What's Your Type?

What kind of man do you lust over?  Is it a smooth, buff gym bunny, or a hairy bear?  Do you like twinks or daddies?  Or does your type not fit easily into any one box?  You like a hairy twink?  Well, I think those are called otters.  So what would you call a smooth, hairless daddy?  When I hit the bars, I tend to go to the leather bars, under the (usually true) assumption that these men will be kinky.  But what of the college jock who likes to be tied up?  So often I judge a man’s sexual tendencies by his outward appearance.  But, perhaps that’s a fox in sheep’s clothing that you’re looking at.

I’m finding that my so-called type has more to do with what’s in a man’s head than the body that head is on.  Meaning, are we on the same page sexually.  But when I watch porn, it’s so often of the thirtyish year old muscle bear variety.  Coincidentally or not, that is the type that I would fall into.  And yet...

Today I took my sister to a theater production celebrating International Woman’s Day.  I wouldn’t have thought that there I would find myself sitting behind a startling attractive man, sitting alone.  He was not a muscle bear.  He was a clean cut jockish type who frighteningly reminded me of my first love.  In high school I’d fallen for Jack.  Jack was straight, voted MVP on any sports team he was on.  He was also extraordinarily nice, and we developed a slight friendship, though he was a grade ahead.  The man in the audience today threw me back to high school with a velocity that bit me like a snake.  I felt lust mixed with two other emotions: a need for love and a sense that I would never have it because I was somehow unworthy.  I felt both propelled toward him and away from him at the same time, because my heart sensed danger.  In that moment, I wanted the pure lust of my pornographic muscle bears where sexually I was free and emotionally I was safe.

I began to wonder how I would behave sexually with a man like the one I saw today.  I began to wonder if I could fuck the one I love, or are the two notions divided for me in much the same way some straight men suffer from the Madonna/Whore syndrome (ie. they want the mother of their children to be pure and chaste, and to have a hardcore slut secretly on the side whom they would never marry).

The trouble for me is that when love begins to enter this heart of mine, I begin right away to fear its loss, leaving me feeling ungrounded.  How then, could I play the dom and sexually assert myself with a beloved when it would appear that he holds all the cards due to my ingrained insecurities?   And at my age, without a true relationship already under my belt, just a few short affairs, has the chance for love passed me by?  I tend to see myself as a lone wolf, but that house of cards comes tumbling down when I see a man like the one I did today.  But let’s be real:  I don’t know the man.  Perhaps he is a jerk, perhaps he has kinks that would never click with mine.  What I felt today was what our culture refers endearingly to as love at first sight.  How is it that the molecules that make up that person can cause my own body’s molecules to frantically start rearranging themselves?  How do we develop a type in the first place?  I try to ape the type of guy that attracts me (again, the muscle bears).  What of the men who are interested in types directly in opposition to their own?

“He’s not my type.” “What’s your type?”  Statements and questions such as these are short.  The answers are not.

Berlin Leather Sex Party

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Apology

Dear (Unknown Name):  I was sitting on the edge of the pool table at the Eagle and I was in full hunting mode.  I was horny, and feeling aggressive about it – I wanted to get laid.  You saw me and recognized me from a fetish event a while back and reintroduced Yourself.  And I wasn’t interested.  And because I sometimes think the world revolves around me, I assumed You wanted to sleep with me.  Because I was thinking only with my dick, it didn’t dawn on me that You were genuinely just trying to be friendly.  And friendly You were.  You were kind, witty and had a gentle aura about You.  And because You are a sensitive human being, You sensed my reticence, looked at the floor, and quietly said “Well, have a good night” and walked away.

Then Paul walked into the Eagle.  Paul, my dream man, popular in the community.  I had met him at his fortieth birthday celebration a year earlier and we had kissed.  Subsequently, when running into each other at the Eagle, we would find ourselves in a dark corner.  He would spit on my chest and we’d kiss and swap horny energy.  But he was always somewhat out of reach – he never came home with me, no matter how much I tried to get it to happen.

Paul entered and I walked up to him and hugged him and the flirting dance began yet again.  But Paul noticed a friend behind me and said “Hey (Forgotten Name), how the hell are you?”  I turned around and it was You, the kind, polite man I’d just rebuffed moments earlier.  This time, You did not acknowledge my presence, and rightly so.  A group of men formed at the bar, with Paul the center.  We joked and talked, and I looked at You and smiled.  We were all friends, weren’t we?  But You looked down and away.  You had seen me preen my peacock feathers in front of Paul.  When you avoided my smile, I felt hot with shame.  My flirtatious dance with Paul now seemed pathetic and sad in light of how I’d treated You, Paul’s friend, so indifferently a few minutes ago.  You had class.  I had none, and I left the bar, without saying goodbye to anybody, not even Paul.  I was not worthy of Paul, and certainly not worthy of You.  I am sorry that still can’t remember Your name and I am so very sorry for my arrogance.

Dear Manuel:  Who says you can’t meet a great person at an orgy?  We met at 6 am at the end of an orgy on a Saturday night/Sunday morning.  When the party at the hotel dispersed, I took you home.  You were a stunning example of male beauty – latino, gorgeous muscles, an ass that wouldn’t quit, nipple piercings and a tattoo on your right hip.  Days later you emailed me pictures of yourself that you’d sent to PlayGirl Magazine.  There was no doubt in my mind that you would get a response from them.

I began to learn about you.  I held your naked body in my arms as you cried about the painful relationship you had with your father.  I felt you melting into me.  I listened as you earnestly looked me in the face one night after making love and whispered “No more hunting men online, no more orgies – just you and me.”

But my heart couldn’t crack open.  For whatever goddamn fucking fucked-up reason, I couldn’t feel what you were feeling.  And I so wanted to.  On paper, you seemed perfect – gorgeous, sensitive, loyal.  What kind of fool would bolt from this?  Only a fool named Jason.

Again, like the man at the Eagle in the letter above, you were sensing my reticence.  I could see it in your eyes.  You even had the balls to ask me if you were causing me stress, and I lied and said “No, no, everything is fine, everything is good.”  One morning, you woke in my bed and gently nudged me.  “Jason, let’s get up, go get some coffee.”  “Five more minutes,” I mumbled.  A half an hour later you said “Jason, honey, it’s a beautiful day, let’s make something of it.”  Again, I waived you away for another “five minutes”.  I never heard you leave, you crept out of my apartment so quietly.  We never spoke again.

We saw each other weeks later at the club.  You were with a new lover.  We smiled at each other and waved, but you looked wistful and sad at seeing me.  Your new boyfriend is a very lucky man.  What was wrong with me?

Dear Alanis Morissette:  You sang the line “What was wrong with me” in your song “Unsent”, from which this essay is inspired by.  In the song, you wrote unsent letters to men with whom you had some unfinished business, or something you wished you could have said to them.

Alanis, your album Jagged Little Pill was a seminal record for my generation.  Everyone could relate to you, as you discussed how men had disappointed you, hurt you, misunderstood you, or took you for granted.  How awful then that I should admit to often relating more to the men of whom you sang about.  Men whose hearts were un-open, or worse, empty.  Men who couldn’t connect.  Men whose emotional maturation was stunted.  I’m the guy that everyone always refers to as a “nice” guy, but evidently, I fail myself sometimes.  To know that I’ve caused pain to another man, especially one who has allowed himself to be vulnerable with me, is a jagged little pill to swallow.  And an apology seems hollow.  But, an apology this essay is.

New York Nights

I don’t know if it’s still there, but just before the turn of the millennium, there was a leather bar in New York called The Lure.  On Wednesday nights, usually a slow night for a bar, The Lure had the smarts to make that night their Pig Night.  You would see the ad in the gay magazines of a pig in fetish gear, underscored by the tagline “Men Are Pigs”.  Enough said.  Wednesday night is the new Saturday night.

Entering the Lure was like entering another universe – one filled with the smell of poppers and sweat, the sounds of thumping music, the feel of hot air, the sight of gorgeous leather men, and if you stayed a while, a taste of them too.  You could check all the clothes you wanted to check at the coatcheck (where do I put the coatcheck tag when I’m half naked?).  With all the bartenders dressed in leather and/or fetish gear, I decided to order from the one with huge muscles and nipple clamps.  Not intimidating in the slightest, he proved to be sweet and smiley. 

Two drinks later, I’m still not ready for a trip to the backroom, so I cruise the place.  So many dark corners.  In one, I chat with a guy who eventually moves behind me, wrapping his arms around my chest.  We keep talking and his hands slide slowly to my pants, and then in them.  And this is how I know that part of being a homophobic straight male comes down to jealousy, since this welcomed groping could never happen in a straight bar between a man and a woman (or could it? does it?).

This groper was the opening act, and now, I think I’m ready for the main act – the backroom.  An area of the bar is partitioned off, and almost dark, with just a few dim red lights to cast an appropriately sleazy glow.   What time is it?  It must be late, because the backroom is at its peak, packed shoulder to shoulder, cock to cock, with men touching each other as they squeeze by.  Along the walls, men are on their knees, servicing others, some of them being fucked.  I watched two men playing and they notice me and beckon me to join them.  They are standing, and I fall to my knees to worship both their cocks at once. When I glance up, they are either smiling at me, or kissing each other, both beautiful sights to behold.  This communion makes me cum.  I’m not sure if the two guys I’m servicing even know I have.  I release their cocks and smile and say thanks, and lead my dizzy self out of the darkroom towards the light of the bar, itself still so dim.  I’ve cum, I can still taste two men on my lips and am ordering another drink from the same nipple-clamped bartender.  He knows I’ve been around the world and back in the backroom.  He smiles knowingly at me.  Is he at that stage in his career as a bartender where he thinks this is heaven, this den of lust, or is he at that place where he’s seen it all before and longs to leave the bar and find romance rather than pigs?  I know both feelings are possible, and valid.  I too have been a bartender in a gay bar.

I get back what clothes I’ve left in the coat check and ready myself to leave the bar and enter the real world.  It’s dark still, and I leave a bit of my heart and soul in the bar.  I feel more naked in the real world, even though I’m fully clothed.  On the subway platform, waiting for the train to come, I steal glances at the few people around me.  Can they smell the sex of the night on me?  Can they sense it?  Being New Yorkers, they probably don’t care if I smell of sex.  At this hour, they probably do too.

I crumple into a seat on the subway and look up to see an attractive man across from me with eyes closed, sleeping.  It sounds like a good idea and I too close my eyes.  But when I open them again, he is eyeing me.  He grins slightly before closing his eyes again.  We pass this flirtatious ball back and forth until I realize that I’m coming to my stop.  At my stop, the door opens and I take a last look back at my sleeping beauty.  As I step off the train, he jumps up and leaps off the train just as the doors are closing shut.

Sleeping beauty is a dancer with an esteemed dance company, and he was heading home, but up for hanging out.  He follows me as I lead him up the steps from the subway into the street, and in the time it took to get home, a miracle has occurred.  The light has arisen on the city, and it is that holiest of moments in New York, when the streets and even many of the pigeons are still asleep at dawn and it’s just you and the City.  And in this case, a beautiful dancer.

In my single-room-occupancy room, the dancer undresses and lay on the bed.  His balls are hairy, a rare gift in this waxed age, and I cup them in my hand.  He breathes deeply and teasingly shows me how flexible he is by stretching a leg so far back that his heel nearly reaches his head.

My cock is done – what happened at the Lure was all it had the energy for, but I do have the energy to worship this dancer with my tongue, all over his body until I reach his cock and take it in.  When he cums, we lay together silently.  His energy is at peace and I instinctively sense that he is a nice person.  This is meaningful to me.

When he goes, I lay down, placing my head into the indentation on the pillow where the dancer had rested his head moments before.  My window is open, and I hear the sounds of civilians starting their Thursday.  As I lay there, I don’t worry that straight people, and many of my gay brethren, would think that I’m a stereotypical example of the promiscuous gay male.  I don’t worry whether I’ve got an STI.  I can worry about that tomorrow – and I probably will.  I don’t worry that I was seduced by men and booze.  Instead, as the machinery of capitalism begins to churn on the streets below, I simply fall asleep.