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Yesterday I was speaking with a friend on the phone and I experienced something that has happened many times before. I was reverse slut shamed.

Out of respect, I won’t say the friend’s real name but for now let’s just call him “Schmocky Schmilliams.” Just for a little background, Shmocky Schmilliams is in a long term sexually active relationship and in the past has had a very active sex life.

WHAT HAD HAPPENED WAS…

The conversation was going well as usual, covering a variety of pop culture topics and current events. Then out of the blue, no leading segue whatsoever, he implied that the number of times I’d had sex in the last 3 years could be counted on one hand.

My first reaction was to laugh. He was joking, right?

No, he was serious. This was not a setup to a larger joke between buddies. He pressed on, outright asking me if his calculated guess was actually true.

No, I said to him. However I admitted that I’d only had sex a handful of times this year, all with people I’d already known. No one permanent or new. I’ve been on my DJ Khaled shit this year.

Here’s the thing. He and I have had this conversation many times before. He already knows that I’ve never been a person pressed for sex and admittedly I haven’t been having it a lot lately by choice.

Why was Schmocky Schmilliams, without provocation, suddenly interested in the activity of my penis?

Again.

He didn’t ask me when, as a man in my late 30’s, I’d last been to a doctor for a checkup.

Or when I’d last checked my credit report.

Or how my pregnant soon-to-burst sister-in-law was progressing.

No, he made the conversation about my sex life, or lack thereof.

This in itself was not a problem. He’s a friend and it was not a topic I was ashamed of speaking about. So, as I stated earlier, my response was that while my 3-year body count was not as minuscule as he predicted, it was admittedly lower than most.

While his response was prefaced with “there’s totally nothing wrong with that” gestures of “support,” I could tell that his voice was full of confusion, sadness, disappointment and possibly remorse.

Was he secretly feeling sorry for me? Was he, as a married gay man, subconsciously wanting to live vicariously through his single friend’s sex life? Was he selfishly hoping I would “find me a man” so that we could all double date and travel as gay couples? Or was he just feeling like his friend was being deprived of an essential lifestyle like a Liberal American would feel for a Syrian refugee?

I then reversed the conversation and asked him what number would have made him more satisfied with my response as a person who is not currently dating anyone consistently? 50? 100?

Let’s say 50 times. There are 52 weeks in a year so that’s having sex roughly once per week. Given that most men on our site have stated that having sex too early while dating is a no-no, the bulk of those quick sexual experiences would have to come from Hookups if I wanted to remain single yet still meet my quota.

So that’s potentially 50 anonymous hookups…for a 38 year old man…living in Atlanta. On paper, that’s not an impossible feat. It’s actually aiming pretty low.

Now I don’t know about the rest of you but I have too much shit to do to be looking for 50 different men to hookup with. Especially given the many tit-for-tat hoops you have to jump through with gay men on these apps and sites.

On top of that, I’m a hypochondriac who lives in Atlanta where the HIV rates are mind-boggling. Estimates for metro Atlanta show more than 26,000 people living with HIV/AIDS and Atlanta is the fifth highest metro area for rates of new HIV diagnoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

I’ve made it 38 years without ever getting an STD or STI and I’d like to keep it that way. No Charlie Sheen confessions here. This is not mentioned to shame those that have had or do live with these treatable infections, just to say that extreme prevention and selectivity has always superseded brief moments of pleasure for me.

But these are all excuses.

I could easily have an extremely active sex life and still remain (relatively) safe with the use of condoms, minimal flesh-to-flesh body contact and no open-sore kissing or fluid transfers.

Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

I’M EXHAUSTED WITH THE GAY DATING SCENE AND LIFESTYLE

Seriously though, one of the real reasons that I’m not having a lot of sex right now is I’m really just exhausted with the whole “scene.” For example, check out these Public Service Announcements I saw recently for PrEP. The first features a shirtless twink cruising a bar for sex saying that “he likes to party.”

Is this really my life? Is this the lifestyle I imagined for myself as a kid?

Then there is this PSA featuring openly gay former NGBA San Francisco Rockdogs basketball player DeMarco Majors cruising Grindr for a hookup in his (realistically) messy bedroom.

Again, is this my life? Hookups and conversations with strangers about PrEP?

Lastly, recently on Cypher Avenue’s social networking site The Boards we discussed a criminal case in Atlanta where police caught a 19-year-old kid who targeted gay men for ATM robberies and carjackings on Jack’d (no pun intended). The multiple victims were 34 to 39-year-old men seeking hookups in the wee hours of the morning.

No judgments and safety concerns aside, I’ve just never been the type of 30+ year old man who felt compelled to hookup with an anonymous 19-year-old at 3am in the morning.

Yet this is my life.

A life where other gay men see there something being wrong with ME for not experiencing or even wanting to experience that.

Getting back to my telephone conversation with Schmocky Schmilliams, I asked him if he were single as a newly turned 39 year old man in Atlanta, would he be having sex with at least 50 different men per year. At first he replied with a quick, yes! Then he clarifies and stated that in actuality, he would have a “stable” of about 4-5 guys who would be on his rotation.

That’s still 4-5 guys that you’re having causal sex with at least once or twice per week to meet that 50 quota. That in itself is great. Hell, even the 50 anonymous hookups are great.

As many readers already know, I’m a defender of many things that I personally don’t engage in myself. I’m a defender of first date sex, a defender of one night stands, a defender of hookups, a defender of friends with benefits and a staunch defender of the so-called homewrecker.

So it always perplexes me when the subject of not enough sex comes up. Why not be a defender of the selective sex having black gay man? Especially in a lifestyle and community ravaged with STIs?

Like a seldom seen relative (who doesn’t know you’re gay) at a family reunion that wonders why you’re still unmarried, the response from gay men is often, “what’s wrong with you, boy!?”

This is because they know how EASY it is to get sex if you really want sex.

The “I like to party” twink featured in the above PSA stated, “having lots of sex makes you a stud.” This is true for gay men as well, especially if you are Versatile or a Top. As men we’re assumed to have lots of sex. Especially since we don’t have the fear of unwanted pregnancies.

We’ve stated since the beginning of this website 4 years ago that the gay community is built on sex and Hooking up. Sex permeates our music, our movies, our web series, our novels and fiction…Sex drives our YouTube bloggers’ videos and drives much of the advertising dollars the community generates. Literally 100% of our gay dating sites list Top/Bottom sexual position and HIV status above interests and education. You’d be hard pressed to visit a gay website and NOT see ads for porn, hookup apps or HIV testing.

On this website, we’ve successfully bucked that trend for the most part. Showing that there is more to gay men than just our HIV status.

But here was my homie reverse slut shaming me. Basically calling me “Dry-Dick Nick” without actually saying the words.

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PERCEPTION

To be fair, he wasn’t that harsh about it all…and to be even more honest, this came on the heels of a previous 6 month old conversation that I myself initiated on my lack of telephone-book long list of sexual experiences.

Back then, I admitted to him that at times I did occasionally look at men who had extremely active gay sex lives in their youth and wonder if I missed out on some enjoyment.

Many gay men that I’ve dated have told me stories about various whirlwind relationships, brief sexual encounters, group cabin trips and romantic island getaways all before they reached the age of 28-years-old. I didn’t even start dating and making gay friends until I was that age, so I missed out on having those young gay man experiences.

Now, at 38-years-old, not only don’t I have those personal past stories to draw from, I really don’t have an overwhelming desire to engage in those acts now. So from the outside looking in it can appear as if I haven’t lived my gay life to the fullest. That I’m being deprived of something essential.

Don’t get me wrong, as a black gay man, I’ve had my fair share of great sex with some very dope men. I have no regrets. I love my life, my journey and the person I’ve become.

Happiness and Priorities are in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

I know some fathers who will say that there is no greater joy than having a child. On the flip side, I know some childless men who think about having kids and say, “uh ah, fuck dat…”

STRAIGHT PEOPLE DO IT TOO

Here, near the end, is my main thesis for this already unnecessarily long essay. I believe that there are MANY single men, straight and gay, who are not having porn star quantity sex on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis.

To be real, even actual Porn Stars are not having what is perceived to be porn star quantity sex. Just because you watch their old scenes every night on Myvidster, that doesn’t mean those people are actually having sex that many times a week.

Many of the single straight men I know are not using the heterosexual equivalent to Grindr and Jack’d to have anonymous hookup sex at 3am with some woman in a Walmart parking lot. That’s not to say that men aren’t pussy hounds, my own brother is a reformed dog who sniffed a lot of ass in his past. But I don’t get the vibe in straight circles that every heterosexual guy I know is having sex with 50-100 different women a year. Especially the men I know in their late 30s.

So maybe we need more men to “come out of the closet” so to speak and freely reveal that they aren’t these studs whose body counts could fill a typical 20-page Cheesecake Factory menu.

It’s actually already beginning.

Gay writer and blogger Nico Lang penned this excellent essay, “21 Things I Learned From Not Having Sex For A Year,” where he states:

There’s no “normal” sex life, and most of it comes in waves. At certain points in your life you will be more interested in casual sex than at other times. Sometimes you want a fuckbuddy; sometimes you’re not interested in that and getting on Grindr seems like the least appealing thing to you. You want an app that finds a guy who will be nice to your mom and texts you back. Whatever you want right now, no one should make you feel like you don’t deserve that. Life’s too short to accept anything less than what you need.

In “Why Can’t I Get Laid? One Man’s Journey Through A Yearlong Dry Spell,” writer Daniel Barna reveals a reality that we gay men seldom realize face heterosexual men:

I still seek potential partners under the subterranean glow of the bar scene — maybe not the best approach for a 30-year-old male with a receding hairline…I haven’t even considered online dating, because despite the fact that some of my buddies have met their wives on plenty-of-OK-cupid-harmony, there’s a stigma there that I just can’t get over.

And its not a Top versus Bottom reality…no matter your preferred sexual position/role, we still see hesitation in admitting that a person isn’t getting any.

In our recent Bottoms Roundtable Podcast, I specifically asked the men about this and the response was hesitant, as if he didn’t want to admit publicly that he had extended periods of no sex, much like myself. At the 32:35 mark, one of the Squad Members talked about how at one point he primarily put all of his energy into work and his career and networking so he didn’t do much dating at all. I felt like he was speaking my language so my follow-up question was did he go on anonymous hookups during that dry dating spell. After acting like he didn’t understand the question, his response was, “You’ve got to, you’ll go insane if you don’t.”

Insane? That may have been hyperbole but it does represent the perception that many men have regarding sex. It’s as essential as oxygen, water, carbs and proteins.

The reasons behind my personal lack of crushing a lot of men lately are as varied as reasons why many gay men do the opposite: I’m not pressed for sex, I’m more focused on career and building my businesses at the moment, I’m a STD & HIV hypochondriac, I’m not satisfied with my available options, I’ve got my own insecurities, I’ve got occasional minor medical issues that cause unwarranted anxiety, I don’t feel “sexy” sometimes, I’m too busy to entertain the back-and-forth of apps and hookups sites, masturbation fulfills my needs without the armed robbery risks, the list goes on…

Admittedly, a therapist could probably have a field day with all of that…

But I’d wager that there are many gay men out there that feel the same way, but they fear they will be reverse slut shamed if they do.

What’s your experience, do you relate to any of this or am I deserving of the shame?