With fingers crossed for a productivity bonus, I am getting this week's post out on Thursday, once more. Before we jump headlong into today's topic, however, allow me to mention that the past week saw the anniversary of the horrific killing of Matthew Shepard. I well remember the day this tragic news broke across the world. The book written by Matthew's mother, The Meaning of Matthew, is both chilling and hugely inspiring. If you are a young LGBT guy or girl struggling with bullying or other challenges, take a look at http://www.matthewshepard.org/ or http://www.matthewshepard.org/matthews-place/ , if in the US, or http://www.akt.org.uk/ or http://www.youngstonewall.org.uk/ . Right, on to the meat of the post.
(Please Note - photos/videos are taken from public sites and assumed to be open source. I do not hold the copyrights and, if anyone does and wishes the picture removed, just advise me and I shall take the photo down. The use of a photo does not presume anything regarding the sexuality of the subject)
If I may, I shall kick off by repeating the assurance given in the preceding post that, while the tales related herein are true (or, at least, were told to me as true), none of the characters involved will be identified. As I said last week, while I love the show, this is not Sex and the City!
So, one of the unexpected byproducts of coming out to straight, jolly masculine mates from my old work was that I became a sounding board for tales of straight guys' gay sexual experiences. I seemed to qualify for this role by dint of friends deeming me to be 'knowledgeable' in both the straight and gay worlds and knowing me to be secure; hence ensuring all identities are shielded in this post. Many of those imparting their stories seemed relieved to have found someone with whom they could open up, as if they wanted or even needed to tell tales that had been weighing heavily on them for many years. I might also venture to suggest that one or two sought reassurance that what had passed between them and other guys did not detract from their manhood, from their 'qualification' as straight men.
For what it is worth, my take on sexuality is that very few men or women are 100% heterosexual or homosexual. Humans are rarely straight forward, particularly regarding emotions and basic drives. The hue of the inner man is not black and white, it is more grey, infinite shades of grey....though becoming bright, colourful, sparkly and spangly as one edges closer to gay, of course!
Some of the related experiences, adventures, dated back to the tellers' school days, to their teens, when young guys are a morass of delectably confusing, acute and essential hormone driven emotions and desires. During these years, life is a tornado of hopes and fears, of cast iron certainties and stupefying ambiguities and many have postulated the concept of a 'gay phase' during adolescence. As I came out to myself very young, conscious that when certain mates were sniggering about this or that girl they fancied I actually fancied them, I am not best qualified to comment on the truth in or prevalence of a teen transient state. I did not experience a 'straight' phase, but have heard and seen enough to have developed a view on the concept of a gay phase; though, as you'll read below, I question whether affection for and even physical engagement with someone of one's own sex must always be seen as sexual, per se.
While I went to state schools, albeit as a boarder, many of my work mates attended public schools (ie private schools, in the USA). Their school days were during the years that saw the demise of the "fagging" system in those seats of learning. Fagging was a once formalised, institutionalised system wherein younger boys were required to act as personal servants to the most senior boys and prefects.
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Downton Abbey's Footman
Jimmy |
At its most benign, it was intended to engender respect for one's seniors and an understanding of service, from both sides of that relationship. Humans being humans and, most certainly, boys being boys, such power was often exercised in unintended ways, however, with abundant tales of widespread bullying, of physical and even sexual abuse; which some claim was accepted by school authorities or to which they turned a Nelsonian eye. I am reminded of the quote from Derek Malcolm, a British film critic, who said, "....if you were a fag-master you chose the prettiest fag from amongst the lower boys. You just liked to have a pretty fag; I suppose it was a substitute for girls. The funny thing was, if you shagged one of the maids, you were instantly expelled, but if you had anything to do with boys you got a severe ticking-off." In this, one can detect an echo of the rich and powerful seeking to engage and display young, good looking and physically impressive footmen in days gone by. Nothing ostensibly sexual, but rather to do with demonstrating wealth and power; key factors in the British social dynamic of the time.
While the friends who opened up about what they described as gay experiences attended school during the period said to have see the demise of fagging, or immediately thereafter, it seems that the attempt to dispatch it with a single, clean blow rather failed.
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Depiction of Frat Hazing
in the movie GOAT |
Tales of their public (private in US) school days suggested that although the specific practice may have been banned, as a formalised system, its atmosphere of privilege and power set against subordination and obedience lived on in custom if not in law; some watered down fagging de facto if not de jure. In such environments, I was told of boys being humiliated by their seniors in ways that had sexual overtones (and, to avoid us being too UK- centric, one also thinks of the US college fraternity systems and their initiations, echoed in some male school/college sports teams in the US) as well as the greater extreme of a mate being required to give a senior boy hands on assistance in achieving personal gratification. Such occurrences may well represent outlets for thinly veiled closeted homosexuality but, accepting that, they may also result from different emotional drives and adolescent bumbling round the maze of maturation.
In addition to the possibility that the above extra-curricular activities might be an outlet for repressed homosexuality, I offer two alternatives. On the one hand, the teen years are when a young male is meant to explore and experiment with human sexuality and, as the UK public system was single sex in those days, the lads simply went for what was available. Simply a mechanical means of achieving an end. On the other hand, such activity has long been postulated as being more to do with dominance and power than main stream sexuality.
I do recognise that dominance and submission may be part of any sex scene, be it gay or straight, but many suggest that acts that seemed to indicate homosexual overtones in school systems were rather manifestations of the exercise of power, dominance over others, or, in plain language, simply bullying. Indeed, a police mate of mine says that many so called gay rapes by straight guys are actually to do with the straight male demonstrating power over the target and that male rape is thought the ultimate dominant act. Rather serious stuff, about which I am not qualified to determine any conclusion, but which may make sense in explaining same sex physical acts during the teens years, in addition to the possibility of it indicating homosexuality or bi-sexuality.
If the above may offer explanations for the tales of elder boy/younger boy adolescent same sex activity, the idea of sexual experiences with one's peer group, with one's friends, seems to pose different issues. Two mates talked me through such eventualities, one while in school and one in his twenties. Both followed drinking bouts that were meant to lead on to picking up ladies and, if the stars were in alignment, enjoying a night of corporeal excess with them. As it transpired, it was alcohol that was taken in excess and the appeal of the guys to the opposite sex was somewhat bunted. When they repaired to their rooms, the school teens to rooms in their school House and the twenty somethings to their twin bed hotel room, they almost literally fell into each others arms and experienced their first (and only) sexual intercourse with another guy; with their best friend of the time. The school boys' case followed what appears to be the more common pattern in that, when the noise of fellow students announced the dawning of the new day, jump starting them from their stupor, they rose from the single bed, still naked, took themselves off to the bathrooms and nothing was ever said about the late night dalliance. In the case of the adult pair, things were somewhat different. In this case, when a pre-arranged morning call shocked them back into consciousness, my mate's friend turned to him and asked, "Did you enjoy that, last night?" My good mate paused, pondered, then replied, "Yes, I did, but don't really think it's for me." The two agreed and they shared no further physical intimacies, though their close friendship continued.
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Maverick and Goose (Tom Cruise and Anthony Edwards) in Paramount's
Top Gun. |
The above leads me to talk of so called "bromances". The various interpretations of these relationships figure on a sliding scale from very close straight friendships to a thin veil covering homosexual attraction and even clandestine gay activity. As I ventured in an earlier paragraph, the inner man is not black and white but grey, infinite shades of grey and, as a result, either of the above may accurately describe specific bromances. For my part, however, I have no problem with accepting the concept of platonic romances between males. During my time in the Army I witnessed many friendships between men which were significantly closer than was the norm. They embodied a shared dependency and exclusivity that stood them apart from the norm. They shared an intimacy that some saw as greater than that which they enjoyed with their girlfriends, later wives, in some regards. I did not, however, see such pairings as sexual, gay, in any general sense. Yes, there was always a physical element to the relationships, manifest in 'play' fighting or wrestling, and you might even find them drunk together in underwear or naked....even see them pretend to kiss each other before turning that into another wrestling bout. The physical element appeared important in cementing and re-affirming the relationship. One member of such a pair told me that he and his best mate had masturbated together one night while watching straight porn, after a "legendary" drinking bout. I do not see such relationships as necessarily homosexual, however. Of course this may all have been venting tensions from the inner man's sexual greyness, but I have no problem with accommodating the concept of platonic romance between men, wherein physical intimacy is a reinforcement of friendship, a shared mechanical pleasure, rather than being driven by physical and emotional attraction, lust or love. Devotees of the Discovery Channel and National Geographic Channel may have seen such manifestations amongst various animal species.
To close, I should say, without equivocation, that my take on all the tellers of the above tales is that they are straight, that their same sex events did not indicate latent homosexuality. Only my take, but my 'gaydar' has often been pretty sharp. Each one seemed to have little bent toward the sparkly, spangly end of the spectrum....not that we would want many of them anyway; sorry guys!
So, done for the week. This one took me in directions I hadn't intended at the outset, but I hope it made some sense. As ever, just one guy's take on the subject. My sincere thanks to you for joining me and I am sending you e-hugs or manly embraces, as appropriate. Next week I shall be a touch lighter and roll out 'Sex and the City Scene, Including Straight Guys Picking Up on the Gay Scene'.
Have a wonderful weekend, if Saturday and Sunday fit that bill for you and work allows. See you next week, I hope.
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