On the subway this morning a big freckled bicep stared at me. It was attached to a polo shirt tucked into a pair of black pinstriped dress pants. The owner’s hand was holding onto a metal bar, and as the car lurched and he tried to hold on, his arm flexed and the bicep turned into a tricep. I was trying to read a magazine article about Zen and psychoanalysis, but the arm was inches from my face and just an eye-dart away from the words I was trying to focus on. I didn’t even have to move my head to look. I couldn’t focus on the words.
Manhattan was filled with legs this weekend. Legs in shorts. Calf muscles narrowing into ankles and disappearing into sockless sneakers. The weather was beautiful. I spent chunks of Saturday and Sunday in Riverside Park, sitting on a bench, doing the crossword, reading a magazine, constantly distracted by attractive people — or at least by the hope of seeing them.
The eye is the most sexually stimulated organ. I see a hot guy and I
can’t…
stop…
staring.
I stare like I’m about to go into solitary confinement, like it’s the last hot guy I will ever see. I look away but then I have to look back.
You know the experiment where the rat keeps depressing a lever because it provides pleasure? It’s like that. My eyes just keep looking, as if looking were a series of discrete acts, little pulses of looking instead of a wave of vision. With each stare, my pupils dilate and I commit a crime.
Several years ago I was having a conversation with a friend in a restaurant and I couldn’t keep my eyes focused on him because hot people kept walking past and I kept staring at them. He finally called me on it. I was embarrassed but also kind of proud and tingly.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m like this because I spent so many years trying not to look, trying to will away my libido. Other times I wonder if I just have a high sex drive.
That doesn’t mean I want to have sex with every gay man I know. Just because I want to be friends with a guy doesn’t mean I want to have sex with him — even if I find him attractive. There’s a lot to be said for platonic friendships between gay men, and I’ve been trying to cultivate those lately.
I don’t have enough friends — people to do fun stuff with. I’ve taken the Myers-Briggs personality test a couple of times, and both times, I came out almost balanced between introverted and extroverted, albeit slightly more introverted than extroverted. Sometimes I see myself as a shy extrovert; I wish I had more people in my life, but I get hindered by fear.
As a gay man in a relationship, I sometimes find it difficult to cultivate friendships with other gay men. Sometimes I worry: does this person think I want to have sex with him? And sometimes I worry: do I want to have sex with him? Where’s the line between friendship and flirting, and between flirting and more? Flirting is fun, but straight guys don’t have to worry about flirting with their buddies.
How do I not act too aloof but also not act too come-hither? How do I telegraph the complexity of what I’m feeling when I can’t even grasp it myself?
This is why I shut down and don’t have enough of a social life.
Well, that, and I’m not good at making plans.
Ahhh, spring.
Good questions.
I am definitely a Myers-Brigg introvert. INFJ to be precise. I likewise do not have a wide circle of friends, am lousy at making plans, and often shut down and isolate, so I totally sympathize with you.
Moreover, I certainly identify with your wandering eyes. I’ve gotten much better and more subtle in my leering at hot guys, but I still do it.
I have also struggled with the platonic/sexual issue. I do not have any straight friends. I get along well enough with straight people, but there is a barrier that prevents me from totally relating to them, especially to straight men. I also have a hard time relating to gay men on a platonic level. My closest friends, those that I have the most in common with and most enjoy their company and feel closest to emotionally – are also those that I have a sexual relationship with as well. Gay friends with whom I don’t have a sexual relationship are just a step or two removed — largely because I generally WANT to have sex with them and the only reason I don’t would be if they do not want to have sex with me, either because they are in a relationship or want to remain platonic friends.
I have several gay plantonic friends, but we only rarely hang out and it’s easy for them to fall off my radar. There have been exceptions: I had a very good friend whom I still miss because he decided to become frum and I could no longer in good conscience remain his friend if I couldn’t deprogram him and he wouldn’t listen to reason. When one of my previous “friends with benefits” decided he wanted to be plantonic, our friendship really cooled and it’s unusal if I see him more than once a month.
For myself, I don’t believe there needs to be a line at all. I reject that there is anything mystical or special about sex; it’s just a bodily function no different from eating. You can eat by yourself, you can have lunch with a friend, you can have an intimate dinner alone with a partner. The social relations present in the act are different, but the mechanics of the act remain the same. I see no value whatsoever in physical monogamy, and I don’t see why two (or more) people who are attracted to each other and in the mood shouldn’t fool around if they want to. If two (or more) people are hungry, would it be weird for them all to go to the same restaurant? No, so why does sex have to be any different?
I think it’s has to do with the bourgeois heteronormative morality we’ve all internalized against our will from the dominant society. Is there any reason why we should be monogamous? It’s contrary to our biological and psycholigical instincts. Is there any reason why sex should be “special”? It’s just a biological function like any other. The sexual mores that heterosexual patriarchal culture has evolved to preserve itself and its power relations should not be of any concern to those of us outside the straight male hegemony.
If two gay men seriously want to have a monogamous committed relationship, get married, and have children – if that comes from within themselves – then I’d support their freedom to so even though it makes absolutely NO sense to me. But how many gay men get into monogamous relationships and want to get married because that is why straight male-dominated society has told them they should want? I’d say a hell of a lot of them.
I know I was one, and I’m never going to make that mistake again.
It’s probably overly simplistic, but I had a counselor long ago whose admonishment still rings in my ears now and then: “Think less. Live more.”
Maybe you should find gay social groups that are focused on things your and your other half are interested in.
Daniel’s arguments reek of self-justification and poorly constructed analogies, more than anything else. I don’t care if he wants to screw around with forty people a day, but calm down with the “monogamy = heteronormativity” nonsense. It’s not as if there aren’t a few hundred thousand famous historical examples of heterosexual non-monogamy.
Wel, thank you, Reg, for you ever so insightful expert opinion.
“Self-justification” would only be necessary if there was someone or something capable of judging one. That would require a God and there is no God, so to whom would one need to justify oneself?
And if my analogy (I assume the one between the drive for sex and the drive for food and t he means of satisfying both) is poorly constructed, I’d be a hell of a lot more impressed if you bothered to show how that is the case rather than simply declare it so.
Finally, the point was not the “monogamy = heteronormativity.” I see no value or point in monogamy, but that does not mean I forbid others from deriving meaning from it. However, if one is going to be monogamous one should do it for the right reasons: one should do it because one freely chooses to do it because it truly is an expression of their values and desires and not because it is “the norm” and “what you’re supposed to do” or “what society expects.”
So, yeah. There are gay couples who want to be monogamous and even get married and have kids. That sounds like an absolute nightmare, but that’s their life and their choice and they’re entitled to do it. That’s the essence of the freedom we should all be striving for.
Prostrating oneself to the norms of patriarchal bourgeois heterosexual culture however just because it’s what the ruling elite have set up as “the norm,” however, is a reaction against freedom. So do is buying into archaic mystifications of sex as anything unique beyond a biological function.
This is a great post, Jeff. It very eloquently communicates what a lot of us coupled gay guys feel.