What Heterosexuals Do in Bed

Here's a mind-boggler.  If these 16 guys are representative of the population, 14 of them have had sex with women!

90% of the male population has done it. Heterosexuals and bisexuals do it regularly.  Sometimes they go to a great deal of trouble to find female partners to do it with.

Even some gay men have done it, prior to recognizing that they are gay, though I can't imagine how.

A few years ago, a hetero guy told me: "I'm not gay, so when I think about what you do in bed, it makes me nauseous, physically ill."

I was too shocked to respond at the time, but in l'esprit d'escalier, I have 3 questions.

1. How does he know what I do in bed?  He's never been invited.

2. Why does a heterosexual spend so much time thinking about gay sex?

3. Is finding gay sex disgusting normal for heterosexuals, or does it mean that they are homophobic?

I can answer #3.  I'll think about...gulp...hetero sex, and see if it makes me sick.

I have a pretty good idea of how hetero sex works, from movies, hetero acquaintances' descriptions, and the transman I hooked up with who still had lady parts beneath the belt.  The procedure has 8 steps.

1. First, you need to get your penis aroused.  Hetero guys typically do this the same way that gay guys do, through kissing and fondling their partner.

Wait -- why would you want to fondle a woman?  She's got nothing of interest.  Is it ok if I imagine kissing and fondling the hetero guy instead?

Once your penis is aroused, you can engage in the main hetero act, called coitus, heterosexual intercourse, or "making love." 

2. You put a condom and lube on. 

3. You politely ask her to put her legs in the air.

4.  Feeling around, you should be able to find her vagina, an opening at the base of her crotch.  She urinates through a different opening, so don't get them mixed up.









5, Next, you insert your aroused penis into her vagina, somehow stay aroused, and move it back and forth.

6. While this is happening, you can kiss her, fondle her, and so on.

Wait...how do you stay aroused?

7. The friction will result in an orgasm in five to ten minutes, depending on your age and the time since your last orgasm.

If you and your partner prefer, she can do the work by straddling you while you're supine.

So far I don't see anything particularly sickening.  Anal sex with gay men uses the same procedure. 

8. If she wants an orgasm, too, you can position your penis in such a way that it stimulates something called a clitoris.  But this is very difficult, and almost never happens.  Women usually achieve orgasm through oral sex, which you can engage in after or instead of the coitus.

Now, that I can get into.  Not with a woman, of course, but I go to great lengths to find male partners for oral sex.

Ok, writing and editing that scenario, plus uploading the pictures, took about fifteen minutes.  Fifteen minutes thinking about hetero sex, and I'm not disgusted.  I can't figure out why anyone would want to do it, but chacun à son goût.

Conclusion: hetero and gay sex are the same thing, just with different partners.  Getting nauseous at the thought of gay sex doesn't mean that you're heterosexual, it means that you are homophobic.

Heterosexual for a Day

Remember "What do the Simple Folk Do?" from Camelot:

What do the simple folk do

To cheer them when they're feeling blue?

When they're beset and besieged, the folk not noblesse obliged,

How do they manage to shed their weary lot?

In West Hollywood, it was easy to cheer up when you were feeling blue: buy some books, look at art, have lunch at the French Quarter, go cruising at the Gold Coast.  But West Hollywood is 2000 miles away, and I'm surrounded by heterosexuals.

What do you do on gloomy Saturdays in November, at the start of the "Ho Ho Ho" madness, when all of the melancholy songs are playing but it's not even your birthday yet, and your 5K running speed is down by 5 minutes, and West Hollywood is 2000 miles away and you're surrounded by heterosexuals?

"How do hetero men spend their Saturdays?"  I ask my boyfriend Bob, who is 19 years old and has lived in the Straight World his whole life.  He writes me out a list, then leaves for work.

It sounds like a fun game: see how the other half lives.  Spend a day as a heterosexual, doing everything that hetero men do.

9:00 am: They work on cars.

You mean, like, open the hood and stuff?   In gay neighborhoods we walk or take the subway.  I know how to put gas in those car things, and steer them, and that's it.  But maybe I could get an auto mechanic to do something, like change the oil.

Score!  The guy at the Jiffy Lube is in his 30s, short and buffed, with a round face and square workman's hands.  And he squirts things with lube all day....

10:00 am: They hunt things.

Like, um...cuddly bunnies and such?  I've never once in my life held a gun, but I can certainly hunt.  How about antiques?  I can look for some additions to my beefcake art collection.

Score!  "A Surf Boy Tiki Mug" from Orchids of Hawaii, a restaurant supply company operating out of the Bronx during the tiki craze of the 1960s.  An evil Dennis the Menace.

Besides, there;s a hot father and college-aged son at the Antique Mall, scoping out some antique model cars.  I make eye contact with the son, and get a cruisy smile.

11:00 am:  They play baseball.

I would prefer to avoid having projectiles hurled at my head.  But working out the gym is the same thing, nght?

1:00 pm: They have lunch at Five Guys Burgers and Fries

I would gain ten pounds just walking into that joint. Fortunately, there's a Jersy Mike's next door, which not only has turkey subs, it has some cute college boys for me to exchange witty banter with.

2:00 pm: They shop for tools.

Kitchen supplies count as tools, right?  I go to Cooks Plus and buy a frittatta pan.

3:00 pm: They drink beer and watch the game.

Diet Coke will have to substitute for the beer, and I can't watch sports on tv -- I only get Netflix.  But I happen to have some old bodybuilding contests on DVD.  Will the 1985 Mr. Olympia, with Lee Haney, do?'














6:00 pm: Bob comes home and cooks dinner (frittattas).  

"How did your day as a heterosexual go?" he asks.

"Great!  I worked on cars, hunted things, played sports (if bench pressing counts), had lunch, shopped for tools, and watched a game.  There's just one thing on the list I didn't get around to.  I thought of it after you left this morning."

I show him the last thing that hetero men do.

"I'm totes up for that!  After dinner and some making out, that is.  We can't do it until about 9:00 anyway."

After a day of beefcake and cruising, I'm up for more than making out.  I go down on Bob while beating off, then push him onto the floor for interfemoral, with him on top.

Then we watch tv until it's time for the last item on the list:



9:00 pm: They go out to try to pick up babes.

Preferably babes with handsome faces, hard smooth chests, and gigantic penises.

See also: Searching for Twinks on the Plains

The Only Gay Guy at a Straight Party

Plains, January 2017

The Unitarian Church hosts regular "circle suppers," where eight or so people assigned "at random" meet at someone's house for a potluck.  It's not really random: I am usually assigned to a group consisting of mostly gay people.

But the other night my group consisted of four heterosexual couples and me.

Still, I was rather looking forward to it, since last time I went to a completely straight party, I met a cute college boy, the host's son, and we dated for about six months.  I've had good luck meeting guys so far in 2017. Could lightning strike twice?

No.  The couples were all "my age" (chronologically, anyway), which means that their kids had all "got married and moved away."

Well, maybe the food would be good.

No.  Craggy, tasteless chicken enchiladas, green beans with a weird minty tang, a macaroni salad loaded with mayonnaise, and two kinds of cheesecake.  Plus a lot of alcohol.

Beefcake?  Half the fun of gay parties is cruising the new guys.

No.  I'm fine with older men, but they should know their way around a gym.  Three of the heteros were sagging, wrinkled, and speckled, "my age" but about 100 in gay years.  The fourth was obese, with ham-hands and medic id bracelets and complaints of sciatica.

An enormous penis would make up for any number of physique imperfections, but of course at a straight party men don't typically get naked.

Not that I wanted them to.  If they got naked, the women would to, and I would be out of there fast.

Well, maybe the conversation would be ok.  At gay parties, we start with conversations about gay subtexts or actual gay characters in books, movies, and tv programs.

"Has anyone seen Sleepless yet?  I hear it has a kidnapped son, instead of the usual kidnapped daughter."

They talk about quarterhorses, the use of Amazon Kindle way up in the mountains where there's no electricity, scuba diving in the Caribbean, and how you would like to die (the consensus was: instantaneously while on the way home from a nice dinner with your husband or wife).

I've been to dozens of gay parties, and not once did anyone consider "how you want to die" a fascinating topic of conversation.

Maybe we could move from sports and death to romance.  At gay parties, we tell about dates from hell, the biggest penis we've ever seen, celebrity hookups.

So I told them about Ricky with a Y, who spent our date bragging about how much money he had and psychoanalyzing me.

Clarice tells about Joanie, who who met her current husband while still married to her last husband, but she still stuck with him during his illness, taking him to all his doctor appointments.  She didn't start dating her current husband until he died.

That's not funny at all.

I told about the nephew of my first "boyfriend," who I ran into 40 years later on campus.  Cool twist.

Teresa had a boyfriend in high school.  He wanted to marry her, but she knew that his dad was an alcoholic and abusive, so she refused.  Sure enough, he turned out to be abusive.  Years later she and her husband saw a guy that looked exactly like him on a train.  He wasn't.


That's not a good story.  The abuse makes it a downer, and the guy on the train wasn't related to him.  If it was his son or grandson, maybe.

I couldn't discuss enormous penises here, so I told about Alan the Pentecostal porn star, and let them figure it out.

Barb tells about the time her boss invited her out for breakfast.  He was enormous, at least 300 pounds.  She thought it was for business, but he thought it was a date.  So she quickly fixed him up with someone else.

Stories shouldn't criticize someone's physical appearance.  There's an obese guy in the room who will feel rejected.

How about celebrity hookups?  I told about my date with Richard Dreyfuss.

Andy and Abby visited Los Angeles about twenty years ago, and saw Zsa Zsa Gabor walking a poodle in Beverly Hills.  At least, they think it was Zsa Zsa Gabor.  No, they didn't actually have a conversation.

Either heteros lead very boring lives, or they don't know how to tell a good story.

Maybe the party games would be ok.  At gay parties, we usually played "guess the penis" and other erotic-style games, but it wasn't obligatory.  Once we played a homemade gay edition of "Trivial Pursuit."

Our party game: go around the group and each tell about what you were doing at a decade in your life: age 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, and what you had learned by that point.

Do heteros spend all of their time obsessing about the past?  I have to research the past to write the stories on my blog, but still, it seems morbid.  Why not live in the now?

Because their goal in life was to raise children? The children are raised, so they have nothing to do but reminisce.

My goal in life is to find beauty.  Not only in male form, but in art, literature, music.  It's never over. Like Kevin the Vampire said last week, it's an eternal now.

Fortunately straight parties end early.  By 9:00 pm, everyone was dividing up the leftovers, putting on their coats, and driving off to their hetero lives.

The gay-friendly coffee house and the gym were both closed, so I went to a straight bar downtown, where college kids hang out.

It wasn't crowded -- a group sitting around a table, a couple playing pool.  More boys than girls.  Looked eerily like a twink bar, except no one was dancing.

The bartender was a buffed guy in his 30s wearing a backwards baseball cap.

"You look like you've had quite a night," he said.  "What can I get you?"

"Perrier, if you have it."

He frowned.  "I'll have to check the store room.  No one has ordered that for as long as I've worked here."

"What can I say?  I'm a child of the 80s."

"Oh, you're not that old!  I'll bet you could compete with any of the guys here."

I looked around the room.  "I'll bet I could, too."

See also:  Ricky with a Y; My Date with Richard Dreyfuss; Picking Up the Host's Son at a Straight Party.

15 Rules for Hooking Up with Straight, Bisexual, and Downlow Guys

In West Hollywood many people believed that there was no such thing as a straight man.  Exclusive same-sex desire was a universal of human experience. Men who called themselves straight were just too weak or cowardly to resist the heterosexist chant of "what girl do you like?  what girl do you like? what girl do you like?"

Today we know that some men are, in fact, heterosexual, with no conscious same-sex attraction.

But others, a much larger proportion, are on the downlow, heterosexual as far as anyone knows, with wives and kids, acting on their same-sex desires only anonymously, in secret.

Others are bisexual, desiring both men and women, perhaps equally, perhaps men only occasionally, as a special "playtime."

  Still others are heterosexual, but willing to "settle" for a man if no woman is available.  What does it matter -- sex is sex..

The last three categories are open for cruising, and in small towns with a limited gay population, tremendously increase your chances of success.  But you have to be careful.  Cruising a straight or downlow man requires a whole new set of skills, and a whole new set of rules:

1. Cruise online. Straight men rarely go to gay venues, lest they be seen, and in public places they are always with women or with straight male friends who don't "know."

2. Find out how straight he is.  How occasional is his interest in men?  If he meets guys once a month or less, ok.  If he's always seeking out guys, then he's a traitor, enjoying all of the privileges that come with heterosexual identity, hoping to enjoy sexual freedom while letting "real" gay people do all the work of fighting homophobic injustice.  He's a pathetic loser.  Move on.

3. Find out how homophobic he is.  Many straight guys with occasional same-sex interests overcompensate by denigrating gay people, especially those who are open.  "I don't shout it from the housetops!" he yells.  "Marching in parades, broadcasting your sexual preferences!"  Move on.

4. Skip the first-timers.  "I've never done this before.  I've thought about it, but I've never had the nerve..."  Yeah, right.  He's been saying that for the last five years, enjoying the thought of a same-sex liaison, but always losing his nerve.  And if he does actually show up, there's no way the reality can live up to his fantasy.

5. Arrange for a daytime meeting, at your place.  Chances are these will be required anyway, since he's busy with women at night, and there are people at his place who "can't find out."

6. But not for "right now."  Anybody willing to come over "right now," without finding out a little bit about where he's going and who he's meeting, is bound to be a dud.

7. A face photo is a must.  Not necessarily to determine his degree of hotness -- it's probably 20 years old, and photoshopped.  To determine his degree of openness.  No face photo: very skittish, probably a no-show.

8 Get contact information.  A last name, a working cell phone number, an email address.  And use it to make sure it's not fake.  It might come in handy later.

9. Give him the geographic layout of your place.  He believes that passersby will see him and infer somehow that he is having a same-sex hookup.  That's ridiculous, of course, but a pedestrian on the street outside your house, or a neighbor in the hallway of your building, could make him bail.  So warn him in advance if it's apartment, if there are other houses close by, if its a well-traveled pedestrian area, and so on.

10. He gets only two chances to show up.  You wait half an hour for him to show up.  Later that day you get an email: "Sorry, the wife asked where I was going" or "Sorry, I saw somebody who looked like somebody I work with."  Set up another meeting -- we all have scheduling problems.  But if he doesn't show up the second time, move on.

11. Have a friend present.  Hopefully you've screened out the straight guys with malicious intent, and the ones who are so skittish that they might freak out over their "sordid act" and attack.  But just in case, have a friend present.

You can also protect yourself by telling your friend about the meeting, and sending him the straight guy's complete contact information.

12. ID all Cute Young Things.  14, 15, and 16 year olds lie about their age and background all the time, and saying "He told me he was 18!" is not an excuse.  If there's any doubt, ask for an ID.

13. Don't be afraid to tell him "stop talking about women."  Straight guys love to talk about women, especially during a same-sex hookup.  It reassures them that they're "really" straight.  They'll tell you all about their wives and girlfriends, discuss the attractiveness of various actresses, ask about your heterosexual dalliances, bemoan the refusal of most women to engage in their favorite sexual activities.

Don't say "Women!  Gross!"  Say something like "This is a men-only zone. For the next hour, we celebrate the masculine!"

14. Don't be afraid to give him a Gay 101 lecture.  A surprising number of straight guys have had no connection whatever to gay history and culture.  They don't know that there are gay organizations.  They don't know about Stonewall.  They are unaware of contemporary battles over workplace discrimination, religious harassment, and marriage equality.  Enlighten him, either during the online chat, or during the meeting.

15. If you see him in public afterwards, let him lead.  Straight guys are often worried that talking to a gay person in public, in any capacity, identifies them as gay.  Or they might not want their wives and straight male friends asking "So, where did you meet him?"  If he says hello first, stop to chat.  If he pretends not to know you, give him your best Attitude.

See also: 15 Rules of Gay Cruising;

What Rod the Pharmacist Was Doing Upstairs

Dayton, June 2006

When I was living in the gay neighborhoods of West Hollywood and Wilton Manors, you never dated more than one guy at a time.  If you went on a second date, you were a couple, and "abandoned all others" until you broke up.  ("Sharing" the boyfriends of your friends didn't count.)

But when I moved to Dayton in 2005, I found that juggling several boyfriends was perfectly acceptable, even expected.

Among straight men, it was a badge of honor to date several women at once.  Those who were most adept at it became folk heroes, like Don Juan, Casanova, or Fonzie of Happy Days.

Still, I was surprised by the guy upstairs.

It was a garden apartment, opening directly onto a patio and then the parking lot.  The stairway to the second floor apartment was right next to my kitchen window, so I could see and hear everyone coming and going.

Not to worry, the landlord said.  The guy who lives there is very quiet, no loud music or wild parties.

He was right.  No loud music or wild parties. An occasional door slamming, the muffled sound of a vacuum cleaner, a voice on the telephone.

And something else.

I usually went to bed at 10:00 pm in order to get up at 6:00.  But on the nights I couldn't sleep, or woke up to go to the bathroom, I heard a rhythmic creak-creak-creak.

Creak-creak-creak.

Creak-creak-creak.

It took me awhile to realize what I was hearing.

The guy upstairs was entertaining visitors.  For two hours or more, several times a week.

Most mornings, as I sat in the kitchen eating my cereal, I saw his visitors leave.

Girls.  Two, three, four different girls.

Who was this  guy, with his Don Juan-Casanova-Fonzie ability to date many women at once, and the stamina for hours of creak-creak-creak almost every night?

In my imagination, he became a Superman, endowed with every characteristic I find attractive: short, muscular, dark-skinned, religious, and gifted beneath the belt.

And maybe he was straight but curved around the edges, open to same-sex experiences on his nights off from creak-creak-creak with girls!

But I never saw him leave the apartment.

One day in the spring of 2006,  I was filling a prescription, and when the pharmacist checked my i.d., he exclaimed "Hey, we're neighbors.  I live in the apartment upstairs! Rod Perkins."

Very disappointing: a mild-mannered pharmacist, tall, blond, rather pale, and not particularly muscular (this isn't him).

Apparently our paths never crossed because he worked the 3:00 pm - midnight shift.  No doubt he then met one of his numerous girlfriends, had a late dinner date, and then returned to his apartment.

But if he had a nondescript physique, how did he get so many girls to agree to a creak-creak-creak?

And more importantly, were some of them guys?

In gay neighborhoods, you couldn't get dates based on wit, charm, humor, or knowledge of old movies.  That might keep the guy interested, but in order for him to agree to see you in the first place, you needed a face, biceps, or a basket, preferably all three.  Some guys who didn't have baskets of their own improvised by shoving some socks down there.

Rod didn't have a face or physique.  He must be gifted beneath the belt!

In order to find out, I went back to the pharmacy and gave him a guest pass to the Better Bodies Fitness Center, as a "thank you."

"I used to work as a personal trainer, down in Florida" I told him.  "We can really get you toned up."

The next Wednesday afternoon, Rod came to the gym, and we tried basic weight training and then showered down.

Nope. Not particularly impressive.  And he never glanced at a guy.

I was no longer interested in seeing Rod's bedroom, but I was curious: how did he convince so many women to see it?

Could it be that heterosexuals were not into the physical, but focused solely on wit, charm, and strength of character?

Certainly not -- back in high school, the heterosexual girls I knew all wanted jocks. Without exception. But if no jocks were available, they might settle for a guy with a car.

So I checked Rod's assigned parking space.  Sure enough: a late-model red Jaguar that must have cost a fortune.

Apparently heterosexual men don't shove socks down there.  They compensate for their unimpressive baskets with a killer phallic car.