Have you lost your cherry yet?
For heterosexuals, "loss of virginity" has historically had a very specific
definition: the completion of vaginal sex, including the rupture of the poetically titled
maidenhood. The matter's not so simple for queer men, though, since we haveth not, forsooth, a
maidenhood to lose.
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And lots of the sex we have - giving head, for example - would be
regarded as foreplay by many hets. So a straight person, whether girl-next-door or President
of the United States, can have clearly sexual, orgasm-producing contact and still
claim not to have had "real" sex.
While straight guys lose their official virginity by performing vaginal penetration,
gay guys can potentially top or bottom, which makes things even more complex. "I always
thought of myself as a virgin until I got screwed," says one gay virgin-no-more. "I'd
had a lot of sex before that, including being the top in anal. But there was something
about letting the first guy up my butt that seemed monumental to me."
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On the other hand, many queer men go through their lives quite happily without ever
being fucked, or even having any anal contact. But can a man who's given a thousand
blowjobs be regarded as "virginal?" And how about nonpenetrative sex - hand jobs,
for instance, or body-rubbing till you come? Are those sufficiently innocence-ending?
What about naughty stuff that's even more abstract, like phone sex?
"I think the problem lies in applying hetero standards to queer experience," proclaims
an observer of the sexual scene. "For straight women, vaginal virginity has been a marker
of purity, and therefore of value. So in some cultures, unmarried women get done up the
butt so they can preserve their 'technical virginity.' Silly, really, except that vaginal
sex carries with it the possibility of pregnancy, while other sorts of sex don't."
Since the arrival of HIV, anal sex, too, has potentially heavy-duty consequences, which
makes getting fucked for the first time more momentous for many men than it used to be.
More gay guys seem to be waiting for that someone special to do the butt-sex deed.
But meanwhile, there are many other juicy joys to be had.
"I think the whole yes/no binary of virginity is basically meaningless to gay men,"
continues the sex observer. "It should probably be viewed in terms of 'experienced,'
instead. Just as you can come out to friends but not co-workers, or to co-workers
but not to Mum and Dad, so you can be virginal in some ways but not others."
Sexual proclivities can sometimes seem like a complicated carnal catalogue - particularly
when trying to decipher an alphabet-soup answer to the question "What are you into?" But
shouldn't sexuality serve as a means to pleasure and fulfillment, not a checklist we
measure ourselves against? Just because a fellow has - or hasn't - performed a specific
sexual act, that doesn't necessarily make him better than anyone else.
Perhaps a man's sex life should be viewed as a continuing loss of virginities. A
guy might be a big ol' slut as far as bondage is concerned, but innocent to the
joys of anal sex, or can be an anal piggy who has yet to take part in a three-way. Each
of us has his own pace for the process of losing his multiple cherries. As one gay man
says, "It's nice to know that at the age of 45, there are still some things I haven't
done, but that I one day may want to. It gives me something to look forward to."
And, busted cherry or not, that's a prick-pleasing prospect.
Simon Sheppard
Now here's your chance to meet the man behind this column. OutUK has an interview with Simon Sheppard or you can take a look at some of his books that are currently available:
Looking for something very sexy and just as smart? Man on Man collects the best and hottest gay sex writing by Simon, who is also
co-editor of Rough Stuff: Tales of Gay Men, Sex, and
Power as well as a collection of gay erotica called
Hotter Than Hell.
In KINKORAMA : Dispatches from the Front Lines of Perversion he takes readers behind the unmarked doors and black vinyl curtains that lead to the sometimes shocking, often hilarious, relentlessly arousing scenarios of extreme sex. There
are also stories of bears in Tales from the Bear Cult: Beat Bear Stories from the Best Magazines.
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