This is just a musing, or perhaps a rant: we have a profile on SLS (the dominant “swingers” dating site, at least in my city). Until today, we were both listed as “bi-curious.” Now, to be clear, I’m straight. I know that about myself. I have had sex with a couple of guys, always limited to oral, and none of it since, oh, about twenty years ago.
I occasionally fantasize (though as fantasies go, it’s more of a cerebral one than a libidinal one) about sucking a guy’s cock. Not in the, “it-makes-me-hard-to-imagine” kind of way – in the “hmmm-that-would-be-interesting” kind of way. And I like the male body just fine. I think porn with hot guys is hotter than porn without.
And it doesn’t gross me out to imagine incidental or even more-than-incidental contact with a guy in a group sex situation.
Turns out, this all is apparently differentiating in the world of swingers. So much so that checking the “bi-curious” box on SLS has had all sorts of unfortunate results. On the one hand, it seems that couples, the male of whom is straight, shy the fuck away from folks like me, worried that I might, oh, fuck them up the ass when they’re not looking. And, on the other, it seems that couples the male of whom is bi or gay, and for whom the primary benefit of swinging is his getting some contact with cock, gravitate to me/us like moths to a flame.
Here’s a snippet from a recent chat I had:
“I like integration of all parties. I don’t crave cock, but I like the idea of being close with A. and having another couple close with us, and not having to worry if the guy is going to freak out if he feels my hands on his balls…lol”
My response? “I think it’s safe to say I wouldn’t freak out, but I can’t promise I’d welcome it. Worst case, for me, would be ‘No thanks,’ and a gentle push away.”
But he kept circling back [sic, throughout]:
“does it intereest/excite your wife…the throught of you sucking a mans cock infront of her?”
In response to this, I moved on, telling him “This is an area of greater excitement for you than for us.” And from there, we graduated to not making plans together. (I had the distinct sense I could “hear” his hand stroking his cock as he typed the typo-laden question above.)
So on to the rant: What? The? Fuck?
Seriously?
I don’t want to hang out with these people, let alone fuck them. Men who are so uptight that they imagine that the fact that I might check a “bi-curious” box means I’m going to rape them? Other men who are so creepy that they make the former set of men seem likely to be right in the assumptions to which they leap?
Yuck.
You’re not the only man in this situation. Perhaps try to locate a swingers site that is more gender-fluid than hetero-normative? And yes, it’s still considered hetero even though the women are all “bi”. I’d look for a site that has more pansexual or heteroflexible people on it. Not that I can recommend any since we’re not swingers. But you MIGHT have some luck with Fetlife.
Yeah. In my city there’s a – yes, one – party that caters to “Bi” men. I haven’t been to the party, but I’m not sure it’s right for me, as I’m really *not* bi. I’m what I thought was genuinely “bi-curious.” But what the hell. Anyway, as I document here, I’m somewhere in that netherworld between “swinging” and “polyamory.” I’m not so serious that I want a LOV-ah (or an intense, emotional relationship). But I want to know the names – and the backstories – of the people I have sex with. And I’d like to care about them a little.
It takes all kinds to make a world. I read a lot of m/m erotica, and some have taken that to mean that I would want to direct them in their play. Um, no. Just means I wouldn’t shy away if it was part of a threesome deal…
I had a funny conversation with my trainer (about whom you may have read elsewhere in this blog) about pegging the other day. “But doesn’t that make you gay, if you like being pegged?” she asked.
“Um, no,” I said. “I’m pretty sure that to be gay, you have to prefer sex with members of the same sex.”
And I actually like reading M/M erotica. Which is different than wanting to fuck, or be fucked by, a man. I had a friend once who could only come when masturbating to F/F porn. This, a woman who’s straight as possible.
I have run into these two extremes as a bisexual female myself. More often than not.
Among other women? Or with men?
I guess everyone approaches someone’s profile with their own agenda and biases. What they read and interupt will be very different from the next person. When I was on a swinging site we filled in the orientation section in the way we thought was accurate but we then made sure that we wrote within our profile more details explaining what those definition meant to us. Maybe writing exactly what you have written here into your profile might work well?
Mollyxxx
I really thought I had done that.
I think the bottom line is your first line: people want what they want, seek what they seek….
Sorry about your recent bad experiences in checking the bi-curious box. We note from our own very limited experiences that there doesn’t seem to be much negativity expressed toward guys who identify as bi-curious or bi. We’re certain that there are those who would steer clear of us in that situation although, like you, Jack identifies as straight and has similar attitudes about incidental contact with guys during group sex. Presented with similar inquiries to the one you quote, we’d probably move on as well. It is not a turn-on for us at all. But neither would we be turned on by someone who was terrified that incidental touching would make them gay, or that “bi-curious” means rape. Neither is our ideal play partner.
– Jill
Agree agree agree.
If you told me you were bi-curious, I would understand that you were open to sexual experimentation with other men, that it isn’t what you would seek, but if it’s there you will participate. If you told me you were bisexual, I would understand that you were sexually attracted to men as well as women and would seek sex with either, or both.
One of the unexpected consequences of the more fluid sexuality we enjoy
these days is the human need for categorizations crashing head on with
our current reluctance to label anything. Maybe the best thing to do is as someone else suggested: define exactly what you mean by the checks in the box.
The problem, though, isn’t me, isn’t what I wrote. On the one hand, the fact that I’m even hypothetically comfortable, in certain circumstances, with even limited male/male contact, is a disqualifier for many. And the same fact is the source of a fountain of hope for others.
The words down below? They totally don’t matter. Alas.
Those two extremes really suck. I had a male friend who wanted to have a threesome with me and a girl he knew. He kept talking about it and I kept saying I’d be down. Then when we started to actually make plans I asked him how he would feel if I touched him or potentially blew him. He freaked his shit out and gave the typical spiel about not being gay. I mean, all the dude would have had to say was, “no, I’m not into that, let’s stick to the girl and call it a day” and I would have never touched him. It really amazes me sometimes that people can want to have a MMF threesome but freak out at the slightest touch between the two males. A little skin contact is damn near unavoidable.
That being said, you’re right that the guys who try to force their sexuality on the other male really do ruin it for the rest of us…