Hey, Faggot:
Here’s a question I’ve never seen addressed in any advice column. I’m a reasonably healthy and functional heterosexual woman who prefers fags to straight men. This isn’t a recent thing, or a reaction to some tortured relationship. Even when I was a kid, the other kids I played with were all boys that liked to play with dolls and grew up to be flight attendants. My best friends in high school and college have all come out. Now I find that all the guys I find attractive are gay, and openly so. I even think gay porn is hot.
I really can’t explain this. I’m not afraid of straight men or afraid of sex: I’ve had plenty of boyfriends and some long-term relationships, but nothing seems to turn me on as much as a guy who’s very much in touch with his feminine side. Given a crowd of attractive men, I always manage to pick out the fruity ones. It’s become a joke among my friends.
Is this evidence of some bizarre psychological problem on my part? Does this doom me to a life of sexlessness and misery? What should I do? –Help
Hey, H:
If being attracted to men unconvinced that flatulence = high comedy qualifies as a “psychological problem,” then you and I would be well-advised to start a support group. You are not alone in being attracted to men in touch with what for too long has been mislabeled their “femin-inity.” I say “mislabeled” because thus labeling good table manners, reasonable personal hygiene, the having of feelings, and the willpower not to let big ol’ farts rip whenever nature calls has created a tremendous disincentive for insecure straight boys to acquire these various and sundry social graces. If all those things are feminine, then being masculine pretty much requires one to eat like a pig, smell bad, feel nothing, and fart lots.
But I think you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick: you’ve convinced yourself that you’re attracted to gay men, when what you’re attracted to are effeminate men. Take comfort–not all effeminate men are gay, and, I should mention, not all gay men are effeminate. What you need to do is get out there and find yourself a gay-acting/gay-appearing straight boy. They do exist, and here’s the proof:
Hey, Faggot:
People think I’m gay. As a heterosexual male, I’ve never had problems with homosexuals in the least, but being a rather shy, somewhat insecure fella, I really don’t need another hurdle to jump over when trying to meet women. It’s mostly heterosexuals who are confused: I’ve only been hit on a couple of times by men. I don’t know if it’s because I can match colors, or I don’t do enough macho posturing. Without becoming a homophobe, what can I do to send out the correct signals to potential partners? –Help
Hey, H:
You could fart more.
Look, you say you’re shy, and that’s fine. But if you’re pretty darn swishy, then women will rightly or wrongly assume you’re queer. So if you want to get laid, you’re going to have to get a little less shy about approaching women–for potential partners to get the correct signals, you’re going to have to be a little more proactive about sending them. Call it the curse of the heterosexual hairdresser/florist/waiter/senior presidential adviser: if you don’t tell people you’re straight, everyone naturally assumes you’re gay.
Asking women out and then wining, dining, and fucking them is a pretty convincing way of demonstrating you’re straight. I hear from women all the time who are in love with a particular gay man, or attracted to gay men in general, or sick of macho posturing. Your swishiness is a point in your favor with scores of women, like Help above. Go find one.
Hey, Faggot:
Since porno flicks became available, I have perhaps watched thousands of them. One thing I note is that guys rarely play and/or suck on gals’ breasts. It seems most guys head for the final act without even noticing gals’ breasts. Why should gals be so concerned about their breast image, as most are, when their breasts are often neglected in lovemaking? –Curious
Hey, C:
Um, call me crazy, but I have this sneaking feeling that breeder boys fucking in real life may pay more attention to gals’ breasts than breeder boys fucking in porn. But just to be sure, I called a lifelong expert on women’s breasts, my older, straighter brother, Billy. “Any man who isn’t paying attention to his partner’s breasts is not paying attention to his partner,” he said, sounding an awful lot like…me. “I mean, the best thing in the world is to be inside a woman and have a nipple in my mouth,” he concluded, sounding like himself again. Wake up, straight boys: porn features highly stylized, ritualized performance sex and is not meant to be taken literally.
Hey, Faggot:
I’m a newly single man becoming sexually active again after 18 months of masturbation. With two women I recently have had the problem–in about half of our encounters–of being hard through foreplay but only barely hard enough when the time came for penetration. Since I always begin masturbating by touching my nipples–they’re very sensitive–I fear that I have retrained myself to respond mostly to this stimulus.
Unfortunately, with these women, nipple stimulation does not have the same effect. Initially it makes me hard, but it fails to do much after a short while. If this is only a case of learning bad habits by having solo sex, how can I retrain my body, especially when I still enjoy jerking off and it’s most fun if I touch my nipples? The women thought it was about how they looked, and I’m starting to get frustrated, because I never had this problem before.
–Help
Hey, H:
Your half-the-time problem probably has more to do with concentration and focus than deep-seated psychological problems or masturbatory “training.” You could spend hundreds of dollars going to see a sex therapist-whatever, or you can spend ten bucks on one trip to a sex-toy store. Pick yourself up a cock ring: yours is the very problem they’re designed to correct. They fit snugly at the base of your cock, and once you’re excited, the blood gets in, but it don’t get out–not until you’re finished with it. Get an adjustable one with a buckle or snap, and you won’t risk a trip to the emergency room to have a too-snug cock ring sawn off.
And, hey: If you think your lady friends are at all hip to advanced sex toys, you might want to pick up some tit clamps. They sound and, to some, look scarier than they are, but if you love tit stimulation, trust me–you’ll love tit clamps.
And while we’re on the subject of tits:
Hey, Faggot:
Here’s a suggestion for the guy who’s worried about developing big, leathery tits: I use a little Vaseline Intensive Care on mine every morning. I use the purple kind, marketed as being for “Legs and Feet.” It doesn’t reduce nipple size, but it keeps them soft and malleable. And obviously attractive, since guys go right for them with their tongues.
–JPR
Send questions to Savage Love, Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611.