Self-Portrait of me sucking the penis of a trans woman
Younger readers might have a difficult time grasping this, but the idea of a “sexual identity” was not even part of the world in which I grew up. Yes we heard kids called “fag” or “gay” but even the ones using those words hadn’t a clue as to what they meant. We kind of had this vague idea that it had something to do with not being athletic and/or kissing other boys and it was bad to be called that. But that was as far as we understood. I don’t just mean in grade school, but in middle school as well. To be fair, our understanding of heterosexuality wasn’t all that much more advanced.
I say that as a preface. I didn’t have a time I “questioned my sexuality”, rather all the components had been there from puberty, but I didn’t have a name for it, nor did I ever struggle with what interested me because I’d always known.
When, in the mid 1970’s I began to sexually mature, I like many boys of my generation swiped my Dad’s old Playboy and Penthouse magazines and learned what I could. I was every bit as interested in reading the sex stories as I was the pictures, perhaps even more. From the erotica I learned how sex worked in a way the pictures in those days could not show. From as early as I can remember, my masturbatory fantasies included me having sex with females as well as me “playing the role of the woman” as men had sex with me. While I didn’t have any shame in that, I didn’t have the slightest idea that guys actually did have sex with other guys.
OK younger people, stop laughing. It’s true.
Through junior high and high school it seemed normal as could be to use my homemade dildo for oral and anal sex while I masturbated looking at pictures of naked women. However, never once had the conception ever crossed my mind that other guys thought about that, let alone actually were having sex with each other in my high school. (I hear the laughing again) I don’t ever recall any confusion or self-loathing for desiring sex with people with both sets of genitals. Perhaps because I wasn’t having sex at all helped. LOL.
In the late 1970’s I become involved with a fundamentalist church and bought into the mantra that sex was only for marriage. For the first time in my life I heard the idea that masturbation was bad and I shouldn’t do it. Since in my mind there had never been any separation of my fantasies involving female and male genitalia, I felt equally guilty for masturbating to ether idea. You can guess how successful I was at not having sexual thoughts as an 18 year old.
Time for another laugh:
When I packed up to move into the fundamentalist college dorm, I almost brought my dildo. I still didn’t get that others would see that as a homosexual act. I didn’t bring it only because masturbation itself was a sin. Since I didn’t see that masturbating while imagining giving a blow job was any worse than any other kind of sex fantasy, I didn’t consider others would as well. OK, I was naive.
Fast forward five years. I get married. The first time I had sex was on my wedding night. My poor wife literally had to teach me everything. However the bisexual interest slayed in deep freeze. It was not that I actively worked to suppress bisexual desires, but rather they had been locked away.
It was not until over a decade later, my wife and I had made many changes and by then were exploring the options that an open marriage affords. It was my first experience in a group sex situation that that lock box I’d put my bisexuality into was pried open. Close sexual contact with naked men brought that desire to have sex with a man flooding back. Even that first night, it seemed so wrong that I was not allowed to be sexual with the other men, even though my wife was.
For the first time ever I had actually ask if I were a bi-sexual. It was difficult to embrace that identity, even though sex with men seemed so natural. Even after my first sexual experience with a man, I could not bring myself to take that label. My wife, who had recognized she was bisexual even before we were married, was very helpful. Why was it so difficult for me? As a teenager I’d never had shame for my sexual interests, yet as an adult I did. I think a lot of it has to do with the media portrayal of bisexual men as gay. But I told myself that I couldn’t be gay. I don’t even like men, not just romantically; I generally don’t like men at all. All my close friends had always been female, so it stood to reason that I couldn’t be gay or even half gay. Perhaps even more significant to my resistance to the bisexual label was the hostility toward bisexual men in swing clubs and the open marriage community. I was quite afraid that a bisexual identity would make me persona non grata. Whatever the cause I could not accept the bisexual label.
For five years I presented myself to the open marriage community that I was straight, while in practice I engaged in bisexual behavior with couples behind closed doors. One day, I realized that labels matter. By then I was writing my first sex-positive blog, yet I was not doing what I told my readers to do: own and be proud of your sexuality. When I first made a post declaring I was bisexual it was a very liberating moment. When the first time at a swinger friendly resort I presented myself as bisexual it was also a liberating moment.
Even without any discussion my wife began to ask her lovers if they were open to male on male contact in group sex. Nearly all said they were, though a few made the caveat that they would not blow another guy, they'd be happy for her husband to suck their dick. One particularly funny event happened when we joined another couple for a foursome. The man was not circumcised. Paula really likes sucking dick, but it has to be just right: not too big, not too small and not circumcised. Of course I knew that, but she did not want to say it out loud so she suggested I suck his cock while she and the wife played. It was rather amusing.
Over the years I've sucked a good many cocks, and have no problem kissing guys or letting them fuck me; but in all but one case this has been with men who are publicly strait, usually married. Only once did I have sex, one-on-one, with a gay guy. To be fair, he was very handsome and the sex was great, but once we were done I decided that was just not me. We are still friends and I'm sure if I asked we could get together for sex again, perhaps I will, but while like sex with man as much as with women, I am not really "relationship-bisexual."
So now, as I've mentioned before, due to health issues neither my wife or I are having sex with other people right now. But that does not mean we have a closed marriage or that I don't hope to have dick in my mouth again someday.