Joseph Sciambra - Surviving Gay… Barely

Marble Torso of a God or Athlete, Roman Imperial, circa 1st/2nd Century A.D.

In 1999, I walked into the world famous Castro District of San Francisco as a disaffected young man of almost nineteen years of age. I had grown up bullied and lonely, and I was looking to finally belong. Almost since I was a child nearing adolescence, the other boys at school instinctively rejected me. While they made the decisive testosterone fueled jump to more masculine pursuits, such as aggressive schoolyard play and sports, I was timid and unsure. While their voices deepened and sounded increasingly confident, mine remained high-pitched but strangely muted. While they grew taller and filled-out, I just became thinner and ganglier. The pre-macho boys were typically the best at playing kick-ball and inevitably turn out to be recess and PE team captains. Focusing on my embarrassing apparent lack of skill, they were always quick to ridicule and loudly point out my utter worthlessness. No one ever wanted me on their team. After even the smaller girls got picked, I was always the default last man standing.

There were a few other unathletic boys in my class, either overweight or exceedingly short, who also got similarly passed-over. But they could turn rejection into an advantage through comical self-deprecation or by poking fun at me or someone else. I couldnt do that. I tended to take everything to heart. I froze at the merest slight. The often cruel unthinking banter of boys seemed deliberately vicious. Yet, the more they rejected and taunted me, the more I wanted to belong. My childhood fantasies began to center around a benevolent superhero who would adopt me as his sidekick. In the afternoon, I would rush home to see after-school reruns of Batman and imagine myself as Burt Ward. To this day, its highly significant that homoerotic fantasies about Batman and Robin are pervasive in gay male culture.

When I arrived in San Francisco, I was still tall, thin, and uncoordinated, but I quickly discovered that men wanted to be with me. Here, a boyish stick frame was a distinct advantage. That first night, as I crept into my first gay bar, I was the same insecure and desperately shy kid. I didnt know what to do. My only experience with the world of male-on-male sexuality was through watching gay porn. And, in those images I was fascinated. There was a fundamental order and a ritual to everything portrayed: old with young, big over small, the experienced and the naive. The mature and supremely masculine always ushered into manhood the fresh-faced and less physically impressive youthful rookies.

From porn, I sort of knew what to expect; I had seen such ominous similarly titled films like: Daddy It Hurts, Stop It Hurts, and Its Gonna Hurt. I imagined my transition to masculinity as an initiation rite. And at the near height of the AIDS crisis, like male youths in tribal cultures, who had to endure some sort of physical torment or trial in order to join the community of men, I was willing to suffer anything in the process; even to die.

With my back to the crowded dance floor, I joined a scattered line of men at the bar. The boy no one wanted on his team became the near favorite. Here, proficiency wasnt a necessity, only budding vigor, stamina, and unquestioning willingness. Unlike during our lost childhood, there were men willing to coach and guide us. I looked to my left and to my right and met the cold hard stares of a few intense looking guys. Some gave off a knowing half smile. I glanced down at my drink. When I looked up they were still watching. A man in a tight thin t-shirt that showed off his pecs like Adam West suddenly asked me to dance. I was the first chosen. On the dance floor, he moved close and put his mouth to my ear. Over the loud music I could slightly make-out a muffled question. In the process, the one-day growth of hair on his chin brushed against my newly shaved face. In that accidental moment, I thrilled in the intimacy.

As a boy, I obsessed upon Sonny Crocketts stubble, the mustache of Magnum PI, and the mere fact that the Six Million Dollar Man had a hairy chest. As a somewhat hairless and unsure initiate, I was immediately drawn to those men who fit my juvenile preconceptions of masculinity. This duality persists in committed and or married same-sex male couples where oftentimes, but not always, pairings involve a larger man, who conforms to certain traditional masculine traits, and a smaller partner who exhibits more effeminate characteristics. And, yet even in those matches which closely resemble each other, the slightest variations instigates a hierarchical rank, with minor differences in height, muscle mass, mannerisms, pitch of voice, and aggressiveness determining each persons role. In a sense, its a return to the masculine pecking orders of the schoolyard. Towards the final years of the 1990s, when bareback sex roared back into popularity, men of lesser masculine attributes spoke of a gay urban legend whereby the infusion of semen from a virile male into a receptive male causes an increase in testosterone levels and secondary sex characteristics such as the growth of boy hair.

As someone new to the scene, the unrelenting subliminal fear is that you will remain in constant boyhood or worse still permanently lapse into the humiliation of your former sissy persona. In the 1990s, the saddest cases were those men, now well into their 20s, that still sported bowl cuts and bleached blond hair. They starved to remain thin and described themselves as boys in gay-sex-adverts. As they got older, their age-range for a potential daddy similarly increased. However, typically almost everyone had a first lover that was older, experienced, and reassuring. In our minds, they are accompanying us into the world of men that we always felt alienated from. And, they apparently accomplished this feat through sex.

According to a 2015 HIV Surveillance Report from the CDC, 88.3% of HIV-negative men practiced anal sex in the last 12 months; the numbers were only slightly higher for HIV-positive men. Another study found that: 71.8% of MSM had anal sex and 28.2% reported oral sex at last encounter. Most significantly:

Over one-half (52.0%) of MSM aged 1824 reported a recent male anal sex partner who was >5 years olderBy contrast, only 7.9% of heterosexual men and 10.0% of heterosexual women in this age group reported a recent partner who was >5 years older.

In gay porn, the denouement is always the anal sex act. As an inexperienced eighteen year old, I found the aspirations of gay men to be strikingly similar. For an encounter that did not at least include the possibility of anal intercourse seemed incidental and quick. Anal sex lent male homosexuality a certain amount of intimacy. The possibility of that fusion was unbelievably alluring. But I was petrified by the ever-present likelihood of AIDS, thus I refused to risk my life even though I knew I would remain incomplete until I found the courage to submit. A frustrated boyfriend accepted a sort of second-best when I agreed to a form of frottage through which he would thrust his penis between my closed legs. It was an elaborate form of mutual masturbation. Years later, I would tragically discover that the longed for insertive form of this action was similarly shallow.

Only, fear could not squelch this persistent nagging feeling that something remained invariably incomplete within me. I thought about it, and then one day I calmly walked to the local drug-store. Near the gay mecca of the Castro, it was well-stocked with various over-the-counter laxatives and Fleet enemas. For the next hours, I ate very little and washed down a few ex-lax with plentiful amounts of water. The following morning, I had second thoughts when I took the enema out of the box. With its long pre-lubricated syringe, it looked like a quasi torture device. For a few minutes, I leaned against the bathroom sink with every muscle in my body clenched until I couldnt stand it anymore. Looking back, it was like a ritual cleansing before a ceremony in some pagan temple. I was probing my body to initiate rebirth, except no matter how much I pumped myself full with water and salt, I became like the Dead Sea at Sodom. I floated for awhile, but there was nothing to sustain me. It existed for its own sake.