Unbeknownst to me at the time, my first real “gay” relationship was also my first foray into homosexual “monogamy.” Then, I wasn’t consciously looking for anything long term, but because I was a so lonely, scared, and desperately needy, I would have gone home with anyone who gave me the slightest bit of attention. When someone did, as typically happens it was an older and far more experienced man, an unbelievable sense of acceptance, affirmation, and security swept over me like the most intense narcotic high on Earth; I couldn’t get enough, and I wanted to stay in that semi-numb zone forever. For a while, the two of us just being together was enough to generate an incredible amount of heat – that fire is what I kept going back to in order to feel love. Almost right away, we stopped going out – either individually or as couple. We stayed home a lot or only occasionally socialized with similarly coupled men. But, rather quickly, I perceived that he was getting bored. In hindsight, I needed him far more than he needed me.
One night, while with another of those so-called “monogamous” couples, my boyfriend suggested that the four of us go to the bedroom; I wasn’t really shocked, for, as relatively new as I was to the “gay” scene - I pretty much understood how things worked; and, I would have done anything to please someone that I thought cared and loved me. This situation went on for a couple of weeks, then all of us moved the party to the bars and dance clubs in the Castro; not very slowly, our circle of casual sex-partners expanded and then we became one of those couples who played as a couple; at first, I thought I was doing it simply to keep him happy, but then I realized that I was becoming more and more attracted to other men; I would notice that this guy was far more manly than my boyfriend, or that another was more aggressive, or another had a deeper voice or larger arms or bigger hands; in my head, I was creating and seeking a sort of “gay” male icon – a perfect idol of masculinity that could save me; it was an incessant hold-over from my porn obsessed childhood when the male body became super-human and then monstrous in its exaggerated proportions and compulsive focus upon size. Then, my first monogamous “gay” relationship ended with a whimper: at a particular visit to one of the gay sex haunts of the Castro, amidst our mutually approved playing, I just walked off with another man.
At about 25 years of age, at mid-career in my “gay” life, I coupled once again, but with someone closer to my age; this time, instead of being a wimpy kid in need of guidance and reassurance, I felt like an equal player on the field and I wanted to couple-up on my own terms. But, what really drove me to seek a sort of shelter in a one-on-one relationship was my growing fear of death and my utter frustration with a lifestyle that mindlessly killed each of the friends I had made back when I was 18. Now, in my middle-20s, I was sensing an encroaching loneliness that made me feel like a little boy again. I didn’t know what to do, so, I decided to live on the periphery of gayness; going home with the same man every night, while still maintaining my allegiance to it all: attending the parades, festivals and rallies as a fully possessed “gay” man. Yet, this self-exile lasted only a few months, because, like my boyfriend nearly 8 years before had done – I was growing increasingly bored and restless. Likewise, my new partner was feeling the same way – so, we opened things up and invited in a third, then a forth, then a fifth. Finally, among our group of friends, we had created our own little bathhouse. Again, I moved on, as the circle of sexual partners continued to expand, it eventually consumed any sense of a relationship and we became what many would regard as “f##kbuddies.”
A few years later, I tried the whole experiment again – this time, while I was nearing 30 and my partner was in his mid-40s; because, I had been in the “gay” lifestyle for over a decade, had tried nearly everything, been disappointed over and over again, but somewhat undaunted and still looking – things became particularly sick for me; almost on a weekly basis, my new partner would bring home these pathetically under-experienced and usually too high young men; it became cannibalistic; there was always this ugly sensation of conquering and submission; the drive was pushed forward by an insatiable hunger that never allowed for a full belly; it was sort of bulimic: a gorging and momentary satisfaction followed by a self-purging and then the immediate return of an overwhelming desire to be refilled. The pervasive psyche of everyone involved is an overpowering unawareness of our own incompleteness; therefore, our existence is preoccupied with gaining some kind of wholeness.
Two decades after experiencing all these ragings and wanderings, I have come to one conclusion: that a world without women is impossible. Sounds simple, but it was a revelation; because, growing up during the 70s era of female-power, the ERA, and Charlie perfume commercials, I always thought that the only difference between men and women was a matter of something between the legs. At first, the reality of the distinctions between the sexes was made abundantly clear when I picked up my first female prostitute and she turned out, to my utter shock and dismay, to be rather prudish. You see, up until that point, all my sexual experiences had been with other “gay” men; stupidly, I thought that women behaved in the same manner – at least the slutty ones. This wasn’t true; at Berkeley, during a prolonged bisexual phase, I dated another student, a completely uninhibited neo-hippie chic, who, despite her free-thinking ways, needed to be constantly romanced before anything physical could take place. As someone who could always use other men as a sexual outlet, I quickly found women to be overly-demanding and time-consuming. Back at the Castro, I didn’t even have to speak with a prospective partner; often, eye contact across a crowded disco was enough – you simply headed to the restroom and waited. No woman, not even a street-walker, unless she is mentally ill, will follow a nameless man to a bathroom stall (with the door missing) and have sex with him over a filthy public toilet. Yet, “gay” men do it every day.
The sexual excess in the “gay” male world is indisputable; only, unlike many who currently promote a new sanitized and disease-free picture of the modern “gay” man, this perversity is unavoidable – even among the so-called married and monogamous. This primarily has to do with the simple fact that an all-male society will inevitably collapse because the testosterone of the male is never tempered with the estrogen of the female. In reality, the unregulated dominance of male hormones creates a sexual China syndrome, in which men, specifically homosexual men who grew up alienated and endlessly craving male affection, congregate together, find an endless supply of other similarly wounded men willing to have sex, then, without malice – they set into motion, through their excesses, an unstoppable cascade of death; after the gay liberation movement of the 1970s, this disaster came to be in the form of AIDS; today, though science has perfected new ways of keeping “gay” men alive, the melt down continues with an ever increasing number of antibiotic resistant sexually transmitted infections that seem to only arise within the bowls of homosexual males.
The inescapable fate always seems to fall back into disease and death, even among those who try to escape this horror by partnering and embracing some form of strange “gay monogamy – with well over half of all HIV infections among homosexual males occurring while in a relationship. The pervasive restlessness and need to idolize maleness always shows its ugly face; in terms of males and females, there is an incredible gap between the fascination men have with pornography and the much smaller percentage of women who watch porn; “men are more than 543% more likely to look at porn than women.” Therefore, when men who are attracted to other men form a culture without women, the sexual forces inside the masculine are unleashed without any temperament from the female: the body is objectified to the point that it becomes inhuman, sex is constant and unrestrained, and the only thing that stops the perversity is disease.
Addendum:
The all-female world of lesbians, though with very low rates of STDS, comes with its own set of problems; without testosterone, the excess of estrogen creates a universe of over-emotionalism trending towards excessive drama constantly verging on violence.
The evidence:
“Almost half of the participants (48.7%) were monogamous, slightly fewer (42.1%) reported non-monogamous sexual agreements with some conditions or restrictions, and a relatively small number (9.2%) reported sexual agreements with absolutely no restrictions on sex with outside partners. A third of the participants (32.4%) reported breaking their agreement in the preceding 12 months and 14.8% reported having UAI in the preceding 3 months with an outside partner of discordant or unknown serostatus.”
“Development and Validation of the Sexual Agreement Investment Scale”
Torsten B. Neilands, PhD, et al.
J Sex Res. 2010 Jan; 47(1): 24–37.
“Ninety nine percent of couples reported having an agreement. Specifically, 45% had monogamous agreements, 47% had open agreements, and 8% reported discrepant agreements.”
Relationship Characteristics and Motivations behind Agreements among Gay Male Couples: Differences by Agreement Type and Couple Serostatus
Colleen C. Hoff, PhD, et al.
AIDS Care. 2010 Jul; 22(7): 827–835.
“Nearly 70% of HIV+ MSM (men who have sex with men) are estimated to have contracted HIV from a main partner…Our data suggest that reported monogamy may sometimes reflect intent or a non-traditional definition of monogamy rather than engagement in sex with only one partner. Nearly a quarter of men who indicated that they had only had sex with their partner for the duration of their relationship also reported engagement in anal sex with at least one non-main partner in the past 90 days. This supports previous research showing “monogamy” to be an ambiguous term…”
“Open, Closed, or In Between: Relationship Configuration and Condom Use among Men Who Use the Internet to Seek Sex with Men”
Sonya S. Brady, et al.
AIDS Behav. 2013 May; 17(4): 1499–1514.
“The Monopoly data indicate that while a majority of gay and bisexual men report having a ‘regular partner’, a very substantial proportion of these, probably more than half, may be ‘f##kbuddy’‐style arrangements rather than the ‘boyfriend’‐style ‘relationships’ that is often implied by the use of the term ‘regular partner.’”
“Monopoly A study of gay men’s relationships 2014”
Garrett Prestage, et al.
The Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales. 2015.
“Sixty-eight percent of HIV transmissions were from main sex partners…”
Estimating the proportion of HIV transmissions from main sex partners among men who have sex with men in five US cities.
Sullivan PS, et al.
AIDS. 2009 Jun 1;23(9):1153-62.
“78% of lesbians report that they have either defended themselves or fought back against an abusive partner.”
“Domestic Violence and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Relationships”
The Public Policy Office of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence