How Many Sex Partners Should You Have?

I've never understood people who brag "I've had only five sexual partners my whole life," or "I've only had two," or even "I've only had one."  And everyone congratulates them, as if they've accomplished something magnificent.

Why is depriving yourself of beauty a good thing?

Should you also brag that you've only seen two movies in your whole life, or only five paintings?   Is never crossing the Pont Royal from the Tuilieres Garden to the Musee d'Orsay something to brag about?

But when you say you've had 50 partners, or 100, they sternly disapprove.  You're a sexual compulsive.  You have no self control.  You're a slut!

Does seeing 50 movies in a year mean that you're a movie compulsive?  Does having an ice cream sundae or a pizza once a month, 700 during your lifetime, mean that you have no self control?






I think this fear of multiple partners comes from the 19th century notion that sexual behavior is inherently dangerous, apt to lead to physical and mental deterioration and even death, so you have to be very careful, treat every partner as if he's your last.

Or from the 20th century notion that sexual behavior is an infinitely transforming experience, to be shared only with the One, the person with whom you have a permanent, lifelong romantic commitment.

Nonsense.

Sexual behavior means experiencing the beauty of another person's face, physique, and sex organs. Certainly you should do it with people you care about, but why limit it to them?  Why not experience as much beauty as you can in life?

Ok, you're thinking, but what about the risks?

When you interact with strangers, there's always a risk of theft or assault, but if you do a screening interview, have a friend on call, and keep him in your sight at all times, the victimization risk is minimal.

And if you inspect his penis before oral and insist that he wraps it before anal, the health risk is minimal.

And remember what you have to gain:

A universe of men, 18 year olds and 80 year olds, tall and short, masculine and feminine, chubby, muscular, skinny, hairy and smooth, Kielbasas and pencil nubs, facial hair, tattoos, different colors of hair and skin, different races, ethnic groups, religions, languages, an infinite variety to see, feel, touch, and taste.

 But how many partners is optimal?  How many guys should you shoot for during your lifetime?

If you come out at age 20, and are sexually active until age 80, you will have 22,630 sexually active days, or 3224 weeks, or 744 months.

One a day:  Impossible!  It takes at least an hour, maybe two, to find someone who is attractive and interested in you, another hour for the introductory interview, and a third for the sexual activity.  No one has time for that every day, with work, gym, meals, social events, and other leisure pursuits.

Besides, unless you have a large circle of friends who are constantly getting new boyfriends to "share," you'll have to find the guy from scratch every time.  Even in a gay neighborhood, the number of suitable options is limited.  If you try to find one hookup per day with no repeats, you will soon run out, or have to take whatever sleazoid or downlow guy you can get.

One a month?  Not nearly enough.  That means experiencing new masculine beauty for only 1 day out of 30, only 3% of your sexually active days on Earth.   I wouldn't dream of going for a whole month without buying a new book or seeing a new movie, and certainly not without a new experience of the masculine.


One a week?  Better, but still, it means experiencing new masculine beauty on only 14% of your sexually active days on Earth.

Two or three a week?  I think that's optimal.  New experiences of masculine beauty on 30-40% of your days.

 I suggest one new date, hookup, or sharing experience every week, and then, once a month, going to a bathhouse or sex party and getting with five guys.  That's an average of 2.5 per week, not including repeats, and easily doable, unless you are really picky or live a hundred miles from civilization.

Look for variety, not the same type every time.  If you like them young, try an old guy.  If you like them hirsute, go with smooth. Everyone is attractive in his own way.

At the end of your sexually active life you will have fond memories of 5,600 men.

It may seem like a lot if you've been raised with the "one partner forever" myth, but compare it with the number of movies you will see, or the number of paintings, with how many ice cream sundaes and pizzas you will eat, and with how many times you will cross the Pont Royal from the Tuilieres Garden to the Musee d'Orsay.

Tricking with Yuri's Student in Iceland

Reykjavik, October 2016

On Halloween, the second biggest holiday in the gay world, I'm sitting in the Culiacan Mexican Grill in Revkjavik, Iceland, spending $20 for a tasteless burrito.

 Back home there is an endless round of parties, dinners, parades.  You spend weeks deciding on the best costume, putting up decorations, buying candy for the trick-or-treaters (in gay neighborhoods, cute guys, not kids).

They don't celebrate Halloween here.

Why am I in Reykjavik?  And not in West Hollywood, or New York, or even back home on the Plains?



Yuri is so deeply rooted in gay culture, living in the heart of London's gay neighborhood, hanging out only with gay men, discussing masculine beauty and gigantic penises at every opportunity, that it is difficult to imagine him outside that world.  But in fact, he's a well-known atmospheric scientist who has published important research on climate change.

He has brought five of his advanced students to Iceland to see the aurora borealis, and test how they have changed due to global warming. Something about emission spectrography and astronometric oscillations.  I'm along for the ride.

 I was hesitant:  from what I recalled from my college field trip, Iceland was cold and barren, with no gay culture.

""You are joking!" Yuri scoffed.  "It's not cold, it's as nice as New York.  And Iceland is the most gay country in Europe!  Even the prime minister is gay!"

[Actually, the lesbian Prime Minister, Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir, was in office from 2009 to 2013]

Granted, it's not cold: 42 degrees Fahrenheit, about the same as on the Plains, maybe even a little warmer.  The sun rises about 45 minutes later, and sets about 45 minutes earlier, no big deal."

But there's no gay culture.  One gay bar, only open on weekends, one mixed restaurant, no bathhouses, no bookstores, no gay churches, no gay neighborhoods.  Gay people are completely assimilated.

I can't even spend the night with Yuri.  He's out to his students, but not out enough to share his hotel room with me.  After the bedroom activity, I go back to my own room, as if I am a hookup, not a close friend for nearly twenty years.

Anyway, he goes to bed at 9:00 pm, since the scientific studies take place at 3:00 am.  I went once: sitting on lawn chairs at Thingvellir National Park, drinking hot chocolate from thermos bottles and taking radiometric measurements.  Not my thing.

So I'm mostly on my own.  I've been to the National Museum, the National Gallery, the Art Museum, and the Museum of the Penis by myself.  Yuri and I have had lunch and dinner, and hung out at Kiki, the city's mixed gay bar, without picking up anyone -- it's for socializing, not for cruising.

In four days I've only met one local guy, Bjorn, and he was actually Yuri's hookup.  I was just along for the ride.

His students are cute -- five guys in their early 20s, fresh-faced science students, boisterous and energetic.  But I don't even know if they're gay, and besides, I can't cruise Yuri's students.  I'm like a chaperone.

Today I ran into two of them in the lobby of our hotel, texting on their smartphones: Jon is tall, with thick brown hair and a heavy-lidded, Mediterranean look.  Maury is a redhead, short and rather buffed, with horn-rimmed glasses that make him look middle-aged.

"Happy Halloween!" I said brightly. "Fara til rethur safninu?"  Are you going to the penis museum?

They stared, puzzled.  "Sorry, just practicing my Icelandic.  Where are you guys off to today?"

"Haukadalur," Jon said.  "The neovolcanic zone with geysirs and hot springs."

"Not as much fun as trick-or-treating, I'll bet."

Maury grinned.  "Dr. B. told us about you living together in Florida.  I'll bet you had some fun Halloweens there."

I was too nervous to say anything more.

I dump my tasteless $20 burrito and head to Hreyfing Heilsulind, a gym with day memberships.  At least I can get a decent workout in, and maybe get some sausage sightings in the steam room.

Nope.  Only a couple of older guys in the cardio room, no one in the steam room.

Kiki, the queer bar, has a Halloween display.  Rather a low key things, ghosts and Frankenstein monsters surrounded by orange crepe.  Anyway, it's closed today.

I go to Bokavarthan, Reykjavik's used bookstore, and find, of all things, a German book about cowboys.  Then a whale burger at Grillmarkathurinn, and back to the hotel to watch The Simpsons with Icelandic subtitles.   It's the annual Halloween Special.

Suddenly there's a knock on the door: Yuri and Maury, wearing devil horns and carrying plastic bags with pumpkins on them.

"Trick or treat!"  Maury yells.  "I've always wanted to say that."

"We bring you a Halloween party," Yuri says.

They brought "fun sized" Snickers bars and ghost cupcakes that they found in a bakery somewhere.  Yuri and I sit on the bed with Maury between us to watch Hocus Pocus on Netflix on his ipod.

I put my arm around Maury, feel his tight shoulders, run my hand over his earlobe.  He moves his elbow down to my crotch.  I become aroused.

Suddenly Yuri stands up.  "It's late -- I must go to bed.  But you guys stay here, finish the movie, have fun."

After Yuri leaves, Maury says "You don't really want to finish the movie, do you?"

I take the ipod from his hand.  "I know how it turns out.  Omri Katz moves to Israel and goes to work in gay porn."

Maury has a very firm, muscular physique, more buffed than you would expect, and a very thick Bratwurst+.  He's an anal top, but willing to settle for 69, with cuddling and kissing afterwards.

In the morning I go down on him again, and top him between the legs.  Then he says "Rethur safninu í dag?" Do you want to go to the penis museum today?

I stare in embarrassment.  "You knew what I was saying yesterday?"

"Yep, my Mum's Norwegian, and Icelandic is close enough to make out.   How do you think I got the nerve to come to your room for trick or treating?"

See also: Bjorn's Hookup with His Teacher; The Icelandic Penis Museum

Yuri Hooks Up at a Russian Orthodox Seminary

East Village, February 1999

Wednesday

"I don't visit you in Manhattan next weekend," Yuri said.  "I must go to Russian Orthodox seminary Upstate."

"A seminary?  Whatever for?"

"There is a weekend for sveštenik kandidata, guys who want to be priests."

"What?" I repeated, shocked.  "You want to be a priest?"  He had been out for less than two years.  Had he succumbed to religious fundamentalism? Was he trying to turn "ex-gay"?

"No, of course I don't really want to be a priest." Yuri said.  "It is to keep...closet.  So I don't tell them I am gay, and I can still go to services."

When I met Yuri, I never expected him to be religious.  He grew up in the Soviet Union, where religious belief was discouraged.  He grew up gay in the Russian Orthodox Church, one of the most brutally homophobic denominations in Christianity.  Plus he was a logical, empirical scientist.

But when he was a kid in Volgograd, his grandparents took him to Mass nearly every week.  He loved the candles, the incense, the droning liturgy in Old Slavonic, and especially the icons, visual images of the Saints, reaching out to him in friendship and love.

They were fully clothed, not as homoerotic as many artistic depictions of saints in Roman Catholicism, but still, they were an alternative to the "girls! girls! girls!" drone he heard everywhere else.

 When he went to graduate school in America, all the way across the ocean, thousands of miles from what he knew, he looked back with nostalgia on those hours in church.  Going to church was an anchor, a memory of home.

The only problem:  you absolutely, positively had to be closeted in the Russian Orthodox Church. If anyone found out, you would be kicked out the door -- after the screaming.

In Manhattan it was easy. Whenever he visited me for the weekend, he took the subway to the St. Nicholas Cathedral on 97th Street, where he could be anonymous, lost amid the milling crowds.

On Long Island, it was harder.  In a tiny congregation Yuri couldn't be anonymous.  Teenage girls flirted with him.  Middle-aged ladies tried to fix him up with their daughters.  Every guy he tried to cruise asked him to evaluate girls.  There were constant questions: "Are you married?" "Are you seeing anyone?"  "Why not?"

How else could he signal that he was not interested?

Then the idea came: he could say that he wanted to become a priest!

"Sorry, I am considering a priestly vocation.  I can't date."

That stopped the fix-ups altogether, and the other guys stopped asking him to rate girls.

Unfortunately, word got around to the parish priest, who started giving him smiles and gifts and hand-on-shoulder talks. and told him about a weekend for postulants (men thinking of the priesthood) at a seminary nearby.  And even offered him a ride up with two of the other pre-seminary boys.

There was no getting out of it -- Yuri was going to go on a postulant weekend.

"It might be fun," I said.  "I remember back when I was a Nazarene, they dragged us to pre-college weekends at Olivet.  Since everyone assumed that no Christian could be gay, I could cruise openly.  And I got some nice bulge sightings."

Friday

It was a four-hour drive to the seminary.  They arrived in time for a communal dinner, students and monks together, in the Refectory.  Then a service called the Compline, and into their dormitory for "study and contemplation."

The dormitory rooms were huge, twelve seminarians on narrow beds with desks between them, with a little tv lounge and a bathroom and shower room off to the side.

They walked naked to the shower. There was a lot of towel-snapping, butt grabbing, and leering, but no fondling.

Lights out at 10:00 pm, and the dorm room got quiet.

Then the stirring began.  After awhile, a guy stood and walked across the cold stone floor, presumably to the bathroom.

But he hadn't turned the light on, and there was no water was running.

Yuri got up and followed.  The seminarian was in one of the toilet stalls, with the door open.

His Bratwurst+ fully aroused, waiting.

Yuri followed him in, closed the door, knelt, and went down on him.

He finished quickly without a word or even a moan.  Then they both stood and returned to their beds.

Yuri waited.  Another got up.  And another.  Another.  For the next two hours, one guy after another went to the bathroom.  If the lights didn't go on, Yuri followed, or if he wasn't quick enough, one of the other seminarians.

He estimated that seven of the twelve guys went "to the bathroom that night" for oral sex, some more than once, while he and two other guys volunteered to be the bottoms.

Saturday

They got up at 5 am and dressed.  Of course, no one acknowledge what had happened last night.

The Divine Liturgy was at 6:00 am, followed by breakfast and chores.  There was a candle factory, a printshop, a museum, and a bookstore.

Saturday afternoon they had off.  Some of the seminarians took Yuri down to Cooperstown, about 20 miles away, to see the Baseball Hall of Fame.

He carefully introduced gay topics.

Saying "Look -- that guy is hot, isn't he?" got only cold stares.

Asking "What do you do when one of your friends tells you that he is gay?"  got a savage response: "Don't talk to him!  Don't associate with him!  He is possessed by a demon!"

They were back by dinner at 7:00, Compline at 8:00, and more study and contemplation.

And, after lights out, more guys making their way to the bathroom.  Tonight Yuri got bolder.  When he saw a guy tenting under the sheets, he went over and touched it.  The guy invariably pretended to be asleep while Yuri fondled him to completion.  Once he even stuck his head under the covers and went down on him (average sized, uncut).

Sunday

Again, no one acknowledged what happened last night.  They had breakfast and studied until the Divine Liturgy began at 9:00 am.  Then, after lunch, they drove back to Long Island.

"Sounds like a fun weekend," I said.  "More action than you'd get in the Village."

"Yes, sure," Yuri said.  "But it made me sad.  Everything was closed, closet.  The guys pretend it doesn't happen the next day, and they say homophobic things.  Not open.  And...the worst of everything... it was sex only.  Nothing warm, nothing happy, just trying to get it over."

He moved across the couch and knelt over me.  "We will kiss now."

See also: Sausage Sighting of a Baptist Boy