To Be Or Not To Be....Slutty(er)

Am I the best slut I can be?  That is the question...

When you’re a sex blog writer, and your blog depends to a degree on your identification as a proud slut, these are the types of questions you ask yourself.  Even with all my constant self-analysis, I still, on some deep level, harbor some crazy notions.  Here’s one crazy notion:

I might meet the man of my dreams at a sex club or bar or bath house.  But if I act too slutty, he won’t think I’m relationship material.  So there I am, in a sexual environment, and I’m holding back, especially if I think a certain guy in particular is amazing.  What do I mean by acting too slutty?  How do you act too slutty at a bath house, for god’s sake?  Is jacking it in the XXX room too slutty?  I’ve gone to bath houses and acted almost demure, as if I accidentally wandered in and don’t really know where I am, because I’m such a good boy.  Almost as if I was above it all.  At sex parties I frequented in Montreal, I would never be the first to unleash my dick and start jacking it, or be the first to go down on someone, because what would people think?  Instead, I’d wait for those men with no social decorum to start the night off and I’d join in since I’m there already, so I guess I’ll try....

Just who the hell do I think I’m fooling?  Would anyone believe that because I hold back and am not the first one to whip my dick out at a sex party that I am somehow better relationship material?   There is no logic here.   This is extra super insane since I don’t think I’m necessarily looking for a relationship anyway?  So what is holding me back from my slutdom?

What’s holding me back is Josh.  And Brokeback Mountain.

Josh was my first love, at sixteen.  He was straight, a year ahead of me in high school, a distant friend, but treated me like gold when our paths did cross.  It was unrequited love, but it opened my flood gates, a true watershed moment, with my tears over him shed at a rapid rate.  In spite of everything, I’ve searched for Josh in every man I’ve met since, to no avail.  I don’t know if he exists.  I don’t even know if the Josh I put on a pedestal exists.  In my mind, he was perfect.  Perhaps he’s not.  I did not know him well enough to ever find out for sure.

Brokeback Mountain did to me what I think Titanic and Harlequin romances do to girls.  They all create a mystique around finding “the one”.  I wanted to find a Jack or an Ennis while herding sheep.  I saw the movie seven times, each time alone, to revel in the fantasy of true love.  But after seeing the movie for that seventh time, I had a dream one night in which I saw the faces of Jack and Ennis.  The two faces merged into one, and then transformed into my own face staring back at me.  And I realized that possibly, just possibly, the greatest relationship I may have is the one I’m having with myself.

My true self wants to free my inner slut.  Does my need at times for hardcore sexual degradation stamp out the possibility that love could be found there as well?  What if my dream man (if such an animal exists) is a slut aficionado?  Because whether you are the type who is the first to brazenly pull your cock out at a sex party, or the shy last one, it won’t make a shred of difference as to whether you are this so-called relationship-material type person. 

I realize that I am both a victim of and a perpetrator of slut shaming.  I have avoided men who seem to be having “too much fun” at the baths, making all kinds of assumptions about them (“too easy” “probably doesn’t play safe” “probably this” “probably that”).  Conversely, I envied the freedom of those men with every pore in my body.  I could offer a course in hypocrisy 101.

Men who have moved past shame are my heroes, because of the courage is takes.  For some reason, I’m afraid to let other men see my unbridled sexual desire, even in environments where it is damn well expected!  I hereby declare that I am taking the shackles off.  I need to amputate that shame so that I can be open to the joys such sexual openness might bring.  After all, who the hell is being served when I shackle myself?

Sex Club & Leather Bar Fail

I had never been to a strip bar that had backrooms for the patrons to play – with each other.  But this strip club that I went to doubled as a sex club.  I got there before midnight, before the cover charge doubled.  Greeting two shirtless bartenders on the main floor, I grabbed a beer and wandered as the club began to fill.  On the main floor, I found there were backrooms meant just for the strippers and their clients.  On the second floor was another bar, impromptu go-go dancing stages, and a backroom for the patrons to get it on together.

Upstairs, a stripper was working a small, raised area, barely a stage at all.  He was a college type, but unremarkable looking, and he worked the stage unremarkably.  He eventually dropped his pants, revealing a flaccid, unamused cock.  After his song was over, another dancer took his place.  This man was in his mid-twenties, hot, and very hairy – a major plus for me.  You so rarely see a hairy stripper.  His bubble butt was very furry and I wondered if he realized that he was very appealing to an underserved market (hirsute lovers).

The club began to fill up, both upstairs and down.  But not a single soul ventured into the backrooms.  I know this because I did venture forth and found them empty.  I watched as men furtively watched the strippers, as if they weren’t supposed to enjoy it or appreciate it too openly.  There was a reticence in the air, a holding back.  A conservatism that felt dangerously contagious.

I stayed for about an hour, but the place began to thin of people before last call was even anywhere near.  And so I swallowed the remainder of my beer and went next door to a leather bar.

Being a Saturday night, the place was busy, on both floors.  I bought a beer and bypassing the backroom, I headed upstairs where I discovered that an S&M show was in progress.  Shackled to and facing the far wall was Mr. Leather.  He was being flogged by a stout woman in glasses.  She and he were trading jokes as she flogged him, light banter that had nothing to do with the flogging per se.  After she was through with Mr. Leather, she looked out at those paying attention in the crowd and invited someone to have a go at being flogged.  A young guy waved his hand to have a shot at it.  He removed his shirt and giggled while his friends encouraged him.  The mistress joked around with him while flogging him and they had a grand old time.  When it was over, the young man jumped up and down, clapping his hands and saying that S&M was really neat.

The display of sadomasochism was missing two vital elements – a sadist and a masochist.  What I saw was a pastiche of S&M, not the real thing.  It was akin to buying a jacket in a bargain-basement store, knowing that it descended from high fashion but watered down many times over.  I wanted to see and sense danger, not the recreation of danger.  I saw the Disneyland version of what should have been transgressive.

I went downstairs, hunting for men who wanted the real deal.  I headed into the back room.  But before I had made three or four steps in, the smell of shit hit me like a brick.  Someone back there had had an accident while presumably being fucked.  Bracing myself against the smell, I noticed that the pervasive scent of excrement was not stopping the full crowd back there.  The place was jammed.  Overpowered by the smell, though, I had to leave.  I left the bar entirely, feeling that tonight I’d been abandoned by the sex gods.  Not every night is going to be a winner.  The trick is to accept this and know when it’s time to go.  But you know that you’ll return, and that when you do, the sex gods might be on your side and give you the transcendent gay bar experience that you seek.  You will return to the hunt, you will return to the night, and it will be resplendent.