“I have a girlfriend,” says a stocky, handsome man in his late 30s, “but every once in a while, I like to get screwed, and a dildo just won’t do.” He’s one of the multitude of men who are more or less het, but mess around with other guys every once in a while. And, as he says, “Lots of gay men are willing to have sex with me, and without all the strings that are attached when I get involved with a woman.”
The Kinsey Report long ago informed us that plenty of guys aren’t strictly gay or straight, but are situated somewhere along a sliding scale. Though many men toward the middle define themselves as bisexuals, others take the tack of “I’m straight, but...”
Fellows who’ll stop at the dirty bookstore for a quick blowjob on the way home to the wife and kids are well-known to the queer community. One such man says, “I think of my orientation as heterosexual. I’m attracted to women. I get emotionally attached to women. But if a guy with a talented mouth goes down on me, I’m certainly going to shoot.”
Counters a dyed-in-the-wool queer, “I don’t see how anyone who enjoys sex with other men can possibly define himself as straight...without being in denial. Maybe it has to do with self-image, or even with playing to the fetish some gay men have for heteros - that straights are supposedly more masculine, and therefore sexier, or some bull like that.”
Supposedly straight dudes who secretly mess around are said, in some communities, to be “on the down low.” But not everyone is closeted about occasionally cruising for homosex - particularly amongst the younger generations, where sexual-orientation labels are sometimes regarded as quaint. One college senior says, “My friends know that I sometimes end up in bed with another male. No big thing. It may just be a phase I’m going through, or it may last till I’m 70.”
Boffing a bi-behaving guy can be a decidedly mixed blessing, though. Says one gay man who seeks to service straights, “It’s great to pleasure hetero men. I’ve heard it argued that I’m just demeaning myself, but giving those guys something they can’t get from women actually gives me power. I’m real careful not to let myself get emotionally attached to any of them, though, even the ones I see regularly. Getting crushes on men who define themselves as emotionally unavailable is a recipe for disaster. I learned that the hard way.”
Then, too, many supposedly straight guys use liquor or drugs to loosen themselves up for male/male encounters, which can lead to unsafe sex or emotional messiness. As the old joke goes, “What’s the difference between a straight guy and a gay one? A six pack of beer.”
Some straight men have rules of erotic encounter - “You can suck me, but I won’t even touch your crotch,” and the like. Others, as our straight-servicer says, “are surprisingly eager to get meat in their hands - or their mouths - or even their butts.”
There are plenty of rationales for a queer man taking a straight guy for a walk on the wild side - like the cachet of conquering a theoretically untouchable dude, or the saintly beneficence of making a het feel good. And there are many men who regard themselves as het but don’t shy away from same-sex orgasms - be it a matter of curiosity, a whim, or a long-term tendency. Men are, after all, pigs, and want to wallow...regardless of the label on the pork.
Simon Sheppard is the author of Sex Parties 101, Kinkorama, and In Deep: Erotic Stories, and can be reached at SexTalk@qsyndicate.com. Visit Simon at www.simonsheppard.com.
