july 1 1 2 0 0 4 »
Let’s do a swap!
For some, versatility is a way to break down
what they see as a stymied, rigid, no-longer-useful
sense of masculinity. Mike Moulton, a gay Port
land bookkeeper who identifies himself as a “ver
satile top,” says: “Unfortunately, the gay commu
nity continues to look to the straight community
for affirmation of gay men’s ideas of masculinity.
Being a bottom is likened to
the woman’s sexual role in
straight relationships, thus ren
dering any gay man who is a
bottom as less masculine.”
It becomes even more com
plicated when dealing with
bisexuality and transsexualism
where notions of masculine/
feminine behaviors and aggres-
sive/passive attitudes becomes
blurred at best. When my co
worker asked me about my
preferences as a bisexual, how was 1 to answer? I
enjoy both aggressive and passive roles with my
female partners and my male partners. No
top/bottom model works for my sexual history.
And what if my answer to Jon is, “I’d like
to fuck Henry Rollins or get fucked by Alan
Cummings”? How does this response reconcile
with our notions of top/bottom behavior? Can
two tops get it on? Can two bottoms?
DAVIS
“Only tops” preferred partners to be their age
or younger at the level of 73 percent. These
statistics hold relatively stable for height and
weight preferences, hairy/smcxtth preferences
and rough/gentle sexual preferences— all of
which seemed to match the top/bottom type.
21
Doesn’t queer
theory have
something more
interesting and
multifaceted to
tell us about the
way men fuck?
urtis Mackay, who
works in transporta
tion in Portland, is a
23-year-old gay man in a
long-tenn relationship. “I’ve
loved me some daddies but
prefer equal roles,” he says.
“My partner and I have been
together a total of 4 1/2 years
and are 100 percent versatile.”
To Mackay, men who stick
to only being a top or a bottom miss out on
opportunities for prolonging pleasure. “W ho
doesn’t want to stop when you get too close
[to coming] and switch?” he asks. “More guys
should try it.”
Versatility, it would seem, does not need to
mean a lessening of one’s appetite for either
one sexual role or another. Many queer men
find that switching between being the top and
the bottom opens sex to fresh new possibilities.
“Sexual versatility is one of the assets and
pleasures of gay life,” according to Picano and
Silverstein. “Many gay men are capable of
changing their sexual role depending upon the
sexual circumstances or the physical character
istics of their sexual partner. T he sexually flexi
ble man has opened his body for pleasure.”
Kinksters mix it up
ne would think that S/M, uniform,
daddy/son and bear subcultures, all of
which thrive on dichotomy, would be
a place where the traditional vision of sexual
roles would stand fast. But this is not necessar
ily the case.
“Men do switch roles,” says 4Tyear-old Earl
A. Coffman, “and, no, ‘versatile’ is not a myth.”
Coffman, a gay Portlander who holds the title of
Mr. Oregon State Leather 2003, doesn’t think
categories define the man but rather the man
defines the category.
“It plays out how the individuals allow it to
play out,” Coffman says. “Basically, everyone
needs to be who they are and who they want to
be. W hat other people think doesn’t matter.
And, yes, you can be a top and get fucked.”
Tbe leather/rubber community and its part
ner subculture of dominance and submission
thrive on sexual versatility, where a man who
identifies himself as a master can fulfill his fan
tasies of being the slave and vice versa. The bear
community has its roots in a broader vision of
masculinity, a manliness that encompasses both
harder and softer aspects, both ferocious aggres
sion and gentle passion.
Although the daddy/son subculture imparts
a familial, mentoring role beyond the bed
room, the role-playing aspects can move into
sexual roles as well. Andy Mangels, best-selling
novelist and publisher of InUniform.com, says:
“Recognizing and exploring role-play should bring diversity and excitement to the bedroom,
not restriction and boredom”
— Andy Mangels (left, with “son” Paul Smalley and partner Don Hood)
“Sexually, the top is generally the fucker, not
the fuckee— or whatever activity is going on.
However, psychologically or emotionally or
sometimes physically, the top can be on the
bottom, or the bottom on the top. A daddy
telling his boy to fuck him isn’t that rare.”
This plays out in the uniform subculture as
well. “We partake in roles all our life,” says
Mangels, who is in a triad relationship with his
partner and their “son.” “We have work roles,
home life roles, roles with our family, roles
with our friends and roles with our lovers. Rec
ognizing and exploring role-play should bring
diversity and excitement to the bedroom, not
restriction and boredom.”
In all of these
subcultures, the sur
prise is often the
norm. “Sexual roles
rarely correspond to
the outside life,"
Mangels says.
“Many drag queens
are tops in the bed
room. Many CEOs
and construction
workers and cops are
bottoms. Most bot
toms I know are pretty masculine. The phrase
‘take it like a man’ is a part of our culture for a
reason. Straight guys don’t get how homoerotic
that phrase is.”
These role-expanding ideas shouldn’t sur
prise us. Subcultures are often bom out of a
sense of being the “outsider.” As a group feels
left out by those within their own culture,
they often define their group through experi
mental sexual roles, open-minded affection
and a lack of judgmental criticism.
A matter of attitude
n the final analysis, top and bottom
roles in the bedroom are, by the nature
of the beast with two backs, here to stay.
But through exploration and play, the many
forms these roles can take allow gay and bi
men the chance to redefine the nature of
sexual relationship, the characteristics of
masculinity and
act of sex itself.
“T h e gay com
munity should no
longer look to the
straight communi
ty for role models
regarding gender
and sex,” says
Moulton. “They
do not apply to us.
There is no ‘mas
culine’ and ‘femi
nine’ role in gay sex, only in attitude.”
It’s a brave new (homo)sexual world. And
we can make it whatever we’d like it to be. i n
I
With more than 60 percent
of the respondents
iden tifying as some form
o f versatile, the categories
o f top and bottom seem
less rigid than popular
opinion suggests
G lenn S cofield W illiams writes poetry, prose,
plays, periodica and pom in Portland.
TALK IS CHEAP,
i flCTIOn TALKS!
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