A snapshot of my sexuality

You see I’m crap on my own. Maybe everyone is. I sure as hell know I am. I’m kind of lonesome at the moment. I left home at 18, and since then have lived constantly with people (friends – girlfriend – wife) apart from the searing shock of 6 months in 2005 when my marriage broke up, and I found myself alone for the first time.

At that time I launched my body, soul and intellect into a recovery program – Which looked to my close friends more like a desparate search for intimacy with random women. Some of you readers will be familiar with this because you read my blog at the time – It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Picture a man who breaks his ankle but who screams, shouts and bounces around the room to effectively drown out the pain, and that’s a pretty close metaphor.

So anyway, back to the now. Here I am, living alone again, only this time I have no major personal disaster to frame my response. I’m just a 30 year old single man, sitting in his flat. And wow, I’m lonely. I wrote (in a pseudo-intellectual whine) last week about how I’m transferring my loneliness into shopping. But really it get’s much worse than that.

Male sexuality can be a very ugly thing. Mine too. Last night about 6 I started seriously looking for prostitutes to come to my apartment. I spent an hour or so looking at thumbnail images of women who sell sex for a living and arrived at a shortlist of 3, from 2 websites. I rang the first place, which despite having a London number rang with a foreign ring tone. The lady who answered called me “darling” and “babe” and the conversation was reminiscent of those I occasionally have with 16 year old saturday girls in shops – Where I suddenly realise I’m a grown up and seen as such.

She talked me through who was available tonight. My number one choice was an Italian lady called Rose. She could be there in 40 minutes. Within an hour I could be having sex with an attractive woman, who sells that commodity (but it’s me paying and sealing that commoditisation) and whom I have never met. The spanner in the works was that she cost £400 for 2 hours. UK ATMs only let you get out £250 per day, so that was out. I rang the second place and got a much more business-like woman on the phone. The woman I liked was available immediately, but it would need to be within the hour as she was their most popular woman and was booked until the early hours – Put another way, she’d be havings sex with several desparate men like me tonight. She would do a single hour – I could afford her services – But suddenly the reality of being one of many desparate men on a rainy night in London hit home. I told her I’d ring back, but never did. I’m looking for intimacy. Sex, which is intimacy’s brash older sibling, won’t help. Particularly if I’m paying the other party to be there.

I went back to the PC and pulled up some porn. Specifically this site. I’ve used the site several times. Women are “bitches” and ”sluts”. Being sexy is their crime, being fucked their punishment. It’s acutely depressing, and if you switch your brain off, rapidly arousing. I wanked myself off, lying on my back on the sofa. I let my sperm land on my belly and lay there watching my penis retract until the sperm got cold and a drip had snaked down towards the leather.

I filled the dishwasher, cooked some food (an extravagant steak for one), channel surfed, vacuumed and invented a new game I’ll call ‘kick a hacky sack over my armchair and into the fruit bowl’. The gentle, knawing unease, my persistant friend for the last couple of months, continued.

Later I tried a new tack. I joined a website for casual sexual encounters. I placed a classified ad in which I tried to balance a certain sexual knowingness, a light-heart and confidence. All three were evasions. The underlying message was “please come and have sex with me, then let’s hug in bed”. Now I think of it, I would probably have been better served by using that exact line. I posted an intimate picture and got two immediate responses mocking my penis. I posted another ad, this time a gay one (I’m basically straight, but did once have a gay thing, maybe I could have fun trying this again). Did any man want to come and corrupt a straight man? Many did. Six responses in an hour, and many more this morning. All written in a brisk and intimidating gay language with which I’m not familiar, and which turned me off – “7.5 uncut hairy”, etc. The pictures (there were many) were enough to underline that while I like hard penises, I really don’t find the rest of a man attractive.

Meanwhile the straight ad yielded it’s only serious response. A woman who ”can hold a conversation but we don’t need to talk too much”. She asked for my number, which I sent, but I don’t expect to hear back.

By this time I was checking and re-checking ads, checking emails, looking at pictures of prostitutes and so on, in a sort of depressing heavy rotation. In the background a documentary competed for my attention – About male Japanese ‘hosts’ who make lonely Japanese women fall in love and bankrupt themselves on champagne and false declarations of love.

At 1am, defeated and pathetic,  I shuffled off to bed.   

Pride in Brighton

Went to Brighton’s gay Pride last night. Despite that, and the virginity story below, I’m actually straight.

It got me thinking about how many elements of gay life and the gay scene I’d like to co-opt for my straight world. There are loads:

• The ability to intellectualise casual sex
• Rufus Wainwright
• Better quality porn
• Sir Ian McKellan
• Acceptance of those who deviate from accepted norms (in terms of dress sense, demeanour, tastes, views, and so on)
• Rupert Everett

Of course if you’re a gay reader you’ll know I’m patronising you, and I’m sure you’d rather homo-voyeurs like me stayed away from your events. And… Oh you’re probably right. Sorry.

Virginity

I thought I’d describe my ‘losing it’ experience. But what constitutes losing it? I suppose the best definition would be the first instance of penetration, but before I did that, I’d done some other stuff which felt like ‘losing it’ but stopped short of penetration.

Before I ever had sex with a woman, I did some sex stuff with a man, so this story is a gay one. In fact this is the only gay relationship I’ve ever had, and I probably won’t have another. I’m attracted to women, but this experience serves as a strange footnote in my sexual history. Fun, not regretted, but somehow I know I won’t want to do it again.

His name was Paul. He was a guy I went to school with. I’d known him since we were about 8 and now we were 16. He was a slightly odd character, quite isolated at school, but kind and I liked him. He was good looking, but his oddness undermined his appeal. Because of this, he had the baffling knack of attracting girls from other schools for brief but exciting looking liaisons. We always figured it took these girls about 10 days to figure out that the good looking mysterious boy from the neighbouring school was a bit weird…

One day he asked me out for a drink (I had the happy gift of looking old enough to drink), and on the walk to the pub, told me he thought he was gay. I felt surprised and pleased he could tell me this. He then went on to say:

“And I’m telling you this because I’ve always thought YOU might be gay”

Oh! What a bombshell! I’m not a bigot now and I wasn’t then, but this was bad news. How was I supposed to lose my virginity if I was giving off gay vibes!? Not really knowing what to say, I assured him that I wasn’t gay, parked the whole issue and entered the pub.

After a few drinks, but I wasn’t drunk, we emerged and began the walk home. The conversation had turned to penis size. It had never occurred to me, but it was now evident, that the penis turns me on. I was turned on when he described his to me. And when I described mine to him, he admitted that I’d made him hard. It was becoming clear that he wanted sex with me, and I was deliciously excited by the prospect. The walk home took us through a park, criss crossed with weaving cycle paths. We took the direct route across the grass, leaving the paths and the harsh lamp-post light.

I asked him if I could see his penis. “Only if I can see yours”, was his sensible reply. Beginning a lifetime of penile exhibitionism, I instantly agreed. I undid my flies, reached in, and gently eased my hugely excited member from my shorts, then through the zipper of my trousers. He looked at it, protruding, looking bigger than I’d ever seen it, and dropped to his knees. Placing his head a couple of inches from my glans, he reached between my legs, grasped his hand to my bottom, opened his mouth and pulled me towards him. I went into his mouth in one smooth movement: At the last moment he had lifted his head and plunged downwards on to my reaching for the sky erection. It’s only with the benefit of many subsequent female blow jobs, that I can tell you that he gave me an aggressive, physical blow job. By grabbing my bum and forcing me into him, I was fucking his mouth. He had done this before. After about 3 minutes, he took a breather, released me from the clamp of his mouth and it was at this moment that I came. All over his hand, arm and… well it seemed to go everywhere.

He cleaned himself up using his shirt, and we walked on. Maybe the conversation became awkward, maybe not, I don’t recall. We reached his house (his mums house of course) and he invited me in.

In his room, perhaps 10 minutes since I had come, I was rock hard again. This time I asked to see his penis. Rather than adopt my minimal approach, he stripped completely naked, and stood in front of me. I didn’t want to look at him, touch him, kiss him or do anything normally intimate. I wanted to inspect, to touch, to kiss his penis.

It was smaller than mine, but very hard. The glans tipped down like Concorde’s nose. His foreskin was partially retracted. It twitched occasionally. I was transfixed by this beautiful thing.

He lay on his back on the bed, and I joined him. I could resist no longer and took hold of the entire (surprisingly warm) length using both hands. It felt great when I wanked him: his foreskin slid over the end so much more easily than mine, it seemed I could get a much longer stroke than my own penis allowed me. I pushed his foreskin up so that it completely covered his glans, leant forward and enclosed the small piece of overlapping foreskin in my lips. It tasted… I can’t recall how it tasted, but it felt fantastic! Without removing my mouth, I pulled his foreskin down and took the whole head in my mouth, pushing down until it touched the back of my throat. I may have been inexperienced, but I’d seen my share of porno movies, so I did my best porno interpretation and bobbed up and down on him for as long as I could manage. In fact I did it until I got bored, and preferred to look at this new found object of fascination. Look at it, while wanking it. As a normal 16 year old, wanking came easy. I made him come very soon. When I come, it never squirts far, but he was different. It shot up in unexpected spurts. On to my shoulder, front, and all over my hand.

I wanted another blow job. I removed my trousers and boxers and stood over him. Instead of taking me in his mouth, he held me, and complimented me on my size (was this the birth of my obsession with partners worshiping my penis? It was certainly the first occasion). He described it as “very impressive”. While I was hoping for more oral, he came out with the killer question…

“Do you want to fuck me?”

I didn’t. Not at all. I was very aroused by his penis, and wanted it as my own personal toy, but wasn’t interested in anything else. Didn’t want to fuck or be fucked. I took fright, mumbled some excuses, got dressed and left.

So my first sexual experience was a weird, never repeated penis only gay thing. It sounds grim now I recount the story, but it was intensely exciting.