I took yet another wrong turn and looked around. It was 10am, but down here in the maze-like bowels of Venice it could’ve been 10pm. I’d been up since 4am and the caffeine from the cup of coffee on the plane was wearing thin. Breakfast would’ve been lovely and there was certainly the tantalising smell of food in the air, but following my usually-acute sense of smell had already led me into three dead ends.

A couple of geriatric Italians grinned at me toothlessly from a doorway. Even if I attempted to ask them for directions in Italian they would feign illiteracy.

I stared at them and grinned back, making the shape of a gun with my index finger and thumb. My over-sized canines had done most of the work, but I had to admit: the finger-gun was a nice touch. Pointing it at the pensioners I asked: ‘Dov’è Al Doge Beato?‘ They showed me, with a nervous succession of frail arm movements, where I might find my humble abode for the next two days: The Blessed Duke, the Happy Duke — something like that.  It sounded cheesy, but it was charming– everything in Venice is lovely.

Perhaps ‘lovely’ isn’t quite the right word; ‘quaint’ better describes the almost-complete dilapidation of the city. As I walked on, almost everything is in an awful state of repair. There’s something about floating in the middle of a warm and windy salt-water lagoon that really eats away at the paint and brickwork. A few bridges and labyrinthine turns later, I stood outside my hotel: a canal-side, turn-of-the-millennium building — and I’m not talking about a few years ago! My room looked out over a canal on one side, and had a floor-to-ceiling double-door leading out onto an ancient stone balcony on the other. It wasn’t cheap, but considering nothing in Venice is, I thought I’d splash out.

‘You can’t miss Piazza San Marco, just head towards…’ I zoned out as he begun gesturing wildly with his hands. It was obviously an Italian thing, pointing and gesticulating; some kind of sign language that I wasn’t privy to. He noticed the blank look on my face. ‘I’ll get you a map.’ Armed with my map and camera and finger-gun I looked around and then at the map, trying to catch my bearings. Picking one of the three paths that headed south at random I felt like one of my other namesakes, Sebastian Cabot. He’d been a major player in Venice back in the day and he’d probably had less difficulty navigating Venice than me — he ended up exploring Brazil for the King of Spain! — but I gave it my best shot. I’d already decided ahead of time that ‘getting lost in Venice’ would be one of the primary objectives of my trip. Losing myself as I cut between two buildings that were no more than half a meter apart; disappearing amongst the endless serpentine alleys, lost to the world. Venice isn’t big, but you only need walk 50 meters off the beaten path, turn a few corners, and you’ll find yourself alone, standing beneath the imposing facade of a  Gothic church or Renaissance house.

First up was a trip to to the Piazza — the only real open space in central Venice and the home of most major landmarks in Venice. There’s also a huge clock tower in the middle which, as you’d expect, grants a spectacular view of the ancient core of Venice.

There are museums and churches aplenty in Venice, much like every major city in Italy, but they pale in comparison to the ones in Florence and Rome. I could easily spend hours writing about the 50 churches that I visited during my trip, but that’d be boring! (Unless you like churches a lot… like me!) Perhaps you can now understand where my recent interest in dissecting religion has come from — you can only spend so long basking in the shadow of such an ancient, powerful institution — Roman Catholicism — before something goes ‘pop’.

Venice was home to the very first Jewish Ghetto, a Venetian word that probably derives from ‘iron foundry’, or a corruption of ‘Judaca’, the name given to the streets in which the Jews were confined to in Venice. This is where Jewish segregation all began, though this ghetto didn’t enforce labour like later incarnations around the world — it was merely separation from the aggressive and violent Christians. Set up by the incumbent Duke to protect rather than enslave, the Jews probably sought refuge there — they definitely weren’t free to leave however! It was also around this time that Jews became, um, Jewish: Catholic law prevented money-lending, but Jewish law did not. Jews also became the best doctors because most medical texts at the time were in Arabic, a language that Italians and Venetians struggled to understand.

The Venetian Ghetto existed until Napoleon came along in 1797 and removed all of the gates that had penned them in for 250 years, though some early documents could put it over 700 years! All that remain are the hinges that held those gates, but the Jewish love of money lives on! (Remember, it’s not our fault though — blame the Pope!)

It was a little sad, walking around the dirty, tired streets of Venice, a city that had once been the most affluent city state the world has ever seen. The Queen of the Adriatic was one of its many names, a name that makes you wonder just how opulent and vibrant the city had been 600 years ago. For centuries, Venice was ruled by merchants – a republic, led by aristocratic merchants, their sole purpose being to make more money (something they did very well. What most people don’t know is that Venice actually held an empire — a small one, mainly consisting of the Aegean islands Crete and Cyprus, but an empire nonetheless. They had a sizable military force, and their navy of 3,000 ships were almost invulnerable in their stronghold of a lagoon. Most were merchant ships but often converted into warships when piracy flared up in the East, or when they played a large part in the Forth Crusade — the crusade often viewed as the final schism between Catholic and East Orthodox religions — a role in a war that would ultimately spell the end of the Byzantine empire. Not bad for an unnavigable flyspeck of an island!

And the scary bit? It was all made possible with money; a leader with almost unlimited resources and support from a loyal, trusting republic:  that’s capitalism.

Back in time again, to the beginning of my second year at university. The following action will actually take place in the same bedroom that would later be involved in the ‘Voyeur Mother‘ story. Again, Lilu’s blog has a bunch of other embarrassing Too Much Information stories, if mine doesn’t make you squirm enough — which I find highly unlikely.

I looked down at plastic, pink spheres, graded in order of size, neatly strung together to form a chain of ten. Someone had left them on the kitchen table — a present? For me? I tentatively reached forward to pick them up when one of my female house mates walked into the kitchen, looked down, the blood draining from her face.

“SEB! Stop!” My hand stopped mere inches from the purple balls. I turned around and looked at her. Her eyes were large, afraid and she stood transfixed, simply staring at the string of beads on the table.

“What…?”

“Th-th-those are… vibrating Thai love beads!” I recoiled and quickly scampered to a safe position behind her, peeking over her shoulder at the dirty, sinful orbs. “Love-what?” I was a late bloomer. I hadn’t a frickin’ clue what love beads were, or why they would be on my kitchen table. In retrospect, it’s even more shocking to realise that she knew what they were. She quickly told me what they were and what they were for. Ew.

Skirting around the outside of the kitchen, holding onto the worktop for support, I made my way to the sink to grab a spatula and some washing-up gloves. “So why are they on our kitchen table?” I scooped them up, holding them at arm’s length. I teased my house mate a little with my beads-on-a-stick. She screamed and ran away. But then I started to think about things: if they’re not mine, and they’re not hers, whose are they? I quickly ruled out two other house mates — they were even more vanilla than I — which left just one other house mate. The dark horse. The sex pest. The one with an Asian girlfriend that looked about 12 years old. Philip, or Phil as he preferred to be called. It was all slotting into place: he’d just come back from a trip to the Far East and he certainly had all the tell-tale signs of being a bit of a bedroom odd-job.

If the kid-like girlfriend wasn’t enough, let’s just say that when I walked into his bedroom and found a couple of restraints tied to the head of the bed, I knew they weren’t for his girlfriend. And neither was the ball gag or spiked paddle, if the noises we’d heard in the middle of the night were anything to go by. Phil, it’s safe to say, was a bit creepy.

So with the spatula extended as far away as possible, the malevolently whiffy beads hung over the end, I walked towards to his bedroom and knocked.

“Come in.” I shuddered. I bet he’d used that line before, whispered huskily to his strap-on wielding pre-pubescent girlfriend. I pushed the door open and he quickly smiled. “So that’s where they are!” Another shudder as I drop them onto his bed and make a hasty exit, keeping my eyes to the floor, saying nothing. My house mate is waiting for me as I leave his room, her big eyes silently asking how’d it go? I shrug listlessly and head back into the kitchen to wash my hands and put the kettle on.

I thought that was the last time I would see anal beads. I was wrong.

…

This is where it gets bad. You probably want to look away now if you don’t deal well with visceral, gory imagery.

A few months passed. Life in the house went by with absolutely no talk of love beads, sex toys or any other kind of interesting apparatus. We even learnt, in time, to turn a blind eye on the Filipino sex slave that he’d probably drugged and brought back to England for his vile bedroom antics.

And then one, dark, stormy night I was sitting in the kitchen enjoying a particularly fine spaghetti bolognese — is there any other pasta dish at university? — when the phone rung. Ring. Just another forkful; perhaps someone else would come to pick the phone up. Fat chance I thought, cudding, chewing, ruminating on the pasta. Brring-ring, chew-chomp. I hate being interrupted by the telephone. It’s so presumptuous to think that someone on the other end actually wants to pick up and that they’re not in the middle of something else. Rrrrrring. I sigh and pick up the phone.

Hi. Is Phil there? It’s his mum. I need to talk to him. It’s an emergency.

I call out his name, no response. Louder, still no response. “He’s probably asleep” I say, sighing down the phone. Really, it’s an emergency, could you go wake him up?

Knock. Knock. No response. I push my ear up against the door. Muffled grunts? The noises of Phil waking up from a deep sleep? Still no response. Knock. Thump. His mother’s voice still weedling away in my ear please, Seb, wake him up, his dad’s just been rushed to hospital. I’m hammering away at the door now — maybe he’s not even in, maybe he’s over at his paedophilic flight of fancy’s flat. Screw it, I barge through the door, his mother’s whining finally pushing me over the edge.

“MmffphhHFNGgrng!”

Ball-gagged and restrained — his wrists to the bed, his legs to his wrists. Take a moment to get a good mental image — OK, are you there now, with me? — his legs were up along each side of his head, his body bent in two. His waxed, smooth ass fully exposed. Just visible, at the eye of the storm, was a hot-pink shiny hemisphere. A wire ran from his puckered orifice to the control box held in his nubile teen’s tiny hands. She was wearing tall heels and not much else.

As I walked further into the room his eyes bulged and looked to the phone still held in my hand.

“GrnngFFGNGFurgnmmpf–UCK, SEB! WHAT’RE YOU DOING?”

His girlfriend had finally unbuckled the ball-gag.

“It’s your mum. Should I tell her you’re busy?”

I need to begin this one with a little background information: I have gas; the internal, intestinal kind, the type that comes out both ends with startling regularity. I don’t know if it’s a male thing, windiness, or if some men get it more than others, but I do know that I have plenty. The reason for this is quite simple: I eat a truly diverse range of foods — often at the same time — and I drink plenty of carbonated liquids, like Coke. I mix my food types with reckless abandon, and my stomach and intestines rebel violently enough to generate gas — lots and lots of gas.

Being a full-time hermit, it’s not really a problem: I mean, does a hirsute British bear shit or fart in the woods? Does it really count as burping if there’s no one there to hear it? What’s the sound one one butt-cheek farting…?

The problem is thus: when I actually find myself around other people, I have very good manners. I don’t fart or burp, nor do I pick my nose. I hold in all of that gas until, by the end of the evening, I’m ready to burst. If you’ve ever held in farts for long enough (I don’t expect girls to admit to this, but the boys probably will), you’ll know just how rough it gets; everything starts to feel really… compacted. Holding in burps isn’t so bad, but it compresses the contents of your intestine from the other side! Finally, with enough swallowing and butt-clenching… something’s gotta give. And it’s always your ass. Always.

And so with that introduction… we move onto this week’s embarrassing, too-much-information tale. As always, if you want more of the same, hit up Lilu’s blog. This is a short one, with yet another Flash animation from my favourite site Sexinfo101. If you can’t see the (not work-safe) animation further down, you need to read this story on my blog.

This one’s so terrible that I’m not going to give you a location, nor shall I mention any names. It involves me and a girl. We might be in a hotel or at my house — or we might be in a cave in Turkey — it’s irrelevant, for the sake of this story.

All you need to know is that we’re having sex. Dirty, no-holds-barred sex. The kind of sex you might have with someone you may never meet again or alternatively, a lover that you know incredibly well: you either know exactly where to touch them, or you hit all the rights spots with a fumbled, scatter-all approach. It’s that kind of frantic, frenetic sex where your heart, arms and crotch feel like they might give out at any moment — but that’s OK, because you’re going at it as if tomorrow might never come. You’re there, in each other’s sweaty embrace, breathing heavily and giving it everything you’ve got.

‘Hey baby… how about a sixty-nine?’

I pause momentarily, wondering if calling her ‘baby’ might be spoiling the moment; I ruin the deep, wet rhythm we’ve so carefully nurtured too. I look at her slightly-parted lips and grin winningly as I kiss her closed eyes. Gradually, as she realises that I’m no longer plunging back and forth like a maniac, she opens her eyes to look at me. A gentle sigh escapes from her lips, the fleeting ghost of a moan that never quite made it. ‘Sure!’

Up she climbs into old-faithful sixty-nine. I guess it varies from girl to girl, but she certainly likes it. She’s one of those few delightful girls that actually derive a sense of power and pleasure from deep-throating a long, hard penis. Funnily, most men like it because it’s very dominating — but girls like it because they’re totally in control of the man’s pleasure. And with the 69, there is of course the tiny matter of the girl receiving oral sex too, which normally settles the deal. It’s safe to say that the position is, for almost all intents and purposes, awesome.

I’ll let the animation above do most of the talking as I don’t really want to make a name for myself as a softcore erotica writer (can’t see it? You have to read this story on my blog!) Perhaps, if one day I feel the urge, I’ll start another blog and write pseudonymous porn under my dress-up-at-weekends alter-ego ‘Debby’. But I digress…

She was quite thin, so I could easily see over her stomach and breasts to her head and mouth. Magically, mystifyingly bobbing up and down. She realises I’ve stopped to look and grunts in that I’m-not-using-my-teeth-but-I-could-if-I-wanted-to way. There was actually one girl, a few years back, that took my cock out of her mouth, looked down at me, staring up from between her legs and boldly stated: ‘Look Seb, get on with it. This position does my knees in and I ain’t got all day.’ This girl was more polite and I took the hint: I got back to work and the thrusting, sucking, whimpering and moaning continued.

It’s all going so well. I can hardly see — damnit, I need wipers attached to my forehead — but what I can see looks damn fine! My body starts to tingle, starting at my toes and quickly zipping up my thighs to my groin. I have a firm grip on her legs and back, and I can feel her squirming with the involuntary spasms of muscles all over her body as she orgasms yet again. Any second now I’ll join her. Her head, her mouth, still bobbing, still dipping, still sucking. My nails dig into her thighs as I start to climax; my back arches as my muscles tense and then shudder with a violent convulsion.

PPFFAAAAAAARRRP  PfffTTTTTttt  ppft    ffftt

The monster of all pent-up farts fired explosively into her face. As if the semen wasn’t enough, she’d swallowed her pride and sucked a fart straight up her nostrils.

Those of you that have farted in the bath will know the diabolical intensity of pure, undiluted farts.

We never did the sixty-nine again. And I now excuse myself from a girl’s bedroom for just a few moments before commencing with the foreplay.

These are my legs, Jesus sandals and shorts.
Sorry for opening with such a picture, it’s unforgivable. But all will become clear as you read on…

Being a man, body hair, schlong and all, there are some things that do not come naturally. Remembering anniversaries. Washing my hands after using the bathroom. And organisation, planning. Lists, I hate lists. I might come across as a deliberate, slightly-gay, well-measured guy that organises his books and DVDs alphabetically, and makes sure everything is just so, but I assure you that isn’t the case. There are a few things that I’m good at: photography for one, I’m perfectionist in that regard. Video games? I’m down-right pro at video games. Rational thought too: if you want someone to make the right choice at the right moment, I’m your man.

But these are living-in-the-moment affairs. It’s the long, over-arching planning that I suck at. If the devil is in the details, I’m Jesus. I don’t keep a diary or even a wall calendar marked with important dates. The only birthdays I usually remember are my parents’. When someone asks me if I’m available next weekend I shrug non-committally, say ’sure!’ and pray no one else has requested my presence elsewhere (I don’t have many friends so I’m usually safe in this department…) In short, I’m a man and I require a good woman to do my thinking and planning for me. Currently this is a role fulfilled by my mother, but I’m sure there’ll be a lucky wife eventually…

[If you can't deal with vivid 'male bits' imagery, the next bit is probably not for you. If you do like stories of this kind, go check out Lilu's blog!]

Anyway, to cut to the chase: I’m the kind of guy that packs his bags only a few hours before he leaves. And I always forget something. I’m fairly experienced at the whole bag-packing thing so I rarely forget anything important — I’ve only forgotten my mobile phone charger once and I’ve never left my passport at home! — but on more than one occasion I have forgotten to pack… underwear. That’s right, I spent 12 days in Turkey, in 40-degree (104F) heat with just a single pair of boxer shorts. (Don’t worry, I had two pairs of socks, my hygiene wasn’t that bad…)

I’m going to use the same picture so you can look at them again but with this new information in mind!

(See those crinkles? They are well worn. They say ‘kiss’ all over them, if you can’t make it out. And those are red lips printed on.)

You’ve probably heard about the ‘back to front’ and ‘inside out’ techniques of odor-mitigation and boxer freshness longevity (or more simply ‘the underpant inversion method’ as I like to call it). You’ve probably seen it joked about in films like American Pie or Van Wilder. You probably laughed and said ‘Eww! Gross! No Way!’

What you didn’t know is that men actually do it.

I know, it’s too disgusting to contemplate, but men actually wear the same underwear for days or even weeks at a time! With creative folding, those sprays that people use to remove the lingering smell of cigarette smoke and a radiator or hair dryer, a man can stretch out one pair of boxers an awfully long time.

In my case, on no less than three different holidays, I’ve taken only one pair of boxer shorts.

I wore them while clambering over the ancient ruins of Thermessos in Turkey. It’s safe to say I perspired rather heavily in the process. Six days later I was still wearing them when I went for a hot-air balloon ride with five other people — they kept throwing odd glances in my direction (which is not unusual) but instead of staring as they usually do, they grimaced and pinched the bridge of their nose, a look of revulsion spreading across their face.

Then in Prague, through 3 days of drunken debauchery and sweaty hiking around the city, I wore the very same boxers. I had washed them since Turkey though.

Finally, during a 4-day LAN Party, I forgot to bring spare underwear. Four days of sitting on my ass, four days of no showers. In the middle of summer and surrounded by 1000 other gamers and computers.

I had to use rubbing alcohol and a chisel to prise them from my skanky, geeky legs. I even had to get my mother to come and help. What can I say, we’re close.

Good day! This week I’m trying something a little different. As one of the most regular and long-term participants in Lilu’s Too Much Information Thursday, I sometimes get the urge to spice things up. We only have so many gross stories to tell about ourselves after all!

This week I’ve hacked Formspring.me into showing its questions and answers in the box below. If you can’t see them in your RSS reader, you need to visit my blog. As people ask questions, and I answer them, you’ll see the results in real-time! You shouldn’t need to refresh the webpage. How’s that for high-tech?! (But you might have to hit F5 occasionally… these quick hacks are prone to bugs… — and if it NEVER updates, just go to my pretty pink Formspring page.)

Feel free to ask me absolutely anything. I strongly suggest you ask your questions anonymously, but it’s up to you. I have a day off today, so I’ll answer questions until my fingers fall off — but don’t expect essay-length answers. If you phrase your question so that a short answer works, I’ll love you even more… and might even do it again!

(It looks like you have to click the question title to see the full answer in some cases.)

I recently bought a new digital camera. Unlike the last, this one has video capabilities. As you can imagine, I’ve spent the last few days filming just about everything: birds, cats, my crippled sister, the undergrowth outside… and even myself. I’ve been brainstorming, trying to come up with some kind of video series that’s both interesting, and a good test of my ability. The video below is the result — it’s quick, it’s dirty (in one take!), but I think I could be on to something.

It’s entitled ‘Things you’ve always wanted to know about men but were too afraid to ask’, and the first episode is ‘Why men pick their nose’. Yes, I’m aware that the series could do with a shorter, catchier name… but I can’t think of one. TYAWTKAMBWTATA? No. ‘… too afraid to ask’ perhaps? Or perhaps I could just embrace my uselessly anecdotal nature and turn it into ‘Things you’ve always wanted to know’. We’ll see.

Enjoy the video. Let me know if you like it, or not. It’ll be educational at the very least!

(If you can’t see the video above, you’ll need to visit my blog — and as always, I am a proud sponsor of Lilu’s TMI Thursday!)

This week sees the continuation of my ‘Things you’ve always wanted to know about men but were too afraid to ask’ series of videos. I’m still trying to come up with a shorter and punchier title — if anyone can come up with anything, let me know; I’ll credit you!

After unearthing the true reason behind why men pick their nose, I now turn my attention to a wholly more juicy subject — showering. More specifically, why some men take a really long time in the shower. Now, you can probably all guess, now that I’ve brought it up, but watch the video and hear it right from the horse’s mouth. I might even surprise you with some of the things that men get up to in the shower — and of course, for the sake of journalistic integrity, I actually recorded the video while standing in the shower.

I know, now that I’ve taken my clothes off — for Lilu’s TMI Thursday, no less — you think I’ve gone and jumped the shark — but not so! Just you wait; there’s a lot more weird stuff that men get up to.

Incidentally, the video was entirely unscripted, and all in one take. I dropped my towel, got into the shower and… this is what came out. I have no idea why I started singing, or where the penis-play ‘outro’ came from. I must be a little crazy in the head.