You're a dick. I've been enjoying your column for years, but your reply last week to "Confused in Ohio," who was worried about her boy-porn-perusing boyfriend, is typical bi-phobia. I thought you had laid your bi-phobia to rest when you fnally relented and acknowledged that, yes, there are lots of bisexuals. But now you're back to your same old agenda, the agenda shared by so many other people who desperately want to make themselves "right" by projecting everyone else to be the same as they are.
The actual fact, as established by Kinsey and others, is that sexual preference isn't just black or white but includes a variety of shades of gray. And a bisexual person can be a little gay and a lot straight or a little straight and a lot gay, but he's still bisexual, not gay. The fact that CIO's boyfriend was fucking her makes it clear that he's not gay. He's bisexual! Why is that so hard to understand? Pussy good!
Cock good! Love both! Bisexual! Get it?
Take off the bisexual blinders and re-read CIO's letter, AA. Her boy-porn-perusing boyfriend is cruising the Internet for gay porn and personals, obsessed with the "taboo" of homosexuality and having sex with men. Worried that he might be gay, CIO mentions that their sex life is good, "owing to the fact that it takes him a very long time to reach orgasm. In fact, sometimes he doesn't get there at all."
For me, that long-time-to-reach, sometimes-doesn't-get-there stuff was the red "not bisexual, gay" þag. One reader who agreed with my take on CIO's boyfriend chided me for not giving proper emphasis to this revealing detail: "You failed to mention, Dan, that CIO's boyfriend's sexual stamina (he takes a very long time to reach orgasm and sometimes never gets there at all) is probably due to the fact that she doesn't really turn him on and/or he has trouble fantasizing about his chatroom buddies when he's in bed with her and not at his PC."
So let's emphasize it now: CIO's boyfriend, unlike a truly bisexual dude, doesn't sound very passionate about heterosexual sex. The fact that CIO's boyfriend was able to fuck her does not, AA, "make it clear that he's not gay." If fucking a woman proves a man's not gay, then I'm not gay. Like almost all gay men out there, I have successfully fucked women — I had to think about guys the whole time and it didn't always work (I didn't always "get there"), but I managed.
So while I'm willing to acknowledge that there are lots of bisexuals out there, AA, you have to be willing to acknowledge that there are lots of closet cases out there, too — and some are so motivated to remain closeted, as I once was, that they'll fuck women to "prove" they're straight. Refusing to believe CIO's boyfriend is bisexual doesn't mean I don't believe that other people aren't bisexual. You, for instance. You say you're bisexual and why would I doubt you? You've got the wounded tone of the professional bisexual down pat — not to mention the hypocrisy. (It's not OK for me to "claim" CIO's boyfriend is gay, but you can claim him as bi?)
As for making myself "right" by projecting my own sexuality (gay, gay, gay) onto CIO's boyfriend (gay, gay, gay), I don't see how lumping myself in with a lying, cheating, closeted coward makes me "right." To out fags, the antics of closet cases with girlfriends are an embarrassment and, in this day and age, a relic. If I could avoid "projecting" my own sexuality onto CIO's idiot boyfriend, I would: It doesn't exactly þatter me or other gay men to count him in our numbers. If I thought he were bi, AA, I'd be happy to let you have him.
If "Confused in Ohio" doesn't want to listen to your advice, perhaps she'll take mine as the voice of experience. Everything she described happened to me 14 years ago. My boyfriend wanted desperately not to be gay and did his best to convince me, too. Sex was fairly decent, in part because he was very motivated to please me and he rarely came (I didn't think about the implications of that fact). He told me, "That's just how I am." After we got married, he told me that the gay porn I kept fnding was "only a hobby." I tried for many years to be open-minded and accepting but got tired of waking up in the night, alone in the bed, knowing that he was in the computer room masturbating to more gay porn. After 12 years of marriage and three kids, he came out and we divorced. CIO, dump your gay boyfriend before he becomes your gay husband, gay father of your children and gay ex-husband.
Thanks for sharing, BTII.
I have a different take on autofellatio, autofellatio in front of your girlfriend and swallowing one's own come than you presented in your column last week. It's a humiliation/submissive/rape-type fantasy.
Speaking strictly for myself, I consider myself straight and I can do the autofellatio thing — and the girlfriend has watched me. And it was about humiliation, being dominated or doing something considered "gross," like swallowing my own come. Showing the girlfriend what I could do, as WAC did, was a way to get closer to my fantasy of being forced to do something "gross" in front of someone. In other words, I'm suggesting that WAC's fella might want to be spanked and ordered to swallow while he's sucking. In fact, I think that the letters in last week's column — all of them concerning straight men doing things like sucking themselves, eating their own come and being fucked with strap-ons — have to do with men wanting to be dominated. I don't necessarily mean a full-on, tied-to-the-wall-and-fucked-up-the-ass-while-clothespins-are-gripping-your-nipples kinda thing. But some people — including me somewhat — are turned on by an element of embarrassment or humiliation.
Finally, like many men, I found that the second I actually came, this thing I had been fantasizing about — being "forced" to swallow my own come — struck me as not nearly as good an idea as it was the second before I came.
Thanks for sharing, MTC.
What's your gripe with Rufus Wainwright? He's a wonderful singer/songwriter, he's out and he's adorable. Why all the Rufus bashing in last week's column?
I actually like Rufus Wainwright, Jeff. I've been a fan since Equality Rocks, a concert held in Washington, D.C., after one of those quickly forgotten gay marches for freedom, equality, T-shirts and an end to AIDS, racism, lookism, ageism and other bad stuff. Unlike everyone else who took to the stage that day — Anne Heche, Ellen DeGeneres, George Michael, et al. — Rufus refrained from making a complete ass out of himself. That was then.
In an interview in The New York Times a few weeks back, Wainwright discussed his recent emergence from "gay hell" — basically, he'd been using way too many drugs and having way too much sex and made himself miserable in the process. I found Rufus' "gay hell" comments annoying, Jeff, as no one is cast into gay hell — people dive into that particular lake of fre voluntarily, which makes it hard to sympathize with guys who complain about the time they spend there. So I was just, er, tweaking Rufus about the gay hell thing.