Stay Positive — Or Whatever
In 2015, I met a man who saw more of me than most passers-by. He sought to engage me in my own space, and bring me into his without pretense or real expectations. It’s one of the most genuine interactions I’ve had with a human, and despite our occasional friction since, I cherish having him in my life.
He saw me first, physically. That makes sense — we met on Scruff. I don’t remember my profile at the time, but I think I was over my exceedingly long-winded, “completely candid about flaws” phase and had a shorter, still informative blurb about myself and my expectations. His profile, I recall, read intentional and cryptic, flirty and nerdy. He wasn’t physically my ideal, but I could never say he’s ugly.
One of the things that touched me most is that he openly displayed his HIV positive status. Even in a city like Chicago, the cloud of stigma lingers and lurks, and as someone who gets so wrapped up and proud about my own flaws, I’m really quickly taken by others who flip the script on theirs.
To be clear:
This is not a piece about HIV and positive status.
This is also not about how HIV is a flaw. Being HIV positive has no moral value to it.
We met up, went dancing and curled up in each other at his place after. We fooled around in the morning. He smelled and tasted like coffee — even before having coffee. I would come to find he’s just coffee-flavored, seemingly all the time.
As we saw more of each other, the pretense was more than casual but never romantic (at least through my eyes). It didn’t feel like he was trying to push me into a “boyfriend” role and I wasn’t pursuing that either. On my own, I was still dating other people. He and I were friends, with benefits. Actual friends though. That part is really important to me still.
I struggled with my sexuality then as well. Knowing him more meant we saw more sides of each other. Eventually he saw my depression and I stopped hiding it. Related or not, on occasion I also struggled sexually with him (and others). At the time, it was a simple throwaway to correlate it with my depression. That’s a real thing, and even now I assume it genuinely contributed to my sexual frustrations.
Two things though —
First and foremost, while that is a real thing I also definitely employed it more often than it felt real. There were times where depression might have been behind the wheel, but also I just wasn’t feeling sex and didn’t want to disappoint or upset others by having them assume I wasn’t attracted to them.
Second, even as it is real it is not easy to navigate. Depression makes it tough to perform sexually, but so do anti-depressants. One way or another I seem to get screwed, and not in any way I want.
As part of the frustration and struggle with this particular man, he offered that maybe my body, and mind were not well acclimated to casual sex. That by opening myself up to more sexual opportunities, I would “prime the pump” so to speak. The theory is sound, in a few ways. Moreover, he introduced a term in light of the idea. He framed the intentionality of it as sex positivity.
To be clear — at the time I interpreted his usage of ‘sex positivity’ in this context to mean “intentionally seeking additional opportunities for sex.” Being sex positive meant playing the sex game more, whether I liked it or not.
To. be. clear.
Five years later, I know for certain that at the very least my interpretation of his remarks at the time do not speak to the actual definition of sex positivity. Sex positivity does not have anything to do with the amount of sex that you have.
For those in the back:
HAVING MORE SEX DOES NOT MAKE YOU MORE SEX POSITIVE.
BEING SEX POSITIVE DOES NOT MAKE YOU A BETTER PERSON.
HAVING MORE SEX DOES NOT MAKE YOU A BETTER PERSON.
Sex positivity is an intentional stance against the puritanical beliefs that sex outside of marriage, or even just for pleasure, is immoral or wrong. Sex positivity declares that sex is a healthy activity that can be pursued for romance, intimacy, and pleasure (among other healthy reasons). Sex positivity doesn’t prescribe anything about sexual appetite or preferences, though it does advocate for sex to be pursued without judgment. Through a sex positive lens, there’s nothing wrong with “vanilla sex,” and there’s nothing wrong with hard-core BDSM.
I got my first inkling that something was wrong as I met some more of his friends and associates. Plenty of them are delightful, sex positive people. A few of them distinctly hold themselves in high regard for their presumed sex positivity, immersion in the kink community, and general sexual voracity.
Those people are awful to be around.
I got to learn more about sex positivity as I tried to act on my interpretation of it and failed. I went and had more sex. I had sex with a different man maybe every five days (which for me was a remarkable increase). I did it whether or not I wanted to because I felt like I was supposed to. From a humanist perspective, I felt like I was failing as a human, and doubly so as a gay man, if I wasn’t pursuing sex.
But the sex. It was so unremarkable.
Very little of it was good, almost none of it was worth repeating. The large majority of it felt painfully transactional, and unfortunately mechanical. Load for load, pump for pump. It was hollow, and I felt hollow as I pursued it more.
I kept up the act for several months, but about half a year later fell into a relationship that served a lot of my emotional needs. Even in that relationship, I attempted to pursue “sex positivity” despite neither of us having a particularly large sexual appetite. I think that false expectation weighed a bit on the relationship, but there were other problems. The day after we broke up, I found my way back to this first man.
I had the best threesome, and some of the best sex of my life.
And then it went back.
Single again, I met more gay men and old feelings set back in. So many men talked about their sexual adventures ad nauseam — I had little to offer and little interest. I felt once more like I was failing at being gay and — more deeply — at being human.
It’s biological for us to pursue sex. It’s a lizard-brain thing. We do it (even gay men) because there’s a persistent instinctual urge to attempt procreation and proliferation.
Not having that. I just felt.
Less than. Disappointing. Unloveable.
The thorns came with a rose though. I did discover sex positivity in my “failings.” As I met more men who espoused “sex positivity” because they have a lot of sex, I noticed they were just talking about having a lot of sex, and demanded that affirmed them.
Sure. Whatever. Those same men were mean and judgmental toward themselves and each other when it came to sexual drought. Dry spells were shameful, and not attempting to be sexual was their sin. While that’s definitely not the exact puritanical stance, it rings similar bells. It doesn’t espouse any positivity, and still belies an onus on any given individual to pursue something without intention. What began to amuse me is that they didn’t have real words to describe my stance.
Some of them say I am “sex negative”, prudish, or judgmental.
Some of them say I’m just “broken”.
The truth is, sex positivity betrays itself a bit in that positivity is an unfortunately heavily connoted word. It insinuates goodness, health, and plenty. “More is more.” Perhaps an appropriate alteration is the idea of “sexual agnosticism.” I don’t hate or love sex. I don’t care about it all that much. Furthermore, I think a lot of men (and probably people in general) could benefit from being more candid with themselves and others about their own sexual appetite. Some people are — as I’ve begun to describe them — incredibly “sex forward.” That is to say, they prioritize sexual interactions and pursue them as a means of engaging others.
Traditionally, I think someone who is “sex forward” might be called a slut. People keep trying to take back that word, but nowadays it mostly seems to mean nothing (which is an improvement I suppose). Being “sex forward,” or proclaiming one’s sluttiness with pride is a sex positive stance that is earnest about sex being a priority for some people.
BEING SEX FORWARD AND PRIORITIZING SEX IN YOUR INTERACTIONS IS NOT WRONG OR BAD.
NOT BEING SEX FORWARD DOES NOT MAKE YOU LESS HUMAN.
That last one was mostly for me. I still need the reminder.
I think I’m going to continue to struggle in this arena. Even as I claim more earnest declaration of my intent and expectations, I think most other gay men are entrenched in a mindset of “sex first, that’s how you do it.”
There are no rules. And even if there were rules, we’re queer — we’ve been breaking rules for a while.
See you on the apps.
Sincerely Not Horny,
August
