I’m Not Impressed By Prudery

Back when I started middle school the boys I had grown up with went through a startling transformation. The innocent little guys I had known for years suddenly seemed to have an edge to them. They were more aggressive, they used words that used to be forbidden, and many of them talked about sex in the most graphic detail imaginable. During those years I was regularly exposed to comments about dicks, pussies, fucking, sucking, cum eating and pussy licking. I eventually got over my shock and the salty comments became ordinary. But I never joined in, and I suppose some of the boys thought I was something of a goody-goody. However, that was far from true. I had went through the change just like the other boys. I was having all kinds of “dirty” thoughts, too. Only I was having them about other boys, not girls. But I couldn’t admit to this. It just wasn’t allowed. I was sure that my existence would become a living hell if I divulged any of my sexual thoughts. However, I couldn’t bring myself to pretend to like girls, so I simply remained silent while the boys around me talked like proverbial sailors.

By the time I got to high school, I was almost ready to explode. The straight guys I knew felt free to talk about sex. Some of them were having sex. And a few had girlfriends. In one way or another, they were expressing an interest in the opposite sex openly, and this was accepted. By then I had been having sexual feelings and romantic longings for years, and, unlike my straight peers, I had kept it all bottled up. And when I was about 15 or 16, I began to have a recurring dream. In this dream I went to the restroom of the Montgomery Ward store in nearby Beckley, West Virginia. I went into one of the stalls as was my habit because I was too shy to expose myself at the urinals, and while I was relieving myself, a man broke through the stall door, pushed me to the floor and raped me. It was frightening at first, but eventually I relaxed and stopped fighting this man, and the experience became blissful.

It disturbed me that in my dream I enjoyed being violated, but nevertheless, I had that dream over and over again for years. The dream finally faded away when I started college. I started seeing a therapist during my freshman year, and eventually I told her about the dream. Even though I hadn’t had the dream in a while, it still worried me. We talked about it, and in a short while the pieces fell into place. Even though I knew I was gay from the age of 11 and enjoyed a rather rich sexual fantasy life, the circumstances in which I found myself demanded that I do everything in my power to prevent anyone from knowing about that fantasy life. And there was a part of me that simply didn’t want to hide my thoughts and fantasies about men. It took so much effort. It’s bad enough to be a horny teenager who isn’t getting any, but on top of that, I had to pretend I wasn’t interested. That was enough to almost drive me over the edge. So the rapist in my dreams wasn’t a real rapist at all; he was a liberator. He was someone who knew what I wanted despite my subterfuge, and he gave it to me even though I couldn’t admit I wanted it. He was there to break through my defenses so that I could experience the freedom of doing it on a dirty restroom floor, a public place, a place where one of those men I was so afraid of, one of those disapproving men who didn’t like boys like me could walk right in at any moment and see me being used by another man and liking it. The dream ripped apart my prim, sexless persona and reminded me that I wasn’t just a gay boy, I was, at least in part, a whore, an animal, a wolf.

When I got to college, I met gay guys who took delight in their inner wolves just like those smutty 12-year-old boys I used to know. It was great that I finally got laid in college, but simply being able to talk about all of those forbidden thoughts was just as great, and often even more fun than actually doing it. Ah, to be able to sit somewhere on campus with a friend, point out some cute boy, and admit that I wanted to bend him over a table, rip down his pants and shove my face into the crack of his behind. And then to laugh at how crazy that is, how wild…

There is a part of us that is wild. We are part of nature, and sex in nature is rarely as romantic and tender as it is so often depicted in the movies. And although most of us have our romantic, tender feelings, too, including gay men of course, there is that primitive part of us, and many of us are aware of it. Many of us know how to have fun with it.

There are a lot of gay men who are accepting of their inner wolves. Many allow themselves to talk about their wolfish desires with their gay friends, just like straight guys often do with their buddies. Some allow their wolves to come out from time to time and do their thing. And a few let the wolf run free.

But there are some gay men who pride themselves on how clipped and circumspect they are. It’s true that some may simply have a lower libido, or perhaps their desire for romance simply overwhelms their desire for raw sex. That’s fine. Some probably would just rather not talk about it freely and openly, and that’s fine, too. But, it annoys me when I hear gay men trying to place arbitrary limits on not just themselves but on other gay men. Just like the Christianists who demand that sex is only for heterosexual married couples and we should all strive to be modest in our day to day lives, there are gay men who insist that sex is only for those in committed relationships, and sexy talk, dress and horseplay should be avoided. Some of them give themselves all kinds of brownie points for not being like those gay man who don’t play by their rules. They’re so sure they’re better because they’re right and properly offended by “smut”.

Well, my sex life has never been too adventurous, I’ve never had a thing for leather, and I’m just as modest about my own body as I was back when I was a teenager and afraid to flash my willie in the men’s room, but I can remember all too well the horrific pain of having to pretend I didn’t have sexual desires. It was very much like being in prison, and I’ve never fully recovered from that. I spent 7 of my formative years denying who I really am, and the terror and the shame and the loneliness and isolation that I endured day after day after day ruined me. So now I feel hostility toward anyone who would try to shame me because I accept the fact that there’s a part of me that isn’t wholesome, safe and sanctified in the eyes of the self-appointed guardians of sexual morality. And I have very little desire to banish anyone to the hell that was my teenage years just because some think how they express themselves sexually is dirty or gross.