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;

10,000 Naked Men, Part 1: Asian to Hung

When I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, you never saw a penis except in the locker room after gym class.  No pictures.  There were plenty of pictures of naked women, but male dangly bits were deemed de facto obscene, so there weren't any. Maybe on a statue or a naked Amazonian Indian in an occasional issue of National Geographic.  Otherwise you had to make do with looking for bulges.

When I turned 18, I could buy "dirty" magazines, but they were all about women except for Playgirl, which I didn't dare buy.  Sometimes I bought Hustler, because nude men would be shown alongside the women.

In grad school in Bloomington, I finally found porn magazines aimed at gay men: Blueboy, Honcho, In Touch.  You could see penises, but they were frightfully expensive, $3, $4, or even $5 (twice my hourly salary) for nine or ten pictures.

In the 1990s, the internet allowed you to go to online bulletin boards, pay a monthly fee, and download jpgs, hundreds of them.  Guys who had been bereft of erotic imagery for the last 30 years suddenly found themselves spending an hour or twoevery morning just looking at and downloading images.  Maybe 20 a day, or 7300 per year.

Then in the 2000s, bulletin boards were replaced by blog sites like tumblr, and suddenly every hunk with an i-phone was posting nude selfies.  Today you can see uncountable thousands of pictures instantly.

But the guys who were bereft of erotic imagery earlier in life were still overwhelmed.  It's like you were starving for half your life, and suddenly you are invited to a nonstop banquet.  You gorge yourself, worried that the display will someday end.  So you continue to spend an hour or two every morning downloading images.

And before you know it, you have 10,000.

I've used many of them as illustrations on this blog, but there are thousands more.  Here are some of my favorites.  In each category.

Asian.  (Top photo.) Lots of men from China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and South Asia.  I like this fresh-faced Chinese twink with a veiny Bratwurst+.

Ballet and Opera Bulges. (Second photo.) Admit it -- you go to the ballet primarily for the bulgeworthy tights.  Here's a trio of buddy-bonding guys with tripods beneath the belt.

Batman and Robin.  I have a whole folder of pics of the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder, both canonical and fan art.  Nightwing -- Robin all grown up -- shows a fabulous physique but no basket in this canonical drawing.

Black. It's the sleep-flexing on the couch that makes this photo.  And the baseball bat between his legs.

Bulges.  Charlie Day of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia displays the second most important reason I'm a fan.  The first is his comedic talent.  Ok, who am I kidding? His comedic talent is #2.

Celebrities.  I have over 1000 pictures of shirtless and nude celebrities.  Most I've seen in things, or at least heard of.  This one is 1930s heart throb Tom Neal.

Comics.  Comic book and comic strip characters saying and doing fun things, especially things that, taken out of context, sound dirty.  Looks like Mr. Magoo's sexual expertise was too much for the twink he hooked up with.

Dads and Sons.  Not sex photos, but shirtless or naked, at the beach or in the sauna.  This is an interesting series, Dad and Son photographed every year, as dad gets a little saggier and son (always over 18) gets a little more buffed. The changing hair styles are fun, too.

Dwarfs and Other Unique Men.  Men who are very short, very tall, or have other unusual physical qualities. Some interesting -- and hot -- nude photos, but I'm going to go with this muscular swimmer who is missing a leg.

Fine Art.  Lots of reproductions of male beauty in statues and paintings.  Franz Metzner was a German sculptor known for his stylized musclemen.  In this poster, two nude men are hoisting a flag to celebrate the International Exposition of Industry and Labor in Turin in 1911.

Hung.  My file of supersized guys contains some whoppers, but I like this amateur shot of a military-type posing against a bare wall.

Ran out of space.  Next up: Kilts to Pairs and Punks to Urinals.

Alan Cruises a Cop

Paris, March 1989

During my terrible semester teaching in Ankara, Turkey, my friend Alan the Pentecostal Porn Star sent me a airplane ticket to visit him in Paris.

Alan was my best friend in West Hollywood, fun but exhausting, rushing headlong from wild scheme to wild scheme, his frenetic energy making him constantly "up."  No quiet nights at home, no nice safe museums or art galleries: lights! colors! music!

Plus he had no sense of tact, decorum, or the consequences of his actions.

The morning after we broke up, he called and asked me to have brunch with him and his new boyfriend.

When he saw a high school boy aroused in class, he asked "Do you want to go to the bathroom and take care of that?"

And now he wanted me to drop everything and fly to Paris for a week?

Well, it was Paris, after all.  And I was anxious to see Alan again after six months.

He had put on a few pounds -- actually about 20, a victim of French sauces and limited gym facilities.  But he still had the same frenetic energy, the same fervor -- and the same unbrindled erotic desire.

On the way into town on the Metro, he kept pointing out cute lycee boys, burly working-class men, languid immigrants, and timid tourists.  "It's like a candy store, isn't it?  So many men, so little time!"

He had a tiny one-room apartment on the fifth floor of a building on rue Chapon, in the heart of Le Marais, about two blocks from the Pompidou Center, walking distance from  Notre Dame and the Louvre.

He didn't mention the gay Pentecostal church, his ostensible reason for moving to Paris: he had a job teaching literature at the American School went to the American Church on the Quai d'Orsay, and had a circle of friends, mostly ex-patriots.  He showed every intention of staying in France permanently.

During the daytime, I was on my own.  I had only been to Paris once before, so I did all the tourist things -- the Louvre, the Luxembourg Gardens, Montmartre, even the Eiffel Tower.

Paris was great for jogging, but gyms were rare -- I finally found a health club with an assortment of free weights, but I had to buy a month membership to get in.

At night we cruised.

There weren't a lot of gay organizations in Paris -- at least, not as many as in West Hollywood.  But the venues for sex made up for it.

Bathhouses, bars with back rooms, video stores with glory holes.  A different one every night.

"I'm in vacation mode," I told Alan one morning at breakfast in a patisserie -- which, as the name implies, offered no choices that weren't 98% sugar.  "So the West Hollywood rule against tricking doesn't apply.  But you've been here six months.  Have you been tricking every night?"

"It's another world," he said, chomping on an eclair.  "Sex isn't something shameful -- it's an ordinary part of life.  Did you know gay sex has been legal here since 1805?  Guys think nothing of going into a bar with a dark room on the way home from work and going down on five guys.  Even straight guys, with wives and girlfriends waiting at home."

"Straight guys?  You're kidding!"

"Boomer, straight and gay don't apply here.  I swear to you, 80% of the men in this city are available right now, and the other 20% you have to buy a drink first.  Come on -- point out a guy, anyone you like, and I'll bring him home for you tonight."

Yeah, right -- an ex-porn star would have no trouble picking up someone in a gay-owned patisserie full of gay men in the heart of Le Marais.  But what about a straight guy out on the street?

"Ok -- what about -- him?"  I pointed out the window at a police officer watching us suspiciously, to make sure no one was having sex.

He was undoubtedly cute, a square face, short hair, muscular chest, meaty arms, big bulge.  But in 1989 the police were not our friend.

They were homophobes, out to arrest us for solicitation for saying "hello," lewd conduct for holding hands, sodomy for kissing.  They stood around outside gay bars, hoping to intimidate people from going in.  Even crime victims weren't safe from jeers, name-calling, and assaults.

A vice cop almost arrested Alan in the early 1980s.  No way was he going to risk another arrest!.

Alan paled a little, but gained fortitude from another bite of eclair.  "Not a problem, no problem at all.  I'll just go invite him over after work tonight."

While I stared open mouthed, he walked out the door, walked right up to the cop went over and struck up a conversation.  He pointed me out.  The gendarme smiled and waved at me, and a moment later walked away.

Alan returned.  "Ok, his name is Antoine, he gets off at 6:00, so he'll be at the apartment a little after.  You'll be going down on him by 6:30."

I stared, open-mouthed.

"We won't go out to dinner until afterwards, ok?"

Was he putting me on?

"I have to get to work.  See you tonight."

I went to the gym, the  Lachaise Cemetery to see Oscar Wilde's grave, the Shakespeare and Company bookstore, Luxembourg Gardens (again), and finished up wandering around the Sorbonne, thinking about my upcoming "trick."  Was Alan putting me on?  Or would he bait and switch, picking up a guy who looked sort of like the cop?

At a little after 6:00, I returned to the apartment.

Alan had pulled the couch out into a bed, and was sitting next to Antoine the Cop!  Not in uniform -- wearing a black button-down shirt and jeans.

Of course, you change into street clothes after work.

"I brought you a little present," Alan said.

Antoine the Cop didn't even wait to be introduced -- he pulled me down onto the bed on top of him.  I unbuttoned his shirt and ran my mouth over his smooth, very hard chest while he and Alan kissed.  Soon I had worked my way down to his crotch.  After fondling him for awhile, I unzipped him and pulled out his long uncut Bratwurst.  No public hair -- he must shave.

I started going down on him. At the first stroke, I felt Alan's hand on my shoulder.

 It's too soon for your turn! I thought.  But I looked up.

He was gesturing at the clock.  6:30 exactly.

See also: Alan and I Share the Kept Boy;  Alan's Three Arrests; Alan's Substitute for Sharing