Aguilas Off Pine

Category: Sexuality

Wanting Not so Much as to Transition

Aguilar

Last week I went out with a friend to Rough Trade in Silver Lake and purchased another set of leather gear. I had a cheaper one, fake leather, this was the real deal. I needed to go to purchase leather arm bands for a Halloween costume and had invited Ben to come along. The store itself was great, the service perhaps a little too friendly, but I was happy with what I had purchased. Butch, masculine, hot, all these words ran through my mind while I flexed into the mirror of the dressing room. The attendant was quick to compliment my body hair and was letting me undress in the middle of the store to try on more gear, a stark contrast to the local store in Long Beach that hadn’t let me try on a harness without a shirt on. Ben seemed a little underwhelmed with the attention he was getting at the store, or perhaps had wanted to join in. I wasn’t sure whether the attendant was his type and I didn’t know how to tell him I was just playing along to see if I could get a discount or freebies.

Yes, I have no problem admitting I am that sleazy and available.

We left there and after a quick detour for ramen, headed to the Eagle with our gear under our street clothes. I had let him know that I had been there recently and stuck with my friends, most of the guys seemed these unapproachable packs of white, hypermasculine alphas. The vibe this night was different, a slightly more diverse crowd but largely still crowds of friends sticking to each other and not leaving much room for strangers to approach. We fell into the same pattern until a handsome stranger came our way. There’s nothing exciting coming next though. I learned Ben is even quieter than I and at some point we both let the conversation drop and the handsome stranger wandered away. Moments passed when I realized I should have asked anything to have kept the conversation going. These moments in the bar happen quicker than on the work site, where I can leave space to gather my thoughts, although there the contractors have to let me talk.

I had been angling to go to Puteria in downtown LA and Ben eventually agreed that would be the better spot. We headed out and drank and danced till the shirts came off and our harnesses were on display. It was the point of the night that other guys were taking their shirts off and we weren’t the only ones with light gear on. By the end of the night, back at his place and in his own way, Ben noted that he was somewhat jealous of the attention I had received. I was serving masculinity, muscle bear top, short king. I was disturbed to discover one of the guys I had made out with was looking for masc4masc on Grindr and had written an article on how to attract a masculine boyfriend.

All this over attributes I’ve either been forced to adapt, for ease of work purposes, or never had any control over, the copious amounts of body hair.

Yesterday at the gym I had what I saw someone on Twitter summarize as trans thoughts and I wondered what all the guys I talked to last weekend would have to say about that. When I had brought it up in prior sessions of therapy my current therapist hadn’t seemed to care? Maybe she hadn’t noted it down or I just hadn’t given it the weight. I had told her, “I wished I had been born a girl, so that these grown men and women would have treated me as a child rather than a young man.” In the context of our conversation regarding childhood trauma, it seems easy to imagine she had other topics to cover. Recently I mentioned these thoughts and she discounted them, perhaps didn’t catch them again. It’s not that I believe she’s uncomfortable with the topic but it does seem like she doesn’t have much experience with trans individuals. Not that I want to transition…

I was stoned and adding music to my playlist and I remembered Laura Jane Grace in Against Me!’s lyrics, “You’ve got no cunt in your strut/ You’ve got no hips to shake…” and “A fucked up kind of feminine.” A wave of emotional resonance passed through me, the weed doing its job to inhibit my emotional guards. The next second, an unease and queasiness emanated from my stomach and I thought to myself, “I thought I was over this.”

Lately I’ve been trying to accept the parts of my personality that come from the traditional way I was raised, full on Mexican machismo. My mother still won’t admit to it, but there’s a reason I’m able to get along with my conservative, old school coworkers. These are men, we are men, and we’re working together to complete construction projects. Grunt! No feelings! Anyone who gets overly emotional gets mocked, although I’ve gotten worked up and shown the range of feelings stemming from anger that are appropriate for men. I’m sadly more scared to join our design teams because there are more women and I don’t know how I’ll fare there and stay closeted. It’s not too hard to dodge relationship questions, because again, these are traditional men. Most of them are easy to set off on a rant about their wives and just want sounding boards. I’ve even stopped trying to lose weight and have focused on just gaining muscle and fat, getting bigger and heavier. The last break through at therapy was that it was totally ok to throw down to defend myself. My words not hers, but the more clinical way she put it isn’t as funny.

So I was surprised to still be imagining myself as a woman, desiring my body to be lighter and curvier in their way. In the past I know I have recoiled at the attention I got from other men, hidden myself from the male gaze. Lately though, I had been feeling more comfortable in that spotlight, had been defending myself from unwanted touching and had even experienced a resurgence in my libido. So again, why now?

Perhaps more terrifying was the thought, “What if this never goes away?” What if I will always find myself desiring to have been born a woman. To the questions of what superpower I would want, I have often answered shapeshifting and mentioned wanting to be able to switch between man and woman. Flight was the other frequent answer, to fly rather than run from my problems. Often too, I have lamented that I wish I were a lesbian, with all its implications. I see the chasm I could cross but like a green light across the lake, I will not reach it.

I don’t want to undergo an expensive process and find myself regretting it, desiring the ability to pass again as a straight man when necessary. Look at today. I have walked about 10 minutes away from where I parked, perhaps more actually because the entire time I was looking at my phone, chatting away with my cousins. I will walk back through downtown Los Angeles to my car, drop off my laptop, and go get myself into trouble. I couldn’t do this so easily were I woman. My costume for this adventure? My work boots, business casual attire, a jean jacket and my virility. It’s not that I won’t be fucked with if I stupidly walk into Skid Row, it’s that I am not scared to wander around on my own.

Also, the body hair will be really hard to get rid off… And there’s a lot of that!

Stepping into Kink and BDSM: Taking Inventory of my Mental State Before the Journey

Aguilar

Dan Savage hosted Leigh Cowart to chat about their book Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose on this week’s episode of Savage Love. As I was listening during work, I only caught bits of it but was excited to learn that our bodies and brains are complex enough to be able to interpret physical pain during sex as something erotic, to take into consideration that you’re in an aroused state and let you enjoy what in another situation would only be pain. I have wanted to explore BDSM, have my ropes and regularly ask guys to bite a little harder, but have been too scared to jump further in. I’m afraid of triggering some trauma response, especially right now when I feel I am doing so well. Plus, I’m still carrying around this shame for how I used to be in the bedroom, often channeling anger and insecurity to hammer away, to choke a little harder, to take out frustrations on mine and my partner’s bodies. This was back when I couldn’t bottom either, too angry and insecure in my sexuality to relax.  I’m also ashamed of how I used to be in the bedroom, often channeling anger and insecurity to hammer away, to choke a little harder, to take out frustrations on mine and my partner’s bodies. That’s why my sex drive had lowered since my first bout with therapy and now I’m looking to learn how to enjoy sex, pain, and pleasure to bring that drive back.  

I am going to read Cowart’s book but felt it apt to write an initial post that I can look back on, to take stock of how far I’ve come.

First, contrition for how I behaved in the past with hookups and long-term partners. I remember once waking up next to my college boyfriend and seeing all the markings I had left on his body, mostly hickies and hard slaps. I was tracing them out and we chatted about it. He said, admittedly, his friends asked him about the marks because in their med courses he routinely volunteered to take his shirt off and let them… listen to his heart? He didn’t mind it he said, but was annoyed that one of his friends said out loud that she couldn’t imagine what kind of person could enjoy receiving so much pain during sex. Clearly, my ex did and I were able to have ongoing conversations about the kind of sex we were having. Not as much for the guys I was hooking up with. I enjoyed ravishing men back then, thrusting in anger, slapping away frustration and rage. I am not there anymore, but I remember the need to feel large, imagining greatness while I was manhandling my partners.

I want to make clear I don’t feel guilty for my actions, but my intent. That was my stress relief, my therapy, when I was young. The guys I got with seemed to enjoy it, although every once in a while a guy would tell me I was a little rough the last time or complain that something was still too sore. I recall a guy telling me his nipples felt like they had chafed and that he seriously didn’t like it. I remember laughing at his text message, although in response to him I said something like, “Thanks for letting me know. I’m sorry and it won’t happen again.” I wasn’t planning on seeing him again, as back then I would already have been looking for the next guy, but neither would I have him on the list of guys I would send the infamous text, “You looking?”

Back then I wasn’t interested in their pleasure, or mine even, I just needed a release. So, once I started going to therapy, I was releasing and processing the wrath and hurt that used to drive these urges and my sex drive went down for a while. It came back for a time while I was a construction manager, working 60-80 hours a week and desperately needing a way to relieve tension. I’ve switched out of that environment and have resumed therapy, so now I’m learning ways to prioritize pleasure and joy, which has brought on its own drive. I’m still looking for release, but now it’s orgasmic and sexual release, not rage and fury driving me to the bedroom. The kind of sex I’m looking for now, the kinks I want to explore, these adventures can’t be so selfish because I’ll be looking to repeat with people, find a community of like-minded heathens.

Second, the idea of building up a community of pleasure is exciting and will be necessary for my journey into kink and BDSM. I have long term casual relationships, one that is for now only digital but I’m hoping he returns from Florida, and in the past two to three years have started making friends through friends with benefits. I find it necessary to note that we are actual friends, we meet up and hang out without sex being the primary reason, but it’s not uncommon for us all to end up somewhere, multiple bodies arranged naked and on each other. Thus far we have managed to avoid drama and perhaps it’s because there’s an informal vetting process before someone is there for the group sex, usually prior connections are drawn in to form new connections. As far as safety in kink and BDSM communities goes, from what I’ve heard on Dan Savage’s show, there is a less informal vetting process.

I’m hoping to exploit that vetting process to allow myself to feel safe, especially since I’ve had a very specific submissive scenario in mind since youth. I’ve held back on exploring kink and BDSM because I’m scared of being taken advantage of, of not being strong enough to defend myself or not being aware enough to hear my body expressing discomfort. The fantasy itself is colored by my childhood trauma and I likely shouldn’t enact the scene to the full extent. In this scene a hot domme ties me up and whips me, or paddles me, or in more recent fantasies, uses a dildo on me; the darker version has always had me using my anger to break out of the bindings, strong enough to flex them off, then use my massive cock to take out the anger on her. I suspect this scenario will remain in the background of my conscious thoughts, even as I explore the more realistic and healthier parts of it. To truly enact the scene to its fullest, I would need a domme that trusts me enough to put my hands on her. As I play and explore, I may find that the reality of such a scenario, the safeguards and restraint so as not to hurt the other person, may make it more work than it’s worth. However, I want to be clear that I’m not complaining about that, especially because I believe most of my kink partners will be men, some stronger than me. In the same way that I would want to know that these guys are gentle before and after a scene, that I can trust them not to hurt me outside of and beyond the scenario, I know any women I approach will want to know that of me. This is what I mean by exploiting the vetting process, making it work for me but also being aware of and wanting to build that security for others.

The above is really the second and third point. The second being that it’s cool to have sex with people whose presence outside of the bedroom you enjoy. The third is that the community helps keep you safe, because you’re going to be in compromising positions during scenarios. Fourth on my mind is that I have begun to allow myself, thanks to therapy, to aggressively defend myself against people who are not mindful of my boundaries. In short, my mother made me feel guilty whenever I used physical force to defend myself, warranted or not. So, in the past I have had moments of doubt before raising a hand to push away someone and panicked in crowds out of fear from scenarios in which I’d have to assert my physical presence. Wanting to not be seen in a crowd and wanting to have my physical space respected it is a difficult problem to solve. I have sidestepped this aspect of the issue because I don’t go to festivals anymore, the bands playing at these aren’t those I like enough to want to stand around in a field and the active bands I listen to now and tend to play in tiny venues or large concerts and stadiums.

It’s at bathhouses that I’ve learned how to defend myself. I was in a darkroom making out with someone and felt hands start to touch my butt and asshole. I quickly got annoyed because their fingers were too quickly invasive but first, I brushed the hands away softly but eventually grabbed wrists, threw the hand and firmly pushed the entire person away from me. I had to do that to a couple different guys, they had crowded around in that dark room, but they got the message. It didn’t register until later when I was taking inventory of the night and wondering whether it was time to go that I flashed back to an earlier cruise through the bathrooms and had a very different reaction to guys trying to do that without even the implied consent of scooting my butt toward them. An earlier time, a guy had come up behind me suddenly while I was making out with someone and tried to get a finger in as his opening move. I had stopped, pushed him away, but didn’t resume, instead I headed for the showers and left, my entire night ruined by this one awful interaction. I had every right to defend myself and to expect that my body would be treated with respect. But I was happier by how I had handled it this time, asserting myself and insisting on it, but also not letting it ruin my whole visit, not even registering until later in the day.

In summary, I am going to read Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose and at the same time challenge myself to step into the kink community. I have reflected on the way I used pain and sex in the past and know the importance of prioritizing pleasure over hurting others. Second, I enjoy and want to continue building friendships around mutual sexual interest. Third, I want the safety and trust of the community to play out my fantasies and know I need to respect the others in that community, do the work, to build trust. Finally, I feel that I’ve recently come into a position in my life where I can assert and defend myself without panicking over that.

Best regards to future me!

On LGBT Representation in the Media – The Queer Films and Movies of My Youth

Aguilar

Nowadays there’s not much stopping me from consuming any and all media with LGBT characters except taste and preference. Queer characters have begun to pop up in many different shows, some geared toward children and age appropriate. Today, we’re far removed from the nights I would quietly stay up, way past my bedtime and try and sneak an episode of The L Word or Queer as Folk. By some miracle of packaged channel subscriptions, my parents had bought LOGO TV without being aware of it. I couldn’t openly watch it, but if I stayed up late and made sure to cover all the open spaces in my door frame through which light and noise could filter out, I could sneak an episode or two, the volume barely above a whisper.

I couldn’t have been much older than twelve, the apartment in my memory was not where we lived during my later high school years. So much of what I saw flew over my head though, probably a consequence of the low volume and of being more preoccupied listening for movements from my parents’ room. When I went back to rewatch as a young adult, I realized just how much I hadn’t picked up on the sex, drugs, and problematic behaviors of the casts of both shows.

At the time, these two shows were more or less all I had as far as explicitly same sex behavior. Occasionally Will and Grace would enter the rotation, but it was on too early for me too hide from my parents. So, I was left with content aimed exclusively at adults. Movies were no different either and through the magic of the Internet, I found a way to view those too without my parents finding out. I was thirteen when Brokeback Mountain (2005) came out, I remembered streaming it many times over the winter break, quietly sobbing into my pillow over the drama of those bisexual cowboys. Around the same time, my parents had gotten a copy of Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001). Brokeback Mountain was all over American news and hungry as I was for queer media, it was easy to learn about it. Y Tu Mama Tambien I only heard about because of my parents. I recall reading the back cover of it and Amores Perros (2000) and thinking nothing of either film, except that Gael Garcia Bernal was very handsome. My mom saw me reading the covers though and reacted, “Deja eso!” She warned me not to watch either of the two. I tell you, the only reason I remembered to watch that movie was because of her.

Those years I spent much time trying to find queer media without alerting my parents. I’d known for years that I liked boys, I recalled registering a desire to hug a boy in my fifth-grade class and knowing I could neither act on that nor tell anyone about it. The confusion at the time wasn’t why I was drawn to him, but if I was that way, why was I still crushing on the girls in my class? I didn’t want to be them or hang out with them, but I still liked them. Without realizing it at the time, I was most drawn to films that showed characters whose sexuality was not so fixed. There are many examples of gay films where the formerly straight character ends the film fully in love with a man, or a boy if it was a younger, coming of age film. That’s not what I’m referring to though. The films I came to enjoy, that still stand out in memory now, are those that acknowledged sex, gender and desire as something between two people, irrespective of gender and stated preferences, although they weren’t all necessarily positive.

Honorable mention goes to Plata Quemada (2001) and A Home at the End of the World (2004). Plata Quemada, as problematic as its representation of bisexuality remains, was one of my favorite films. Of the three main criminals, one was gay, the other bisexual, both together and stereotypically men, macho, killers and thugs. There was something about seeing queer characters being not just problematic and messy, but violent and angry that appealed to the troubled young man I was. Unsurprisingly, the bisexual character at one point cheats on his partner, but if it hasn’t been maid clear, these protagonists were not meant to be role models. A Home at the End of the World was a film I could only watch once, maybe I rewatched it to understand what had just happened. From reading a plot summary these many years later, I hadn’t understood the plot at all, but I saw what I understood then as some sort of polygamous arrangement, a love triangle consummated. From the plot summary, it’s not clear that that ever happened, but I was a very young teenager and far too naïve to understand anything.

The movies I want to wrap this discussion up with are Different for Girls (1996), Chasing Amy (1997). and Bedrooms and Hallways (1998). Although these are not queer films of the aughts, there is no conceivable way I watched these the years they came out, rather, I would have viewed these in the aughts, through the magic of the internet and hidden from my parents. Bedrooms and Hallways remains a treat, I found it recently on YouTube and rewatched. In my youth, it painted a picture of these cool late 20, early 30 somethings who were still figuring themselves out. It has the typical storyline of straight men discovering their sexuality later in life, funnily enough through a men’s emotional support group. There’s an effeminate gay best friend, Darren, who, despite his rather slutty vibe, is focused throughout the film on going steady with his somewhat boyfriend. What I treasured at the time was that the very handsome lead, Leo, and spoilers obviously, Leo spends the film stumbling around figuring himself out as a gay man but ends the film wrapped in the arms of a prior girlfriend. Darren finds the two, asleep post coitus on the couch and says, “God, just a phase” before wandering off to his room. As the film ends there, it’s not clear what becomes of the friendship or relationship, but, surrounded by the messiness and fluidity of all their friends, it’s hard to imagine this as a friendship ending event.

By contrast, in Chasing Amy, it seemed that a character’s bisexuality was more threatening to their lesbian friends. I don’t mean to draw this distinction as a stone’s throw at lesbians, implying that they are less accepting of bisexuality. I am not a woman, so I don’t have any experiences with women’s acceptance of bisexuality now, but I have been on many dates with gay men that ended after admitting I do find women attractive or having the wonderful experience of reminding a boyfriend that I did indeed tell them I identify as bisexual exactly because I am worried about rejection further along in the relationship. It seems, even as far back as the 90s, that the Europeans were more accepting than the Americans. In Chasing Amy, the three leads are a straight man, Holden, his very jealous best friend, and a woman they had gone to high school with, Alyssa Jones, played by the beautiful Joey Lauren Adams. Alyssa is seemingly a lesbian, and a quite promiscuous one at that, until she meets Holden. They kick it off and at a certain point she informs Holden that she’s essentially lost her friend group, previously shown helping her put together material for a comic convention, because they feel she’s been lost to the straights. Although at the end of the film they are no longer together, so, presumably, Alyssa can go back to identifying as a lesbian and indeed she is shown with one of her prior friends at a comic convention, it is easy to imagine that they don’t all take her back. After all, bisexuals still face scrutiny from the monosexuals, gay or straight. Somehow, despite the strong implications that Alyssa gets around, the threatening relationship/sexual encounter is the seemingly stable one with an opposite sex partner. It’s easy to imagine that they felt Alyssa would disappear into her seemingly straight relationship, her rather lengthy past erased. Fluidity seemed reserved for the Europeans, the lesson was well learned from the films I watched at the time and relearned as a young man in the dating world.

The final film is special in my heart, as it cemented my love of a whole genre of music, one that most queer men seem scared to approach.  Different for Girls focuses on two close friends, Kim and Prentice, who grew up together, Karl and Prentice, but then lost contact. It is the earliest film I watched that had a positive portrayal of a transsexual character, although truthfully, I can’t recall caring too much about her transness. It wasn’t that the film didn’t discuss it, details abound, intimate discussions about the experience and even harassment that she experiences because of her sexual reassignment. It is just that I loved how she explained her masculine preferences as a youth. There’s a scene where Prentice is accusing Kim, questioning Kim’s femininity given that as youths they would often go to rock shows together. If memory serves, it was punk shows specifically, the implication that this was too macho for a transperson. With one gleeful laugh, Kim brushes the accusation aside as, “It wasn’t about that for me. It was about the energy and the movement of the music.” As she says this, I recall the lithe movements of her wrists and hands, raising her arms above her body as she mimicked a dance from before. Whether or not the movie’s language would hold up to our scrutiny now, 25 years later, the intent behind the film was beautiful. That moment highlighted the transformative and liberating power of punk and rock, decades before Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! would come out, and was always what I recalled when asked why as a queer man I liked rock, punk, metal the most.

Clashing Intentions and Actions – Just Part of Gay Adolescence?

Aguilar

I took a small break because I have been stressing out due to an upcoming exam that I am not studying well for. Outside of college, it hasn’t really happened for me that I’m able to study without a classroom structure. After this, I’m going to go ahead and sign up for in person classes, or study with a coworker. Because of these exams and because of my recent break up, I’ve been very upfront on all the dating and hook up apps that I’m keeping it casual for now. Unfortunately, I’ve been having interactions with other men that don’t seem to understand what I mean or where I’m coming from.

I often see it repeated online that coming out leads to a form of gay adolescence, as gay and lesbian teens don’t have the same opportunities to experiment with dating as their straight peers do. Personally, although I had started coming out as early as middle school, I was too much myself to have dated in high school. I did try though and over time those experiences stumbling and putting myself out there have worked to help me figure out what I want and when I want it. That is, while I’ve been comfortable being single and having casual relationships or hooking up off the apps, when I want to be in a relationship, I know how to communicate that out and pursue that. I had two recent encounters where the gentlemen’s stated intentions clashed with their actions and words and I considered whether this was just a part of gay adolescence that I would continue to encounter as a man dating men. 

Of the first, I wrote a bit already about my interactions with him. Following a cousin’s funeral, he freaked out because I hadn’t been in contact with him. Some time after I posted the prior interaction he reached out to apologize and said that the text didn’t help us understand each other, that he tends to be very sensitive and was being selfish, but that he didn’t want to be ignored in the future and he wanted to prioritize that. As I was on my way out of town, I said thanks for the apology and let him know I wouldn’t be around. I talked to the friends on that trip out of town and they told me that, told of someone’s funeral, they would have backed down as well, not insisted on being heard out. With that, I decided to unfollow him and remove him from my followers too.

He didn’t notice however and reached out to make small talk, discussing the exam and the vaccines. I engaged with the small talk for a while but after some reflection, let him know that I didn’t want to talk to him anymore as I had just gotten out of a relationship where I had to create emotional space for my ex’s angry and jealous outbursts, but when I finally got angry at him, he dumped me. I related that to what had occurred between us, summarizing it as me having created space for him but he being unable to do the same for me. For some context, when he had come over, I held him while he cried because, as he stated, he just felt very comfortable around me; when he reached out to me because he felt I had stood him up, I apologized but told him it was a bad time as my cousin’s funeral had just happened and rather than back off, he insisted that I needed to prioritize his need for communication in a friendship. As the friendship with him required more from me than I could give, I insisted that we not talk anymore, although I pointed out that he was equating my grief with his personal insecurities and asking me to set my feelings aside.

What I never got around to discussing with him, because I was much less invested in this situationship than he was, was that he had not laid out all these rules ahead of us meeting in person. In fact, it felt like he suppressed all his requirements for having a friendship until after we had had sex. In a way, I feel more responsible for ignoring the red flags as I am slightly older than him and definitely more experienced, but I also felt that I had said many times that I was not looking for a relationship or really any responsibilities right now as I wanted to focus on myself. Although I stand by that, I do feel that I should have paid more attention to what he seemed to mean, which is that he needed a therapist and a stable, committed boyfriend. On the therapy part, I won’t say more than I already have, but he raised several topics after we had met, but before he got upset that I didn’t follow up on a potential hang out, on issues that I let him know immediately were pretty serious and should be discussed with a professional. And on the boyfriend part, it became clear just how serious and committed he expected his friendships to be, to the point where he should just be looking for a boyfriend and find a different kind of trouble.

My next issue with men hiding their intentions, or not being honest with them, comes from men hiding their age. Although it’s never truly been an issue, it happened recently that two men, one in his mid-thirties and another in his forties, have said that they are 29 years old. The latter’s profile actually stated 26, but I asked him what his age was after he sent some face pics. He said 29, I pointed out I was turning 29 and asked if he’d like to try again on giving his age. Now, I’ve said all this very politely, because I get that youth is a commodity in the gay community, but it feels odd to have them use my age when they’re clearly older.

The former deserves a little more talking about as I went on a date with him. He started off as a blank profile, which immediately set off flags, but he was quick to share pictures of himself. I let him know right away that I would be on my guard because I always am with blank profiles. Although I understand that there are good reasons for that, such as teachers not wanting to be seen by their students, I haven’t had good interactions in the past with these types of profiles. This time was going a little better; we agreed to meet at a local restaurant and other than being a little late, he showed up. Immediately I could tell he had lied about his age, but decided not to bring it up right away.   

We chatted about different things and overall had a pleasant conversation. At some point, he mentioned a six year relationship, described how it had ended some short time before the start of the pandemic, so seven years ago. I told him that was a little odd because his profile said he was 29 which meant he had to be 22 when they had gotten together. At that point he said, well no, he was something like 33 or 34, which made more sense for the length of their relationship, but said his profile was just old. The explanation was suspect, but as my most recent ex-boyfriend is older than him, I didn’t care to follow up. What did interest me was how he went on to describe his ex-fiancé as a home-body, preferring to stay in on Fridays than go out, how he just seemed very boring and didn’t like going out as much as he did. He had previously let me know that he would be partying all of Saturday and Sunday, specifically hosting a giant get together at the beach on Sunday. So in my head I really considered asking him for his ex-fiancé’s number. All I said was, “that sounds how I like to spend my Fridays, just prepare some food, have a nice edible and just relax.” Even on the question of weed, he said he hated being around stoners. He didn’t know the lingo but basically once couch lock set in his anger would peak.

Although the date went well, I figured I would not bring up the topic of dating again. He ignored me all weekend anyway, which was fine. But tell me why on Monday he hit me up saying he felt like we had a great connection and that we should date more seriously. I let him know that I didn’t want to given that the issues he had with his ex would be the same we would have and that I didn’t feel the need to put us through that. I was happy to continue to hang out with him on the weekends but not for anything beyond casual fun. Unfortunately, he has decided that I will change my mind and that I just need to give him time, to make time for him, and I’ll see.

For these guys, I don’t know exactly what’s leading them to navigate the dating world in this way. But I can see that they aren’t clearly communicating their intentions and needs. At least in the first case, from his perspective he was wrong to have placed any respect, or trust, in me. In my case, if he had let me know just how critical the stakes were for our interactions, I would have left him alone, certainly not inviting him over to casually hook up, or not believing him when he said he was open to it. On the latter, I’m not ready to date. But when I seek to return to the dating world, I’ll be trying my hardest to avoid personality types exactly similar to my ex, so it’s interesting to have a guy who described all the problems with his ex be things I love, and still have that same guy be interested in me. Finally, as far as hiding intentions go, I don’t think I’ll get to the point where I want to hide my age. In part, it’s because I’m not interested in younger men, but also, I think as a young man of a certain age, I’ve been exposed to more age positive media. But I’m hoping to always be just a little too lazy to lie, a little too lazy in dating to be anyone other than myself.

After all, in the words of Darren from Bedrooms and Hallways, “Simplify your vibrations. Your sex life simplifies itself.”

The Burden of the Closet and of Secrecy Being the Default

Aguilar

It is in retrospect that I have begun to see the painfully obvious ways in which being in the closet, in which defaulting to secrecy, has hurt me. After all, being in the closet is an active effort and required picking up habits that don’t go away just because you come out. Unfortunately, the more painful memories require a trigger warning as they involve child abuse, sexual assault, efforts to cover the aforementioned up, and my reactions to it, which includes recreating trauma.

I don’t remember when I learned to keep myself secret. When I told my mom that a male family member had molested me, I blamed her when she asked why I hadn’t told her sooner. I wasn’t able to talk to her about it until after I had been through a lot of therapy and a lot of that time focused on the dysfunctional relationship we had. Plus, there wasn’t anyone else around involved in raising me. Generally, she had taught me that I should be seen but not heard, that I was around to help her process her feelings, sometimes that included being her punching bag, and that the person who had molested me could do no wrong and was forgiven, usually, for any of his past transgressions. This person is no longer in our lives, because my mom finally was able to stop letting him in, but I digress.

When it happened, I was eleven or twelve years old, well before I had started to have real sexual urges, although I had started puberty and had already noticed that I was also attracted to boys. I don’t even remember being told not to tell anyone; it was as if he knew that I just wasn’t the type of person to talk. I was painfully quiet back then and perhaps that was obvious to the adults in my life and doubly so to the predators looking for an easy mark. Indeed, it was only after therapy lessened the impact that I could begin to talk about being molested. I wrote about it often, but it took me close to ten years to tell anyone other than two therapists about it.

I’ve reviewed my journals from back then. Although I noted what happened, near as I can gather or remember, I only didn’t tell anyone because I was worried that they would take that as the thing that “turned” me gay. That the pride and assuredness of my own sexuality blinded me to the hurtful impact of continuing to keep his secret is an irony that I think anyone with more experience could have seen. And really, that is the undercurrent to the ways in which I have hurt myself by being so secretive; if I had had a trusted adult and been able to be honest with them, the self-destructive behaviors that came after may have been curtailed. I don’t blame myself though. In retrospect, I can see the parts when I let shame control the narrative, but in large part it was about survival: as I’ve said prior, I knew that coming out would see me homeless, I thought I was controlling the narrative about me, and it also true is that you need a sense of pride in your sexuality to survive in a heteronormative hegemony. Yet, again, that trusted adult may have been able to point out to me the link between the childhood molestation and all the cruising I was doing as a young person.

I used to go to the gym a lot in high school and college, work out, then cruise in the steam room and locker room showers. As I wrote about it back then, I was excited to be sexually active and also saw it as my obligation, a way of sticking it to society by having lots of gay sex when, at least in California, the right to marry was being voted on and being taken away. It wasn’t just about sexual freedom, but revolution, after all, no amount of shaming could take away how good the good times felt. The issue was the bad times. Stone cold sober, I would lose agency over my body, freezing in place and letting people I was not attracted to touch me and pleasure me. I remember explicitly telling myself to just close my eyes and let it happen, it would all be over soon. I didn’t understand what was going on then, that I was recreating the earlier childhood trauma by letting these older men use me. Apparently, I also didn’t understand that I could just say no and conceptualized what was happening as an obligation, although I’m not sure why I felt obligated to do anything.

In the gyms, this cruising consisted of mutual masturbation and oral. I don’t know why it never went further than that. Perhaps, from up close, some of these men realized how young I was and never invited me anywhere else. In the post-orgasmic clarity, they realized the hairy chest couldn’t hide how young my face looked and the fact that my voice still cracked. I apologize as this may be too much for some people, but I do have some sympathy for these pederasts. Attracted as they were to younger men, they were playing a dangerous game, as they never bothered to confirm my age and would certainly have gotten themselves in trouble if we had ever been caught. See I never lied about my age, one or two did bother to ask and I would always respond honestly, “Seventeen!” And perhaps it was that I rode my bike to the gym and would not have wanted to bike anywhere else but home, or be driven anywhere else as I wanted to stay in control.

Whatever it was, I managed to hold onto my virginity until my freshman year of college. The one close friend I had back had their own unhealthy sexual patterns and encouraged me to get rid of it. I deeply regret that I didn’t have someone else to talk to about that and that the culture in general led me to think I wasn’t a man until I did. I chatted with a grad student on the hook up apps who was fairly attractive. He sent over a couple pics of his body and I was ready to go. Unfortunately, when I opened the door, the person before me in no way resembled his pics. An older me would have angrily confronted him about this and sent him on his way. But instead I walked him back to my room and I tried to ask him about his pictures. To every question he had an answer and to every hesitation he had a negotiation. We did get some of our clothes off and at some point, I rationalized to myself that if I just went along with it, he’d finally leave. I remember he rode me until he came and then I asked him again if he would leave. He finally did. I thankfully insisted on wearing a condom. I remember taking a long hot shower and then logging onto some forums, probably a reddit forum, to brag that I had finally gone all the way. I didn’t even bother writing about it in my journal though, although I do remember feeling as if something was not right.

My freshman year of college, I decided to go back into the closet. In a truly hare-brained move, I thought I would stay in the closet, not make friends, get my degree as fast as possible and then move on with my life. I think, without having written it down, I can admit that I wanted as much financial independence as soon as possible because I knew my parents would not support me. Second, I certainly did not fit neatly into the gay identity and was scared because of that. Although I knew that I was some sort of bisexual, my then favorite author spoke often how he knew many gay men who started off as bisexual and were just kidding themselves. I wasn’t sure about my own sexuality and didn’t want the scrutiny, so I just didn’t bring it up and kept my online and gym cruising to myself. Per my journal, I then went on to feel tremendously guilty when I did make friends who I wanted to come out to, but was scared they’d feel bad about me lying. Still, I wish I had come out, not just to help me reflect on the above behavior, but also to have warned me about the only other gay person in our cohort.

By the end of my freshman year, I had managed by and large to avoid scrutiny because I was really into two of my friends. Really a third if I’m being honest, although he was a guy so I’m not sure how I kept that crush a secret. It isn’t as if I went around telling anyone who asked that I was into my friends, but with one specifically people could tell I liked her. At the end of the year, I had started considering how I would come out and was even wearing subtle rainbows and yet was not being recognized. The one time it happened at a party that an older guy asked in code if I was family, I happily said “Yes! We’re all one big engineering family!” He kept insisting that no, he wanted to know if I was family, familia, which truly confused me because the minority engineering program at this school painted itself as a family and I could not tell the difference. The upperclassmen interceded and told him to leave me alone. As I later learned, he had a habit of getting his classmates drunk and sleeping with them, clearing out the closeted men in his generation and they didn’t want him wasting his time with me, so obvious was my crush on my female friend.

We had a guy my year that was following in his footsteps, regrettably. One of our friends told me later that he had a list of all the guys he wanted to get drunk and sexually assault. I know for young gay men and for a certain type of older gay man, the fantasy persists of getting a straight man drunk and “turning” him. Having been on the receiving antics, I can say that it’s awful and that no means no. As I later found out, this guy had made a list of all the guys our year that he wanted to get drunk and sleep with, his go to MO as he remains a total slime bag. Still, it was another end of the year party and apparently it was my turn for him to try something.

The party was fairly non-eventful. At the time, I recall him being persistent in handing me booze and me telling him many, many times, that I needed to be careful with how much I drank. If needed I can elaborate on it later, but I had broken my leg and was on crutches at the time, so I knew I needed to stay sober enough to walk on crutches. I made it home safely and I wish I had ended the night there. However, I had made it a habit after any party where booze was involved, to stay up late playing video games until I was completely sober, as I get the spins when I try to sleep while inebriated and inevitably end up puking. I don’t remember who messaged who first, but I do recall him pointing out that if I wasn’t going to sleep yet that I should come over and hang out. Even though my gut was telling me not to, I figured I’d go up and see what happened.

We got there and it was fine, until it wasn’t. We made out, I did get hard, and we fooled around a bit but then I said no. I told him I didn’t feel comfortable proceeding with more but wouldn’t mind staying to sleep together. He said ok and let me doze off. I awoke some time later to him stroking me awake and I got mad, told him no, and went back to sleep. This kept going for a while, because while I was wanting to leave, I was scared at the thought of having to hobble my way down from his dorm room and back to mine, so late at night and so desiring to just be asleep.

That was the last party of the school year and I pushed it out of mind that summer. When I returned that year, I noticed that some of the freshmen seemed to already know something about me and that the gay ones were particularly stand offish. I didn’t know what it was at the time, I figured that having recently come out (again) I was still a bit awkward and, having joined the officer positions in the minority engineering group, I did not want to come off improperly toward them. What I didn’t learn until later was that the guy above had participated in a summer program and had told all the incoming minority engineers that he and I had issues because I was homophobic.

I didn’t learn this until well after college and in retrospect, I applaud the sociopathy of this man. He figured since I showed such discomfort being openly out that I wouldn’t effectively counter the narrative that I had a lot of internalized homophobia. And in a way, he was right. But the reason I went on to dislike him was because he had forced himself onto me. After all, I had given him several clear and precise nos. What could have been drunken mistakes then turned into sober cover ups. Also, to be clear, by the time he had locked his eyes upon me, I had started to come out to our friends anyways and either way, had already come out to my parents, something he hadn’t done. There was no way to cast him as a man trying to help someone struggling to come out. And truly, if he had not tried to turn people against me, I might have continued to have said that he and I just didn’t get along. See, it wasn’t for another year that I bothered to tell anyone about what had transpired against us and it was only because he insisted on trying to make me a bad guy.

I am happy that I finally stopped trying to keep things secretive or private and, in the end, came forward with my story. It didn’t undo all of the issues I had with the younger gay men in our group, after all, I am still a huge dork and at the time was still very socially awkward. But it no longer made them afraid of me and thankfully, it minimized the amount of times I had to be around this rather unpleasant individual. I only wish I had seen sooner what it was costing me to keep secret the ways in which other people had hurt me. Our peers did turn against him and helped me keep him out of my life, which was the other side of secret keeping. Not only was I holding onto this pain by myself, but managing the scenario fell on me alone, when I could have been getting help the entire time.

Because I have already written so much and because I still want to go hit the gym, I will stop here. I want to follow up to make clear what else hiding all of this caused as well as elaborate on the relief I felt in telling my story and some of the help I received.

Thoughts on Being Professionally Closeted

Aguilar

I am out to my friends and family, but professionally closeted, somewhat anyway. If you’re able to see what’s in front of you, without the assumption of heterosexuality, you’ll notice me. In part, this professional closet is just a professional veneer, topics that I don’t bring up because they’re not appropriate for the workplace. But I think that professional attitude is itself a tell. After all, from entry level to management, their heterosexuality explicitly comes up. I don’t mean the wives either. One evening a section head graced me with the knowledge that in his youth he attended a couple swingers’ parties and orgies, but, he claimed he did not participate. Unfortunately, he also let me know that his son’s grades were slipping, which wasn’t as bad as what his friend was dealing with, whose son had just come out. How he got to these topics from asking him if he had any career advice is beyond me. 

Unfortunately, I naturally present more masculine and this lets my coworkers initially read me as straight, which lets them be more honest about their negative opinions on queer people. That manager’s statement was relatively benign. After all, grades don’t seem to define the structure of your life quite the same way that your sexuality does and he could have been reflecting on how that young man would have to deal with the prejudices of a straight environment. But I’ve had other coworkers refer to difficult contractors as “cocksuckers” and “maricones.” Again, my straight coworkers have no problem dropping any suggestion of a professional attitude to say offensive bullshit without caring who might be listening. It is frustrating, but I can pretend that they don’t know and brush it off a little more casually. 

That’s not to say that the psychological damage of being professionally closeted is not building up over time though. After all, it’s not just the effort I make to drop pronouns and refer to every ex boyfriend as an ex, but learning directly from my coworkers that they would think less of me if I came out to them. It almost feels dirty, as though I’m a spy behind enemy lines gathering intel. With that intel, I do begin to look down on them, categorizing them as people who are somewhat bigoted and thus people I need to continue to be dishonest with. Frankly, always having to tiptoe around these people lest I trigger their delicate heterosexuality gets tiring and expends energy I could spend elsewhere. In my defense, I have come out to some of them to test the waters of being more out professionally. 

A couple of coworkers decided to grab dinner and drinks together after a work meeting. I had to leave early and as I was leaving mentioned that I was leaving for a date. A coworker told another and so forth until it got back to the specific construction site I was regularly on. The project inspector told me had heard about it and asked if I had a girlfriend now and I responded, “Well, no, I have a boyfriend.” I had gotten to know him well enough by now to be sure that whatever happened, he would not risk his job by being too explicit with whatever he felt about that. As expected, he quickly dropped the topic. But a different engineer and I got drinks way later and he let me know that the inspector was very uncomfortable from that day forward whenever I was around, even though we had been working together for a year by then and would work together for another year more. 

Reactions such as those, the casual homophobia as well, those are the reasons why for now I don’t feel too guilty to continue lying by omission, for staying in the closet for now. After all, these people presume heterosexuality and to clarify that now reveals a bit too much for me. There’s an author and columnist I’ve been reading since I was young, Dan Savage, who has this idea that there’s the people you’re saying you’re fucking, the people you want to fuck, and the people you’re fucking. In my case, single and theoretically willing to mingle, I’m stopping at the level of people I want to fuck as a need to know basis and my coworkers don’t need to know. The hilarious byproduct is that my coworkers think I’m a bit of a sexual prude, but after all, I’m never letting them know I’ve been to bathhouses and nude beaches. I do intend to drop the act though. For example, I’ll definitely need to mention a stable partner or husband, but even before then, the cost of being professionally closeted is too annoying, especially as I intend to climb the ranks. Plus, I’m going through all of this out of concern for coworkers who do not themselves maintain any sort of filter for respectability or for the comfort of others. 

There’s two more things to share right now, although I am aware this is getting long. First, there was a time in college where not being fully out significantly hurt me, as I detailed here, although I need to elaborate more. Second, I wanted to focus on the coworkers that make it a necessity to remain partially professionally closeted. However, there’s thankfully some other LGBT coworkers here and there as well as more and more young people coming into the workplace, some still holding on to biases but largely friendlier to the queer community. 

Coming out and Familial Shame

Aguilar

“Lo que mas me gusta de ti es que no se te nota.”

A while back, as my younger sisters were leaving behind their early teenage years, they asked me why I had never come out to them. “That’s easy,” I responded, “it’s cuz Ma kicked me out when I came out to her.” I caught them off guard with that response, because while it was that simple, there is also more to the story. From their perspectives (eight, nine and fourteen at the time), their older brother left the day after graduating high school to Mexico and just didn’t come back to live with them. I also wouldn’t put it past my mom to have told them that I was just tired of living with so many girls, as she alluded to many years later. Although I did want some space from them, the reality was that I felt that I was contributing by that point to the toxic environment, so when I was seventeen years old, I left home and didn’t return.

This isn’t a tragic story about running away and living in the streets though. After all, my mom had made it very clear my entire life that she would not hesitate to turn her back on me if I acknowledged who I was. By that point in our lives, my mom knew. Whether it was the gay porn on the family computer’s history, the way I pined in angst over specific male friends, or whether she had snuck into my room, found my journal or a library copy of some same sex young adult novel, I haven’t asked. Nor is our relationship close enough now that I feel comfortable finding out from her. Still, she had made it clear she knew and had an issue with it. So, before coming out to her, I made a plan for how I would spend the summer before college, as I had decided to come out to her toward the end of my senior year of high school. I asked an aunt in Mexico City if I could stay with her and my bio dad if I could stay with him in between college orientation and my move in date for the freshman dorms.

Of my actual coming out, I still look back on it as one of the worst days of my childhood and really one of the defining ends to that time. It has left an unmistakable mark on my relationship with my mom, the mostly single parent who raised me, and on all my relationships. After all, that day was proof that some love is conditional. Her response that day she saw as just something she had to do. Not only did she disapprove, but she insisted that I left her no choice, she had to protect my sisters by casting me out, lest I somehow spread “it” to them. I still remember the tears and melodrama, her struggling to breathe as if she were the one suddenly without a home. To this day, I struggle to have a relationship with her, because I know that if I had not gone on to be “successful” she would not speak to me. After all, now she can brag about her son the engineer. If she leaves out my sexuality, I can’t fully blame her, because even now, out of convenience I do the same.

But back then it was seemingly the worst thing I could have done to her. My rage at the time was that if she had not wanted to know, she should have continued to turn a blind eye. After all, I was almost done with high school and would be leaving soon. Perhaps the college admissions process had made her feel small, as I had largely done it on my own and she didn’t think to tell me to apply until admissions letters started arriving in the mail. I don’t blame her at all for this and she had made sure I was going to the type of schools that had guidance counselors that knew what they were doing. Perhaps it was that we were arguing so much in those days and she wanted to retaliate. So it is not difficult to see that my mom had been trying to push me to come out so that she could punish me for it as well and was doing what any bully would do, picking on things that make us most ashamed or that we feel are our biggest faults. 

Although I understand how this is rooted in shame, it feels so reductive to say my mom is ashamed of me or that I am ashamed of my sexuality. How I view myself now is tinged with modern thoughts, but back then, my vanity and arrogance helped me press onward in the face of opposition and yes, this is a defense mechanism, but it worked until it didn’t. It is more apt to say our entire culture is ashamed of queerness, on both sides of the border, and we were just two small people adrift in all of that. It would be easy to say this is just because we are Mexican and I have met many Mexican-Americans who would leave it at that. After all, the quote up top is from my aunt, one my mom’s cousins and only a couple years older than me, telling me at a party how she appreciated that I can pass for straight. Yet, it was a different cousin, my mom’s age, who accused my mom of homophobia and asked her to let my then housemate visit, mistakenly believing we were more than just friends. However, it is eminently more convenient to have most of my American coworkers assume that I am a prude with high standards, a bit of a nerd who has a hard time meeting women, than it is to have to deal with their discomfort at knowing that I am a sexually active queer man. Those who have found out and are not supportive, have no shame themselves in letting me know. Worse even are those coworkers whose prejudice blinds them to an obvious fact and who then drop the professional guise to relax into casual homophobia and expect me to agree with them. So, there is no letting America off the hook either or casting aspersions to Mexican culture as if it is a monolith. Or myself, because if I’m honest, professionally I’m still in the closet, selectively coming out to coworkers but also allowing them to assume that I am straight. 

Shame is a topic that I want to explore more. Both in how I was taught that being queer was bad as a child, how it has served me as an adult, and how I need to push it off to thrive as an adult. It just felt that coming out was where I had to start, because it marks such a difference between what is seen but not acknowledged and what once acknowledged lingers over every interaction out there in their hegemony. Because as nice as it is to believe that one day it won’t matter, that day is not today, and except in a few industries, it seems that we are all still encountering people who reward those who can pass more than those who cannot. 

I’ll leave it here for now, to gather thoughts on what the next post should be.  

Note: I tried to schedule this post to publish on March 16, 2021 at 6 PM. I apparently didn’t set this up correctly so I manually posted it and backdated it.