Demisexual 🖤💜🤍

Here's the thing: I've always wanted to be a slut. As in fuck anybody I like whenever I wanted. As in having sex whenever I wanted with whomever I wanted. I have always been utterly fascinated by the era of gay sex that goes from the mid seventies through the early eighties, before AIDS would appear and decimate the gay population in the United States and the world and make everybody paranoid about fucking anybody. I also adore vintage porn and I truly enjoy stories of bathhouses and glory holes and tearooms and sex in the shrubs in secluded parks. I really think that kind of freedom, with a healthy dash of a slightly debauched approach to pleasure is quite cool. I find the idea of sybaritism as a catalyst for self-knowledge to be actually inspiring. Hey, why not?

But I have never been able to really enjoy that kind of connection. Now, I did have a slutty phase when I was a teen. I was young and cute and had a lot of fun. Also, you probably know how powerful feeling a man's desire for you can be. That is intoxicating and many of us have done one and a thousand things because of that feeling. I think I fooled around with almost all the guys in my block. And the next block. And some on the block beyond that one. I fooled around with some of their brothers and  with some of their cousins, too. Sometimes with some of their dads. Oh, I've been around. But it was mostly done on the down low during hot summer afternoons and it was fleeting. Some of you may know how it is with 'straight' men. Abut I also tired of them easily. There seemed to be such a variety, that's true. But it was like having cotton candy for breakfast, lunch and dinner. At one point I was fed up. Literally.

The furtive, almost impersonal nature of hookups has always kind of low key bothered me, though, and I did not understand why. I think the IDEA of hooking up with another dude is hot, oh yes. But for me, the execution is almost always mostly terribly awkward and many times it is slightly cumbersome. The Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Man approach has always left me slightly disconcerted -and disoriented- and somehow unsatisfied. Oh, yes, some men have made me cum like there's no tomorrow during a quickie and some encounters have been scorchingly hot. But really. Those encounters can be counted in one hand. And I may have some spare fingers left. I have always find it absolutely fascinating when men can engage in the most intimate of sexual experiences with someone they have never seen before and will most probably never see again and go and repeat it with someone else a few moments later. And then repeat it again. That capacity has always amazed me to no end. I guess compartmentalizing is not my forte, Mary.

It wasn't until recently, with the advent of people talking more and more about micro-sexualities (thank you, Tumblr, you were indeed useful while you were good) that I kind of started to understand what is it that's going on with me when it comes to hooking up and my slight reticence to drop trou at the chance of getting dicked down by a very hot stranger. The first time I realized I was not really into the whole hookup thing was many years ago after a party with some friends. A group of us were walking back home and one of my friends asked me if I would go with him to buy cigarettes. We went to the store and on the way back I noticed that my friend was talking to two other guys. I said hi and kept walking. The thing is, when we were close to the house, I noticed they had stopped. I thought they had decided to smoke a blunt and I wanted to say bye. When I turned the corner I saw my friend with the two guys. He was in the middle and the two guys were literally spitroasting him. The guy getting sucked smiled at me and made a gesture to join them. I smiled, gave him a wink and walked away.

The men offering my friend a good time were hot, by the way. They had that kind of beefy-jock physicality that I've always found attractive and were slightly rough around the edges but handsome. Ideal, no? I thought the situation was hot, I just did not feel any desire to join them. Who were those men? Where did they come from? I was sure my friend didn't know them either. How did that happen? Up until them I had only had sex with people I knew or people with whom I had been acquainted for awhile. Don't get me wrong, the ability to just get it on with another dude at a moment's notice without any kind of preamble is one of the fun parts about being a gay man that many a straight man envies (they also think all gay guys know each other, so there's that...). And I've done the Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Man. It’s not like I’m a shrinking violet. I just don't seem to enjoy it as much as other men seem to, or be really proficient at it, and for the longest time I thought there was something slightly off with me. Sorry, Maddie. I don't think I could do the Dick Dock in Ptown...

That's when I found out about micro-sexualities. I know, I know. It's been said that micro-identities are just annoying but I have found that they explain better the nuances of sexual attraction to people like me: I like sex. I do. I like sex with men. the only thing is that I like to have sex with men to whom I am attracted but with whom I have a certain emotional connection. I think I could be demisexual. Yep, I can put myself in one of those subcategories and I fit right in.

I know, I know. We all have to remember what James Baldwin said about these sub-divisions:

"Our passion for categorisation, life neatly fitted into pegs, has led to an unforeseen, paradoxical distress; confusion, a breakdown of meaning. Those categories which were meant to define and control the world for us have boomeranged us into chaos."

JAMESBALDWIN

But I think that at the same time, these categories do help us understand ourselves better and therefore help us deal with some issues we could have and that we had not been able to explain in the past. Like understand that some people do not need sex that much. Or that some people can indeed love deeply more than one person. Or that some people can have a deep connection and no sex at all. Take for example the Asexual guy I kind of dated: I could understand where he was coming from and not wreck my mind trying to figure out what was it that I was doing wrong. That would also explain why my exes are such good friends, right? I thought for the longest time that I was just taking a page off the Lesbian Instructional, but apparently it is due to the fact that I really like, connect and understand the man I'm fucking and when the fucking stops,  the friendship can go on.

This has also helped me realize why I was such a failure on Grindr. Oh, I have stories. Hookup apps seem so fucking easy for everybody but for me it was a struggle. I just could not function well in that environment and now I think I know why: the scattered, vacuous interactions you go through with the men on them do not allow for any of the things I need to find myself interested enough in a man to let him press me like the news. I feel like watching a fish tank. It may also explains my utter fascination with Porn Stars, right? You knew there was a reason for that. 

I really like the D but I have to really like the man and connect with him to really enjoy the nookie. Now I know that it is the man what I find attractive: I want to get to know and connect with the man that I'm fucking, basically. And that helps a lot. Because for the longest time I felt kind of off, like I could not put my finger on what it is that I was missing about myself and was ready to return my gay card. And now it's clearer. And don't worry, Mr. Baldwin. I'm sure this one is not going to boomerang back and send me into chaos. I kind of live there already anyways.

#HAPPYPRIDE

XOXO