Sunday, February 11, 2007

I WANT TO TAKE YOU TO THE GAYBAR! (shout out to the kleptones)

Tonight we sat in bed and played Ticket To Ride. How sad is that?

I've left that link running long deliberately to highlight how fucking sad it is that I did that. I don't mean sad in reflection to me. I'm fucking smart. I know how to fix shit like that. However, there is no obvious way to correct it in the GUI of this editor and I forget how to easily fix it. I remember a long way (long meaning 30 seconds) but I'm too lazy and stoned to fix that.

So for reasons I feel I must be deliberately vague on, I recently ended up at a gay bathhouse. I feel very anxious about using the right words to express my feelings on this because I want them to be clear. I do not identify with contemporary gay culture which this place was totally dripping in but I was feeling comfortable, a bit of a country bumpkin in the big city, and god damn it I didn't want to go back to a boring hotel room (the only occupant being a pack of cigarettes I shouldn't have owned or wanted to smoke). So I went as part of a social outing that kind of naturally organized itself. (the organization was not to go to the bathhouse, and only a subsection of those at the event in question continued to the bathhouse.

Maybe you, like I, are unfamiliar with how it works. Maybe I'll go into that some other time in detail. Suffice to say I watched gay men partner for anonymous sex. They'd walk up, grab a little ass, and disappear. Now there were places - the porn room, the lounge - where there was a more public and stationary exhibit of gay sexuality but I didn't linger in them.

Indeed all I did do was spend an hour (we preagreed to meet at 3) in the steam room having a most excellent steam. It was a steam room with a hot tub in the middle of it so my oh my was it steamy. While I clearly did not indulge in all the features the establishment offered I thought it was $15 well spent. I never in my life thought I would have done such a thing. I called my wife immediately to wake her up and tell all. She was a little pissed about that, mitigated only slightly by the difference in time zones.

While I feel a bit like a sexual anthropologist in this I do feel slightly like I might be objectifying anonymous gay sex for my amusement and this is far from the case. I'm not sure I've settled on why I believe some are gay and some are straight, but I'm not unfamiliar with the sexual uses of another mans penis (just like 1 in 3 adult males out there). I somewhat wish I was more like the characters of Alan Moore's Lost Girls who would have jumped down the throat of the experience all guns blazing.

However that is a fictional world and I have a very real wife that gets preconsent on my sexual adventures. It was part of the contract I signed by marrying her. And while I confess truly that the thought of having a homosexual encounter never crossed my mind despite the veritable abundance of opportunity there is a caveat. The key figure in deciding to go was that I was absolutely hammered. Fantastically drunk. 13-14 ounces of rum served with diet cola. I couldn't have gotten an erection if my life depended on it.

Since I'd been known to act rashly in the heat of the moment - and the lack of sex for 4 days had created some heat - I knew such inability to perform would guarantee security and I happily jumped aboard what proved to be a very unexpectedly good time.

(and for the record, this experience with anonymous homosexual gay sex was practiced with more attention to safety than any anonymous heterosexual experience I've had)