Sex Obsession

I recently had a reader write to me.  Regarding my blog, he called my essays “good, honest accounts of a sex obsessed male.”  I liked the “good, honest accounts” part, but would you believe it Dear Reader if I told you that I was shocked to hear myself referred to as sex obsessed?  How out of touch with reality could I possibly be?

The thing is, I thought that everyone spends as much mental energy thinking about sex as I do.  I had to wake up to the fact that no, not everyone thinks about it as much.  But I would then go on to say:  Perhaps some people think about it as much as I do, and the others almost as much.

To all you wonderful sluts reading this, you likely think about it often.  But let’s not forget how often the religious right think about it.  We know they think about sex constantly because of the amount of energy they expend trying to keep us from having it.

Don’t we all walk down the street and wonder about the sex lives of the people who pass by us?  Is that person, who at first glance appears nearly asexual to you, really a wolf in sheep’s clothing?

I believed in the beginning that even if the religious right would hate my blog, my gay friends would like it.  This has not proven true.  I’ve shared the link to this blog with only my nearest and dearest friends, but a few have never once brought it up.  Maybe they just didn’t get around to reading it?  Or did it bother them?  In what way?  My goal with this blog is to shed light on things I think are needlessly (and sometimes harmfully) kept in the dark.  Is it possible that even some of my gay brothers want to keep it in the dark?  Or, is it that they just aren’t obsessed with the topic in the way that I am and are not, quite frankly, that interested?

In May of 2012, I posted an essay about what I considered the birth of my sexuality (Times Square).  I wrote something to the effect that I felt something was indeed born that night.  What was born?  I think an essential authenticity was born.   A deeper understanding of myself and how I connect to people.  In the years prior to that, I was obsessed with acting, and the theatre was my lover.  That was authentic too.  My goal as an actor had always been to tell the stories of my gay brotherhood.  But that never came to pass.  Instead I took whatever job I could, and so often it was in productions that had nothing to do with my reality.  There was a dissonance in my head:  An actor is supposed to tell other peoples stories, but I wanted to tell my own. 

But perhaps Mary’s essential authenticity was born the day she became a field reporter at the local TV station.  Maybe Ken’s essential authenticity was born the moment he realized he could make people laugh.  And thus, an obsession – no wait, let’s call it a passion – began.

I titled this blog Hunting for Sex.  I can’t help wondering if what I’ve been hunting for all along was simply myself.