Sex has never felt casual to me. Some have suggested that because of this I am not really gay, like the drag queen who claimed to my ex-wife that I wasn’t gay because when I had his beautiful body on my massage table I didn’t have sex with him. He echoed the complaint of much of the gay liberation movement that grew up during the time of free love and open relationships. The early gay movement presented these opening salvos of value to gain attention in order to gain civil rights for yet another segment of American people. They championed free-love among other rights. Still, even the most cursory look at “out” GLBTs reveals a much more complicated world of relationships, sexual practices, and preferences.
I really have no problem with the idea of casual sex. It’s fine with me although I have never been truly casual. When I came to Denver to live, I had sixteen different partners in my first sixteen months. The meetings began as casual pick-ups in bars. “Let’s have sex,” one smiling man at Charlies night club suggested. I agreed, and off we went to my apartment. The casual got a little more complicated when we negotiated what to do. It turned out we both wanted to do the same thing to one another but eventually found a mutually agreeable compromise and the once-again-casual fun began. Afterwards we talked about our backgrounds and found similar experiences, and in the exchange he emerged as a complex person, as much as I. Casually or otherwise, I liked him, his body, his openness, his personality. The several times we got together were great fun with vigorous sex, but I felt responsibility towards him and myself. Sex has always been like that for me. I feel like Johnny Carson, who said the reason he had so many divorces was that when he had sex with a woman, he thought he was supposed to marry her. When with men I don’t think in terms of marriage, but I may as well. If I’m casual in the initial act, I’m not casual in the aftermath when a real person emerges. Perhaps I was too long married, too long a pastor in churches. I just can’t maintain interest to an unattached sex organ.
Casual sex is probably the wrong expression for what I have observed in bars. There are forms for seeking to get laid that include pick up lines, banter, back-and-forth exchanges of glances, words, drinks, dances, kisses, and sometimes introductions. Even getting casual sex relies on long-established rules of communication. It’s rare to find it any other way since communications have to be understandable.
I seek mental and emotional accord as well as sex. I want real, lively people in my life. I’m just that way. So… I’m a certain kind of gay person. I love sex but always lean towards complex relationships with complex personalities. That’s how it is for me: not too casual.
While I protest my interest in casual sex, I freely admit I have had sex outside of a committed relationship. I had sex in addition to a committed marriage, and in these variances I am not alone. In general, men seem happy to engage in casual sex even though there are social strictures against it. They do so in war; they do it when away on trips; they do it at home even with the possibility of getting caught and charged. The care of children and their mothers is a societal concern that has tended to limit the number of wives and keep men in control. In addition, control of family lineage and the distribution of wealth have long been preoccupations among the powerful. Societies don’t want to get out of control just because their men have too much testosterone, so they have developed standards of faithfulness within human marriages.
Men having sex with men don’t have to worry about pregnancies, so when Gay liberation became an issue, gay’s fought for sexual freedom as well. Gay men felt free of relational obligations until the discovery of the deadly STD HIV, then the co-infections such as hepatitis C, and then the re-emergence of syphilis. Then gay men had to calm down, refocus their attention, be less casual about it all, but they still wanted to suck it, still wanted to stick it, and still wanted to feel it buried deep inside and often with lots of different people. They (we) wanted the fucking intensity, and the rubber made it possible.
The accusations I have heard that I was not really gay, seem to point to an established form of free love, meaning casual sex within gay meanings. I am even more casual. No. I’m not. Nor am I particularly hung up. I want sex within friendship’s larger possibilities. I’m not interested to simply play out someone else’s fantasies. I want to relate at some more complex level. So I think in terms of sexualized friendships, something more akin to fuck buddies with the emphasis placed on buddies. This institution provides more than sexual release. As a form of friendship, it bows somewhat to the terms of contractual relationship. It certainly is more complex than John Richey’s young protagonist in the novel Numbers, much less goal-oriented than his adding notches to his whatever or adding variety to his numbering. It moves away from such quantitative goals to supplement them with a quality experience that I believe can only come with repeat performance. At least that’s my fantasy.
The current interest in establishing gay marriages by law seems to move the emphasis away from casual sex, but we must also remember that men who have been married to women all their adult lives still want and often get casual sex. The same surely will be true with gay men who seek formal, structured relationships, yet they seem willing to do so for financial, personal, control, romantic, or other reasons. Also they want it as a civil right and surely will win in this confrontation with general society.
© 17 February 2011
About the Author
Phillip Hoyle lives in
Denver and spends his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing.
His massage practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups
of writers and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in
church work, he now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients
in his practice. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
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