Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

There I was. Half-clothed, lying on a table in a medical facility, pajama pants pulled down, my butt exposed and available on an examination table, medics about to insert something into my asshole in order to snip cell samples from my prostrate. I was there because my annual physical revealed I had an "elevated" PSA (Prostrate Specific Antigen) level. I'm game. Let's go.

In the room, there were seven or eight men and women watching this procedure. The scissors went up my bum and cut off slices of my prostrate-- they did it eight times-- it was also on the screens for the various folks to watch, and I did wonder about the ethics of all this. Lying on my side as they snipped again and again, one voice asked: "Are you OK?" I responded: "I'm actually a little tired. Do you mind if I take a nap until you're finished?" I could hear them laugh. One voice said: "You know, it's this procedure than drives most men crazy." What he meant was that most men, presumably most straight men, simply cannot handle intrusive anal procedures, whereas I think gay men, most of us at least, handle butt stuff real well. How come?

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This reminds me of my late friend Fred. Fred was a great big bear of a guy, and Fred liked to take just about anything up his ass. I recall a delightful dinner at the apartment of a mutual friend. As we munched through a saffron-seasoned chicken, Fred regaled us with a recent adventure wherein he was tied to a bed by a stranger he had met through a newspaper ad, got his butt greased up with cooking oil, and then experienced the unique agony of having the stranger wind up with both hands and forearms up Fred's lower regions. Fred delighted in telling this tale. When he was done, I made a pitch for the joys of simple cocksucking. I'll never forget the look on Fred's face. He set down his chicken leg, wiped his fingers, looked hard at me, and said: "Yuck! How could you put one of those filthy things in your mouth?" I didn't quite know how to respond-- this was over 20 years ago. These days I have had enough experience to chalk it up thus: You Meet Different Type Queans All The Time.

Do straight guys have a problem with things up their bums? One report from a SF women-owned sex and video shop was that their best renter video was: "Bend Over Boyfriend." The psychic-drama of sex acts between the oral and the anal-- it's a long track.

Please let me note a gorgeous moment: I saw a man, an ordinary man, in simple clothes, a cap, in a situation wherein I caught him peeing against a wall. This is not an odd situation-- men pee against walls all the time, me included (a risky behavior; gents caught urinating in public in Massachusetts have been arrested, convicted as "sex offenders," and added to the insane Sex Registry lists!)-- but in this case, it was for me an iconic gesture.

What has always bothered me about the dominant culture in America is its squeamishness-- about nudity, about the human body, about bodily functions. Our culture has a positive knack for making "dirty" the most ordinary of events-- changing into swimwear, taking a piss, having sexual relations. The gay male culture is completely comfortable with a milieu of open male nudity and representations of men having sex. The heterosexual culture, to the extent I can glean it, doesn't have the same degree of ease as that of the gay men. I noticed recently, while at a store that retails sex toys, sex clothes and related sundries for women, the men and women (couples) in the store, radiated a certain up-tight tension which conflicted with the easy sexual pleasure the items in the store were promising. In a similar gay situation, the ambiance would be more ennui than up-tight. And I think gay men, mostly but not all-- think of Fred!-- are more comfortable with all varieties of sexuality and freer to talk about them and less quick to judge than their straight brethren.

One story from the late Mr. Sylvia Sidney-- Boston's notorious "Mess In A Dress," not the Hollywood legend from whom Sidney took his name. Sylvia was once discoursing about the joys of glory hole sex. "So this big cock comes through the hole, and it was glorious and I was having the best time with it. The glory hole was so big, I could peek up and see the number's face. Holy god! It turns out to be this hideous quean whom I just hated to his tits. But I figured, what the hell, I'm into it this far, I may as well just go ahead and suck him off. And I did." When Gay Studies get more deeply entrenched in academia, I should think this would fill the bill for a study in Gay Ethics, or at least in Tearoom Etiquette Studies!

I can never stop thinking about the line that runs from the art of the ancient Greek Kouros-- naked male statuary-- that runs right through Renaissance Art and into the late modern celebration of the male body and sexual capacities. All three cultures are imprinted to a large and visible extent by the mentality and ambitions of aggressively homosexual men, setting the parameters of their esthetic and sexually capacious world. In such a situation, think of Robert Mapplethorpe as our very own Norman Rockwell.

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com