kay fashion, he did take a bit of a “sabbatical” at one point to travel the world for six months to “find himself.”

He returned broke.

And even more confused about who he was as a person, but maybe that was the point.

[Surrender]

At this point in the interview, Kay strips to his underwear. Gray briefs. A smile across his face. Apparently his apartment is a roaring 90+ degrees and he was desperate to undress.

He sits back, legs spread. He’s 5’10” and around 170 lb. I see him bulging.

Kay looks great. He says he looks younger today than he did in his 20s. The pandemic got him, in a sense. He put on weight and knew he needed to refocus on his health and wellness.

He owes the physique and appearance to his workouts and nutrition. He works out four times a week, mixing CrossFit, weightlifting and cardio. He particularly loves leg workouts and even demonstrates a squat for me. His briefs stretch as he lowers, becoming somewhat see-through.

Kay’s mantra in health and in life: Surrender.

On a surface level, surrender means sucking it up during a workout to get the desired results. Working out can suck. Life can suck. Sometimes getting where you want to go means surrendering to the discomfort required to get there.

But for Kay, it goes deeper than that.

Surrender means surrendering to the realities of life and of yourself. Accepting that you are ever evolving. Your desires change. Your motivations change. Your needs change. Maybe there is no “true” answer to the question of who you are.

That’s particularly poignant coming from someone who once traveled around the world specifically to find himself, only to come home more confused.

Maybe the value in life is hidden in the mundane, day-to-day routine of it all. In conversations with strangers at the gym. In relationships that come and go. In work. In music. In all of it.

And Kay has built plenty of that into his life.

Making friends in his mid-30s is difficult. His straight married friends all have kids now, with little time for social activities. Even still, Kay makes new friends online (me!), at the gym and through music events.

Kay’s in a band. He’s played electric guitar but focuses on bass guitar now. Events keep him social enough, and with the constant client work for his job, he’s usually in bed by 9 p.m.

His dating history has a pattern, too, which he readily admits. Kay likes to date people who are thinkers. Teachers, psychologists, etc. People who ponder life and question motivations.

Deep thinkers turn him on.

But more importantly, they challenge him. They make him question his own motivations and, hopefully, better his own life. Maybe it’s no coincidence that some of the most consequential people in Kay’s story have been the ones willing to look at him and say: Check yourself.

He considers himself bisexual. Romantically linked to women. Sexually linked to men.

“Men are fun.”

[Naked = Fun]

And apparently, so is getting naked for a stranger on the internet.

Kay drops his briefs to the ground with an instant boner. I make him throw them across the room. He’s on full display and I think he likes it.

Actually, I know he likes it.

I take a guess at his length: 6.25” on the nose. He grabs a tape measure to prove I’m right.

For someone who has spent much of his adult life questioning when he’s performing and why, Kay certainly isn’t afraid to put on a show.

The difference might be that now he’s having fun with it.

The Undress Code experience is a turn-on for him. The mental and physical intimacy of a naked interview makes his balls tingle. He loves sexual topics with a narrative, so having a casual conversation while keeping a sexual edge humming in the background is right up his alley.

Inherently, a clothed-to-naked interview also lends itself to something else Kay enjoys: a dynamic.

Kay loves sexual dynamics. And we’re not talking alpha/beta submission. We’re talking classic porn tropes: daddy/son, teacher/student, doctor/patient. Played-out scenarios where there’s a built-in social dynamic.

There’s a role to inhabit.

A story to play along with.

Maybe even a little performance.

His cock twitches as he tells me his most intimate sex story.

Kay was visiting a nudist retreat, where it was common for guys to walk around the grounds naked, especially in the evening when the day’s events were over. On one evening walk, Kay ran into a sexy white guy a few years older who was walking his dog.

They got to chatting.

The man had just wrapped up an intense argument with his boyfriend and needed to blow off some steam. He invited Kay into his trailer, and they got to know each other over a glass of wine.

One thing led to another. Confessions of horniness. Mutual attraction. Kissing, sucking and flip fucking. A wild night with a stranger that hit all the right spots.

But Kay stayed overnight.

And they talked.

They got to know each other on a personal level, too.

Kay likes sex. He likes attention. He likes dynamics. He likes putting on a show. None of that disappeared when a college friend made him cry in the Arizona desert.

Maybe it didn’t need to.

At 37, surrender doesn’t mean Kay finally discovered some fixed, authentic version of himself hiding underneath all those performances. If anything, he seems to have learned the opposite. There may not be one definitive Kay to discover.

There’s the Taiwanese teenager trying desperately to fit in. The loud college kid demanding the room’s attention. The guy in AA. The city planner. The salesman. The interpreter. The world traveler. The gym regular. The bass player. The guy who likes women. The guy who thinks men are fun.

And, tonight, the naked guy on my screen.

They’re all Kay.

Maybe surrender is letting them be.

I know it sounds bad, but hear me out. No gay man grows up with a roadmap on how to be gay, let alone how to navigate an open relationship. And somehow, I’ve managed to be in two of them.

Relationship 1, on paper, made sense to open up. We had a period of doing long distance. I had my corporate job in one state, and he moved away to another for grad school. Distance made opening the relationship seem practical. But in practice, it didn’t work out as well. He called me crying every time he dipped his toes into the Grindr world. The emotional weight of being intimate with another guy was too much for him. The result? I switched jobs, moved to his city, and we reverted our relationship tag back to #Exclusive. We subsequently broke up.

Relationship 2, my current and loving relationship, opened up after a year of dating. We wanted the best of both worlds: excitement together and the freedom to explore separately. Our version became “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Is this the right approach? Maybe. Either way, it was fun at first. The floodgates opened, and a rush of men crossed our paths. Things eventually calmed down.

But as you’re aware, I’m an Online Gay. I love the endless conversations on Grindr, Reddit, X. I enjoy talking to strangers about fantasies, relationships, and identity probably more than I should. It’s how I ended up on Substack.

Some fantasies belong online.

I like the idea of Clothed Male, Naked Male (CMNM) dynamics. I interview guys here while they get naked for me, for my amusement, and for the benefit of the Undress Code community to share their stories, not just the sexual ones. It’s been super exciting and super fun. The floodgates remain open here. But at the end of the day, it’s my Online Gay persona that I prefer to keep separate from my personal life.

So yeah, I blocked my boyfriend. I wanted one part of my life that belonged only to me.

(Photo Credit: David Clifton-Strawn)

[Meet Cator, Life Coach, 50, Atlanta]

Phase 1: Clothed

Cator is a 50-year-old gay man living in Atlanta, Georgia. He’s lived in the south for much of his adult life. but his story starts in New York City, where he built a career as a writer. Before becoming a life coach, he freelanced for the likes of Vanity Fair and The New York Times, riding the early 2000s wave of men’s fashion, grooming, and lifestyle journalism.

This chapter of his life feels cinematic. He recounts Fashion Week, yacht shows, and trips to Monaco. It was the fast life: fashion, travel, drinking, networking, and the excitement of every new assignment.

But then the 2008 financial crisis hit. Writing dried up almost overnight, forcing Cator to reevaluate what came next.

Leveraging his journalistic background and deeper understanding of the men’s lifestyle industry, he founded his own online magazine, The Manual. Think GQ meets Garden & Gun. Articles on grooming, food and drink, fitness, travel, the outdoors, and the hobbies that make men interesting. Gardening. Whiskey. You name it. He wrote thoughtful essays and grew a team of over fifteen people throughout the years. I sensed immense pride in his building something that was his.

Then life interrupted, again.

Around the pandemic, Cator lost both his job and his long-term relationship. On paper, those are simple sentences: “I got laid off” and “I got divorced.” In reality, those moments can reshape your entire identity for months, if not years.

I admired how Cator talked about these moments. He mentioned them so assuredly, like yeah, that happened. I didn’t sense bitterness or self-pity, but rather acknowledgement and growth.

And without these moments, maybe Cator wouldn’t be the life coach he is today.

Cator Sparks: Life Coach for Men

He approaches the role with intention. Life coaching isn’t a regulated profession, something we both acknowledged, but he took that seriously. He completed certification through CTI, one of the most renowned coaching organizations in the world. He spent months traveling to New York on the weekends to learn. He also became a facilitator for EVRYMAN (often described as “CrossFit for men’s emotions”). He studied specialized topics like somatic healing and inner child work.

His coaching ranges from self-improvement, interpersonal discussions and self-dialogue, to more tangible courses on Gay Dating Apps and how to navigate the world of dating and intimacy.

Phase 2: Underwear

Being a life coach has given Cator something many people quietly want: ownership of his day.

He works from home in urban Atlanta, where his house feels like a tiny farm tucked within the city. His mornings are enjoyable. He has his coffee outside, he gardens, and he practices moments of relaxation before his regularly scheduled client calls begin.

Health is prioritized every day. Yoga. HIIT classes. Even a Greece-vacation-inspired summer diet, resulting in 10+ pounds lost.

It’s pretty obvious that Cator is proud of the body he built. He even volunteered an artsy near-nude photo for the interview. The confidence didn’t come overnight, though. Part of that journey involved intentionally pushing past body shame. He’s visited Easton Mountain, a nudist retreat in New York, where openness around the body is normalized, instead of hidden. In 2022, he attended an ayahuasca retreat, where, somewhat unexpectedly, he rediscovered his foot fetish. An honest piece of his story.

But not all of his body’s story has been positive. Last year, after months of pain, doctors discovered he had virtually no cartilage left protecting his hips. He underwent a double hip replacement and has bounced back swimmingly. The poster child for proactive, yet decisive, personal and physical health.

This version of Cator comes across different from the younger version. His twenties and thirties were fueled by career ambition, New York City energy, and constant movement. Today’s Cator seems much more intentional about caring for the one body he’ll have for the rest of his life.

Phase 3: Naked

An unexpected benefit of having a rockin’ body at fifty is hearing “hey Daddy” from other gay men.

At this point, Cator is completely naked. And honestly, I get it.

Cator and I met on Substack. I had posted online looking for someone with a foot fetish to interview, and somehow the algorithm decided we should know each other.

[I’ll pause to admit something.]

Before this interview, I carried a stereotype about foot fetishes. I imagined Cator would be someone who wanted to worship another man’s feet.

Instead, he described something much simpler. Cator admires and appreciates feet.

A healthy foot. A confident guy wearing sandals. Bare feet on display. The smooth skin, the toes, and the care some men put into themselves to keep their feet that way. He even recounted an early memory of a middle school classmate with particularly nice feet, and how even from that age he felt something deep inside when seeing them.

Living in the south doesn’t hurt either. Warm weather means plenty of guys in sandals!

But the more we talked, the more I realized this interview wasn’t about feet. It was about mentorship and caretaking.

Cator loves the idea of being a “Daddy,” but not because of age. To him, being a Daddy means being someone others can rely on. He’s grounded. He takes care of people. In many ways, it’s the exact same role he fills professionally as a coach. The sexual dynamic becomes an extension of that core personality.

Ironically, it’s also one of the few spaces where someone takes care of him. After spending so much of his life looking after other people, he enjoys partners who want to make sure Daddy is happy, whether that’s listening to what he needs or giving him the same attention he gives them. And yes, that often includes his feet. He loves having them touched, massaged, and played with just as much as he enjoys admiring a man with sexy feet of his own. (They do have to be sexy, though. Otherwise, it’s a no-go.) For the guys who genuinely want to spoil Daddy, that’s where the magic is.

He laughed about slowly pulling off another man’s socks, kissing his toes, and watching them curl from his touch. He’s absolutely a top. There’s no greater connection than being inside someone, their legs in the air, feet in his face.

Sex can be fun, but the real invigoration comes from the connection. The “how are you doing today?” and the “let’s grab dinner sometime.” Those guys are prioritized.

He told me about one of his wildest nights in New York (back in the day), calling an escort service to have someone sent to his door. The escort was impressed with Cator’s charisma and physique and the chemistry was so natural that the escort never even charged him. Looking back now, with dating apps putting thousands of men a swipe away, he almost seemed nostalgic. Sex has become easier, but genuine connection has not.

I think the fascinating part about Cator is he got me thinking in the best way possible. I left the interview questioning myself, my career, my relationships, my identity.. maybe even myself. Did he somehow life coach me during the interview? Excited to explore that more. Thanks, Coach!

I’ve spent months interviewing guys, having them strip down and share stories about themselves. So today I wanted to share a quick strip tease on myself (and yes, I wrote this naked).

I started Undress Code after losing my dream job. I worked at a Fortune 500 company. It had prestige. It had great pay. My department was wonderful. But my direct boss and I did not get along.

Meeting with her one-on-one three times a week sucked. She nitpicked, she passive-aggressively scolded, she talked about me behind my back.

She reported me to HR, claiming I “didn’t respect her” as the basis for the complaint. I wasn’t her first run-in with HR, but I was the first subordinate to have issues with her, and subordinates never win.

The day she put a Performance Improvement Plan on my desk in a “surprise” meeting, I professionally told her to shove it, gave my two weeks’ notice, and admitted I already had a new job lined up.

She’ll go down as the worst boss of my corporate career.

I still feel behind because of it. I question my capabilities. I second-guess every email, every conversation, every request for feedback with my new team.

As cheesy as it is to say, Substack gave me an excuse to connect with other people in a positive light.

Every interview I’ve conducted has uncovered shared experiences. Inflection points in someone’s life that slammed one door shut but opened another. The end of a relationship. An accident. A career pivot. Talking through those moments is what makes this project worth it.

I’m inspired by the guys I chat with. I learn something new about myself every single time.

I still catch myself reliving the memories of that dream job turned sour, but I’ve also learned to trust myself again, open up, and keep growing.

Phase 1: Clothed

Mike is in his forties, East Coast born and built. His life looks almost aggressively normal from the outside. Software development manager. Blended family. Cat owner. Carpool schedules, school calendars, grocery lists, and the low-grade chaos of raising multiple kids under one roof. If stability had a LinkedIn profile, it would look a lot like his.

Being a dad comes first, not as a slogan, but as a logistical reality. He and his wife are the primary caretakers for both sets of kids, which means mornings are orchestrated, evenings are crowded, and privacy is rare. “Alone time,” he said, “is only everyone else is at school or work.” That window, when it exists, is precious. It’s when he can finally exist as something other than Dad or Husband.

He’s bisexual, matter-of-fact about it, neither a secret nor a centerpiece. Just part of Mike’s operating system.

Phase 2: Underwear

To Mike, fitness = maintenance. He works out two to three times a week, aiming for four, using both the office gym and a home setup depending on what the day allows. Lunch break lifts 💪🏼. Late-night cardio 🏃‍♂️. Weekend basketball games 🏀, and pickleball 👟, too.

Food is another area where he quietly overperforms. He does most of the cooking and, by his own admission, does it better than his wife. Not chef-y, not elaborate. Just disciplined. Healthy chicken. Healthy salmon. Healthy vegetables that actually taste like something because he knows how to use spices. The goal isn’t culinary glory, it’s sustainability.

A typical office day is functional: get ready, commute, meetings stacked back-to-back, gym at lunch, more meetings, home for dinner and family time. Somewhere in there he still squeezes in some video games, usually late at night when the house goes quiet. His media diet is unapologetically mainstream: Marvel, DC, Fallout, Peacemaker, Game of Thrones. Worlds with clear stakes and escapable rules.

When the topic turned to his first marriage, his tone shifted from casual to precise. His advice was blunt: don’t settle, and talk about life goals early, especially kids. “Parenting isn’t a hobby,” he said. “It’s a permanent restructuring of your life and if you’re not aligned, it will surface eventually.” No bitterness in his voice, just hard-earned clarity.  We left it at that.

Phase 3: Naked

If Phase 2 Mike is controlled, Phase 3 Mike is kinetic (big words for me).

He describes himself as a nudism enthusiast, an exhibitionist, and someone with a libido that simply does not power down. Nude beaches with his wife in New Jersey were a gateway, not a novelty. The appeal was the openness. Being fully in his body instead of compartmentalized into roles.

Their sex life, he says, is “crazy hot,” with his wife tending toward submission while he moves between dominant and submissive energy depending on the dynamic.

Sometimes she takes control. Sometimes she restrains him. Sometimes the roles blur. What stands out isn’t any specific act but the sense that they treat intimacy as something to be explored rather than scheduled.

Still, he admits the frequency doesn’t match his appetite. When one channel isn’t enough, the energy doesn’t disappear. It redirects.

That’s where the online world comes in.

Mike has cultivated a parallel erotic life that is almost entirely psychological. He serves as an “online dom” to a European couple in their thirties, guiding them, teasing them, pushing their boundaries through words rather than presence. Call it “mental dominance,” the thrill coming from influence rather than physical contact. For more than eight months he has been their remote catalyst, their provocateur, their unofficial director.

In other instances, he describes a game he plays with trusted friends: advising each other on how to text their wives, crafting messages that toe the line between playful and risqué. It’s less about betrayal than about transgression in a controlled environment, like leaning over a balcony railing just far enough to feel the height.

Porn, for him, is secondary. The real stimulation is interaction. Control. Imagination. The sense of being desired not just physically but mentally.

For Mike, exploration doesn’t require a single format. It’s a network of outlets, some shared, some solo, some purely digital.

Takeaway

Mike’s story isn’t about excess. It’s about overflow.

He pours enormous energy into parenting, health, and career, but his sexuality doesn’t shrink to fit the available space. It spills into whatever channels remain open: a committed marriage, private fantasies, digital relationships, playful boundary-testing with friends. None of it replaces the core of his life. It coexists with it.

What makes him compelling isn’t that he does “everything.” It’s that he seems to carry it without chaos. The same man who packs school lunches, attends meetings, lifts weights at noon, and cooks salmon for dinner is also orchestrating secret dramas across time zones once the house goes quiet.

Charismatic, self-aware, unapologetic, but still grounded in responsibility, Mike represents a version of sexual adulthood rarely depicted: not reckless and not repressed, but instead managed and integrated.

[Always On] Roger, Trans Male, 41, USA

Roger grew up around medicine.

His mother was a nurse, and his father was a surgeon. As a young adult, he spent time around hospitals, shadowing doctors, and observing the way they took charge, owned the room and owned their medical decisions. Hospitals were not a place for hesitation or ambivalence. At one point, he even watched open heart surgery, cementing his interest in the field.

So in one sense, Roger becoming a doctor was not surprising. But on the other hand, it was not exactly the obvious path either.

Before medicine, he studied engineering. He liked the closed environment of it all. The machines, the systems, the feedback loops. He sees elements of this in his day-to-day with the machines and monitors that fuel patient-livelihood and data. He had a natural understanding of how one part of a system could affect another. That part of him never went away, and today, he’s now in a high-pressure medical specialty. He’s still drawn to the technology, the monitors, the data that tells him the story on whether a patient is recovering.

Especially because Roger’s patients can’t always articulate their needs. Roger’s patients are primarily children.

He doesn’t necessarily want kids in his own life, but he likes them as patients. “They’re better, kinder, and less gross,” than the adult patients he says. They feel simpler in that sense.

But the medical work he performs itself is anything but simple. The training in medical school, residency, and continuing education is complex and draining. The stakes are high and the decisions are constant. Parents of the patients are anxious. And other people within the hospital system rely on him. Decisions that look trivial from the outside, are anything but. Years on the grind has left Roger burned out.

So he started looking for a different kind of medicine.

[Guard Down]

Roger turned to psychedelics because they require him to let go, soften his grip on life.

For the last few years, he has been on what he describes less as a mushroom journey and more as an embodiment or soul-searching journey that happened to lead him to mushrooms. At first, he was terrified of psychedelics. He is a doctor, after all. A former fat kid. A trans man. He is someone who spent much of his life trying to feel comfortable in his body, but also trying not to overanalyze every single thing his body is doing.

That is part of what makes mushrooms so interesting for him. They ask him to stop managing everything.

Roger started microdosing, experimenting, and paying attention to how he feels when the noise around him softens. He’s not trying to escape his life. He wants to look at it differently. He wants to lighten the part of him that always has to decide, diagnose, monitor, prepare, and respond.

After years in the medical field, Roger is so used to focusing on the external: the patient, the monitors, the family, the decision making, the next risk. With mushrooms, he is turning inward.

[Body of Work]

In a full circle moment, that inward turn has changed the way Roger thinks about being seen.

One month a year, Roger challenges himself to take one nude self portrait a day. At the end of that month, he compiles the photos into a small booklet, a coffee table book, and shares it with friends.

What started as a personal art project, has morphed into something much bigger. The books are a way for Roger to document himself. A way to force himself to look at his body and admire and acknowledge it, rather than immediately judge it. He is the subject, the artist, and the observer all at the same time. And for Roger, that really matters.

Roger is a trans man, but when he talks about body discomfort, he doesn’t flatten the whole thing into being about gender. Part of it was being a FFK, former fat kid. Some of it is just “feeling awkward.” Part of it is also learning how to exist in a body that other people might misunderstand before they ever actually know him.

In the most recent self-portrait volume, he pushed the limits further. Roger embraced imperfection. Not every photo had to be perfect. Some angles were less flattering than others. Some lighting didn’t quite hit right. Roger embraced collaboration. Local artists with new visions for the project contributed. They helped photograph Roger in new spaces, public spaces, wilderness, and beyond. Creative editing took photos on page to the next level. Whether he realized it or not, Roger gave up some control. For the sake of art!

Unsurprisingly, Roger is an exhibitionist. But where some exhibitionists aspire toward attention and applause, Roger seeks out acceptance and arousal.

[The cover photo of this article is Roger, being watched from the other side of a hotel shower wall]

Roger has attended queer retreats. Retreats where men practice vulnerability through nudity, erotic touch, and emotional exercises. He likes how these exercises push his boundaries, despite maybe sometimes being the only trans man in the space. Blindfolds, touching, and letting go of the fact that his companions will not feel a “unit” between his legs when feeling around.

He takes this a step further in the bedroom. D/s dynamics excite him. After years of being the person who has to make decisions, Roger likes being told what to do. Submission feels good. So does letting someone else take the lead.

Roger comes across as someone still willing to surprise himself. He is saying yes where old habits told him no, giving up control, and realizing he might actually like what he finds there.

Trying to follow the rules:

Sean grew up in Appalachia, where the nuclear family was paramount. People believed in faith, family, and duty to each other and the community. But that kind of duty came easier to people who naturally “fit.”

Sean tried to follow the rules: be faithful, be useful, be good. He wanted to find the job, find the partner, and start a big, wonderful family. He wanted to be the kind of person people understood right away. Instead, he was “othered.”

He watched his brothers break the rules and get rewarded for it. Meanwhile, Sean followed the rules and still felt invisible.

He went into the ministry. Bible college as a queer person in an evangelical world wrecked his psyche. A philosophy and writing degree followed, maybe because he was still trying to make sense of faith, himself, and the world around him.

After that, the rooms kept changing. He worked in a daycare, a museum, and then a tutoring center. Useful and kind work, connected by care and curiosity. Unfortunately, the last several years have been rocky: a pandemic bubble in online tutoring, then the bubble bursting, then the expectations changing again in a post pandemic world.

For Sean, the problem was never that he refused to try. If anything, he kept trying to become legible to people who had already decided he was hard to read. [Sean, as a fellow writer, I hope you like that line… legible is a big word for me hahaha]

A new perspective:

Sean was diagnosed with autism and ADHD as an adult.

Suddenly, parts of his life started making more sense. Not everything was fixed, but at least some things had names now.

The diagnosis brought anger. Anger at the people who could have helped him and didn’t. Anger at the people who shamed him, belittled him, or never bothered to ask why Sean was the way he was.

And Sean spent a lot of his life trying to understand the unspoken rules around him. Work rules. Family rules. Dating rules. Gay social rules. Conversation rules. The things that came easy to others. He would try over and over to get them right.

That’s where his diagnosis gave him a new kind of context. It helped Sean explain why he was always overextending himself for other people. It also explained why the world could feel so loud and difficult to read. Sean also brought up his alexithymia, which means he has trouble identifying his emotions. On the flip side, he does not come across as someone without emotion. In fact, I felt a lot of emotion. I felt the grief, loneliness, humor, frustration, understanding, and hope.

When it came time to undress, his body eased. Clothes feel restrictive to Sean. He feels everything touching his skin. He hates the heat. He wears a shawl for protection. Sean looked comfortable, and even said so.

Working with what he’s got:

Sean messaged me a few weeks after the interview and said he was doing okay.

He is piecing together teaching, tutoring, and illustration work. A combination of things that hopefully adds up to enough money to live. He said a 40 hour work week is the fast track to burnout city for him, so he’s trying to make work fit in a way that actually works for him.

For Sean, 25 hours a week is doable. So that is what he’s trying to build around.

He was also in an improv group that recently wrapped up. There may be a new troupe on the horizon, and he’s hoping it’s even better than the last.

There is a lot Sean still wants in life:

• We talked about his desire for touch. He has a friend who comes over for movies and “snuggle” time, which I love as a concept. Nothing too complicated. Just body contact and the feeling of being held. Grounding himself.

• He does want sex, too. Life isn’t as sexual as he’d like. He has had friends with benefits in the past, but nothing stuck around long term. He’s explored sex events at clubs and bars, but those can become expensive, and the rules around consent blurry.

• Dating feels competitive. Everyone is fighting for someone else’s attention. Sean feels there is a prescribed way to unveil yourself out in the dating world, and he never really got the memo. He’s been burned before.

• Most of all, Sean wants closeness. He wants family. He wants to be seen. He wants that duty that he grew up around, but understands it may not be in the cards for him, at least in that traditional sense.

Despite everything getting in the way in life, Sean has something great to offer. He’s got a unique perspective, a genuine personality, and a life that works for him.

[Meet Ben, 22 USA]

Ben is 22 and in college studying engineering. When we spoke he was at home with his parents. His mom had stepped out and his dad was downstairs “somewhere in the house.” The whole setup had a slightly mischievous energy but Ben did not seem bothered by it at all. He was relaxed, casual, and very matter-of-fact about everything. Let’s just hope his dad wasn’t listening.

Engineering was not something he grew up dreaming about, but in high school he took an introductory class and something about the design process stuck with him. The mix of creativity and structure appealed to him. From there, the idea of engineering / architecture started to feel like a natural path.

Like I said, Ben came across as very grounded. Soft spoken. Easygoing. The type of guy you would expect to see walking around campus in a hoodie, baggy jeans, backpack, with a coffee in hand. Nothing about him screams extreme or wild… which makes the rest of the conversation way more interesting.

Digging Deeper

For a college student, though, Ben’s schedule is pretty forgiving. One of the perks of his program is that he rarely has early classes. Most days the earliest class on his calendar is around 11 in the morning.

On a typical day, he wakes up, showers, and drives about twenty minutes to campus. Once he is there he usually hangs around between classes. Has lunch with friends, spends time in the drawing studio, or just walks around campus before heading home later in the afternoon.

After school his routine is simple:
He goes to the gym every other day.
He reads.
And he plays recreational basketball. He played in high school and still enjoys it enough to keep it in the rotation.

Physically he is lean. Around 5’10 and about 145 pounds. Athletic but not bulky.

From a grooming standpoint he keeps things neat but uncomplicated. He gets regular haircuts. He shaves his chest hair about once a month. Armpits get shaved twice a year. Ben has been growing a mustache that suits him well. I’m blinded by his boy-next-door charm. It gives him a slightly older look without trying too hard.

Undressed

Ben tends to be attracted to older men. But not just any older man.

He gravitates toward guys who are submissive. He craves the dominance and control.

At the moment he doesn’t have a formal partner. Instead, he is in a sort-of situationship with a guy a few years older than him. They are both fit and physically compatible. They switch between topping and bottoming. No elaborate setups or complicated kink dynamics between them. Just regular sex when they see each other. But Ben wants more. He wants that adrenaline rush.

And then there’s Ben’s online persona.

He spends time on Reddit where he sometimes meets submissive guys who are interested in being directed or given tasks. Conversations move to Snapchat quickly and he enjoys giving instructions and seeing if people follow through. For him the excitement is not only sexual but psychological. It is about control and attention.

Some of the tasks revolve around humiliation or degradation. Ben has a clear fascination with piss play and sees it as a strong form of dominance. Being able to tell someone to do something taboo and have them comply creates a power dynamic that he finds exciting. He laughs when they obey. Grown men humiliating themselves for a college boy. Insane.

There was once a real world moment at a gas station where he whipped it out and pissed on a trucker during a quick meetup.

For Ben the appeal seems less about shock and more about authority. The act becomes a symbol of hierarchy. One person directing. The other obeying.

Outside of that he masturbates daily. He watches domination porn and has a few other personal kinks that pop-up repeatedly. Armpits are a turn on. He sometimes uses plugs. He likes the idea of sex swings and bondage. His world is ever-expanding, and I’m sure he’d try anything twice.

Despite all of that, his demeanor never shifts into something aggressive or performative. He talks about these interests the same way he talks about architecture classes or going to the gym. Calmly and slightly amused.

Takeaway

Ben is a good reminder that kink does not always live where people expect it.

On the surface he is a typical college student. Lives at home. Drives twenty minutes to class. Plays basketball. Reads.

Ben is soft spoken, friendly, normal.

But within the privacy of online spaces he explores dominance and humiliation dynamics with surprising confidence. Piss play in particular becomes a tool for power. It is not only about the act itself. It represents control, taboo, and obedience. Ben seems to understand this instinctively.

For a guy with limited privacy at home and a steady college schedule, the internet becomes his playground during those pockets of availability. Snapchat instructions. Reddit conversations. Moments of command that exist outside the everyday version of himself.

He is not reckless about it, nor is he ashamed.

Just a horny college student who discovered that power, curiosity, and the right audience online can open doors to a very different kind of exploration.

[Meet Johnny, 50, PNW USA]

Johnny’s professional life makes more sense when you realize he’s spent most of it managing systems, people, or crises that were already falling apart. His first job was outdoors in the heat tending landscape at a nature reserve. He loved seeing the water lilies. Working out in the natural world with nothing but his thoughts.

Th…

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[Meet Conner, ~30, NYC]

Conner sits cross-legged on the couch, leaning forward, smiling at the camera.

He lives in New York City but shares a small apartment with a friend. Privacy is limited. Time on the other hand, suddenly isn’t.

At almost 30, Conner is in the middle of a reset. After years of working in marketing, he stepped away from a series of deman…

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[Meet Sam, 30’s DC/Northern Virginia]

Sam is a yuppie in the purest DC sense of the word. Good job. Nice apartment. Run clubs. Protein heavy breakfasts. He probably owns multiple quarter zips.

Physically, he’s imposing. Scruffy. Broad shouldered. Hairy. Built like the kind of guy you’d expect to speak with confidence. Instead, …

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[Meet Julian, 20’s Pacific Northwest]

Have you ever brushed legs with the passenger next to you on a plane?

Or felt the masseuse’s hands drift a little too low below the waist?

Or caught a glimpse of a friend dropping his towel in the locker room for just a second too long?

Julian is a tech guy based in the Pacific Northwest (the…

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Meet Corey [20s, Business]

Corey is (yet another) pretty boy college student interviewee from southwest USA. He’s a self-proclaimed “Hispanic ginger” with a mix of many, many nationalities. He identifies most with his Colombian roots and is a spitting image of his protective and charismatic mother. He’s quickly wrapping up a b…

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Meet Tony [40’s, Lawyer]

This interview was with Tony. He is in his 40’s, Canadian, and carries himself with a practiced steadiness that comes from years of responsibility and discipline

Tony is a lawyer. He has been practicing for over a decade, after an earlier chapter in banking and finance. His work is demanding and menta…

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The more of these interviews I do, the more convinced I am that desire is less about personality and more about timing. When you were born. What scared you. What was forbidden. What you had to imagine instead of immediately accessing.

Malcolm made that impossible to ignore.

We moved through the familiar three phases, clothed, u…

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