This was originally written for Pucker Up, a journal of pansexual political articles. I pulled it from publication at the request of *Jane, the ex-girlfriend I wrote about in the essay. Due to a computer glitch, I've lost the end of this essay. My apologies.

There are several bands I listen to that could roughly fall under a category called "Jason's Favorite Bands That He Doesn't Actually Listen To A Lot Of." There is Sugar (I own two albums of theirs) and the Smiths (two albums also), the Replacements (one album) and Afghan Whigs (one). And on and on.

But perhaps my favorite of the favorite bands that I don't actually listen to a lot of is Pavement. I own two of their albums -- the excellent "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" and the even more excellent "Slanted and Enchanted." Frankly, these two albums give me my Pavement fill. I enjoy listening to them in my apartment really loud, playing air guitar and singing along and kicking my kitchen chairs over, feeling like a rock star. I enjoy blasting them in my Walkman as I sit on the clink and clanky trains of the Chicago Transit Authority, my hometown, smiling at my now-neighbors-soon-to-be-strangers-again train companions, a look on my face that I hope conveys the thought, "Aha, I'm listening to Pavement and you don't even know, do you?"

What is it about Pavement that I like so much? Ah, that is an easy question, perhaps the only one in this essay. I like Pavement because, more than any other band in modern music, they make me feel like a man when I listen to them. The rest of this essay deals with more complicated questions, the questions that answer why this is, and why it's so important.

Stop breathing!
Stop breathing
Breathing for me now
Write it on a postcard,
'Dad, they broke me,
Dad, they broke me'
                --Pavement, from "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain"

"You see, he's a straight guy -- he loves to have sex with women, loves dating 'em, loves being with 'em. But, you see, his behavior and hobbies and mannerisms resemble the stereotypical gay man much more so than the stereotypical straight man. Oh, it's a hoot! The straight world wants nothing to do with him; the gay world constantly tries to out him when he was never 'in' in the first place. Straight women don't date him 'cause they think he's gay; bisexual women date him just to admit later that he fulfills their fantasy role of the beautiful little fag boy that they in reality can never have. Oh, it's loaded with possibilities. We could easily run 22, 26 episodes just on that premise."

Of course, my sexuality is so much more than that. And yet, in some ways, it is so much less than that also. With all the intellectualizing and philosophizing and overanalyzing I do over my sexuality, I tend to forget that underlying it all is this very simple need, this desire, to fuck. I think it's easy to forget that with all the politics and shades of grey and sometimes posturing that goes with American sexuality, that we would have none of these problems if, at the very core of our being, the very center of our egos, we were not built with the desire to fuck, to touch naked flesh and be touched, to have our sexual organs rubbed and tickled and sucked and licked to the point where our eyes flutter and our head lolls back and we have our little death, our orgasm, our body's way of signaling to us that we have done something right.

So, maybe I should start with that as my ground zero of this explanation of my sexuality. I like to fuck. I like to fuck women. I like to put my penis inside of them (or if you prefer, I like to have them put me in). I like everything there is to like about having sex with a woman -- the touch of their hair, the beautiful curve of the underside of their breasts, the feel of their back muscles as they flex and strain in the bed, the smell and taste of their vagina. There. I said it. I'm not going to apologize for it, nor should there be any need for me to, any more than a woman needs to apologize for liking to fuck other women.

But. But there always is a but, isn't there?

So hot
in the August sun
and you're the kind of girl I like
Because you're empty
and I'm empty
and we can never quarantine the past
              --Pavement, from "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain"

The women I get really attracted to are tall, quite tall. With short hair, quite short. And small breasts. And no hips. Women who don't like to wear makeup. Women that enjoy wearing men's clothes. Women who are unusually strong, aggressive, independent. Women who often come from checkered pasts or dysfunctional families, backgrounds that forced them to grow up quickly. Women that look like thirteen-year-old boys.

This is the most blatant similarity between me and most gay men, this attraction to people who either are boys or look like boys, and it is constantly used as an attack against me. "It proves that you're a closeted queer," I am told. "Being attracted to women with no feminine qualities really shows that you are subconsciously seeking out men."

But I don't see it that way, and I try to show my accusers that. To me, the most powerful form of femininity, the most potent, is the one embodied in these women. It is femininity on their own terms, the really sensuous kind that can only be achieved form an inner knowledge of what core things fundamentally make them a woman, not the accrouchments assigned to them over the years. A woman who can stand up and say, "these are the things that make me feel feminine" are the women who have infinitely more sex appeal to me than the ones who blithely accept the trappings that not only men but other women tell them they must have to be a woman. And really, I'd have it no other way. Oh, it gets me in trouble sometimes -- I do tend to fall in love with A LOT of lesbians -- but in general, I say keep your Cindy Crawford and teased hair and big fake boobs and high heels. Now, Bridget Fonda for example... ooh mama.

There are many other stereotypical traits I share with many gay males. I have an overall fey appearance to my body; I tend to talk a lot with my hands, gesturing wildly into the air to make a point; I cry at the drop of a hat, especially during sad movies; I have a finely-tuned appreciation for showtunes and Broadway plays; I enjoy appearing dapper in public; I have an almost lethal addiction to PBS; and there are several gay authors who I enjoy much more than most straight ones.

Conversely, there are many things about straight male society that I have no interest or appreciation for. I don't like cars -- I don't like working on them or driving them or talking about them or owning them; I don't like sports -- I don't like playing them or watching them or discussing them or betting on them or reading about them; I could really care less about firearms, or the military, or any other cultural items of warfare; I am too shy to approach strange women, so can't go cruising at a bar with my friends; women that most straight men find attractive do nothing for me; I even demand that my best relationships with other straight males transcend that usual unspoken, surface-level mano-y-mano, and instead be ones where I can confide in them, share with them my secrets and my fears and the other emotional things usually reserved for female platonic relationships.

As I said, these things do not exactly endear me to the straight community. Most women don't consider me "manly" enough to be attractive; men alternately deride me for my behavior or believe it to be an elaborate set-up to appear to be a "sensitive guy" so I'll get laid more. But does this mean that I automatically fall into the gay or bisexual communities by default? I'm not sure, but those communities are damned determined to make it so.

Two states!

We want two states!
North and south!
Oh, two states
Forty million daggers!
Forty million daggers!
Forty million daggers!
Forty million daggers!
Two states!
We want two states!
There's no culture!
There's no spies!
Forty million daggers!
Forty million daggers!
Forty million daggers!
Forty million daggers!
                           --Pavement, from "Slanted and Enchanted"

I really do love my gay male friends, dearly. But I get frustrated with the catty, pretentious way they react to life around them, especially when confronted with a threatening situation, one where more good could be accomplished with the opposite reaction. But then I feel guilty for thinking that, because they are just acting their way, they are exhibiting their natural personality and can no more help their reactions to life than I can mine. But then I get confused when my friends get angry over other gay men who don't act like them, who don't act in a standardized "gay" way. But I realize that the gay community must show some form of unity to overcome the overwhelming discrimination that exists, even if it is a unity of behavior. But then I don't understand whey they get angry when someone says, "You gay people act all alike." But I know that I would get angry if someone tried to neatly compartmentalize me. But, if that is true, why does the overwhelming attitude of many gay men tend to be, "There are two types of men in the world -- those who are gay, and those who are gay and don't realize it"?

Likewise, I absolutely love and treasure the lesbian friends and ex-lovers that I have. But I get so angry, I get so incredibly angry sometimes, when it seems that every disagreement, every debate, every argument that comes up, from the merits of David Lynch all the way to what we're having for dinner, ultimately ends in the unarguable declaration, "Well, it's part of the patriarchal system we have in this country. You men have been running things for 400 years and that's why things are so fucked up and why we get no justice, and why, apparently, I'm not going to get to have Thai for dinner tonight." But, I can certainly understand this attitude; and, much of what they say is true; and, if I was a woman, there's a very good chance that I'd have the exact same attitude. But why is it that, even though history is littered with exceptional women that made great leaps forward for the gender, not a single one of them, according to my friends, ever seemed to do anything wrong in all that time? But then again, what's the point of spotlighting women's mistakes when there are so many people out there more than happy to do it already? But sometimes, sometimes I get tired of my friends having absolutely no interest in seeing any movie or reading any book or listening to any band that doesn't have something to do with lesbian issues; sometimes I just want to go out with them and watch some light escapist entertainment and simply laugh and have a fun time, without a lesson having to be embedded in everything. But if I was a lesbian and was confronted with the overwhelming amount of insulting, misogynistic, offensive pop culture out there, you better be damned sure I'd be seeking out lesbian culture too. But why is it that when I'm offended by a movie, when I leave a theatre with the feeling like I am the Devil simply because I have a penis, why am I told by their community that I have no right to be offended and that "it's my job to take it" to make up for all the other offensive crap out there directed at women? Whew!

Ultimately, I would like to be able to have the same public attitude towards the gay communities as I do about any other group, like farmers, or people from the coasts, or folk artists, or Polish grandmothers. The attitude is a simple one -- there are both good things about these groups, and bad things. The gay communities are no exception. There are many fantastic, wonderful things to learn from, and to love, and to be inspired by. There are also things that can piss the hell out of you, make you throw your arms in the air, scream "AAAUUUGH!" and run away fast. It is the same attitude, incidentally, that every single one of my gay friends also privately holds about their communities.

Unfortunately, society as a whole is not up to this level. A huge portion of the population refuses to see anything good about being queer, mercilessly persecute them, hunt them down, kill them in the streets like animals. Until that changes, those of us who have any friendly thoughts at all toward the gay communities must be the supporters, must attempt to balance out all the hate by throwing ourselves in the opposite, all-positive direction, even as privately I am getting increasingly sick of the attempts to "prove" that I am gay and more and more just want to shout, "You know what? Please don't get drunk anymore and start quoting the '47 Signs You Are Closeted' article from the new issue of 'Out.' I'm sick of it. And no, I'm not sick of it because you're hitting too close to the mark, I'm... just... simply... sick... of... it."

And as far as the bisexual community goes... I respect what they do. I understand what they are trying to accomplish. But... and this is just one big "but" that I have... But, I have a real problem with the fact that almost every public, published bisexual seems to be making the point that the best thing about being bisexual is getting to double your chances of getting laid. I have a real problem with the fact that the bisexual community likes to foster an attitude to the mainstream world that being bisexual is primarily a sexual thing, emphasizing a hedonistic lifestyle and devil-may-care attitude and multipartner encounters with little or no emotional context.

Certainly, I in no way mean to implicate the vast number of bisexuals out there. Almost all the out bisexuals I know have the same exact attitude that I do, and it is why they are so reluctant to get involved with the established bisexual community. Bisexuality, in reality, has little to do with trying to get laid as much as possible (or at least, not any more than our natural human craving to do so), and bisexuals fundamentally want what we all want -- a little happiness, a little security, a little someone to call their own. But it is an undeniable fact, a fact that I dare anyone to challenge, that the most widely-exposed magazine of the bisexual community, the one with one of the highest circulations, the one that mainstream magazines love to quote, literally has the title "Anything That Moves."

Darling, don't you go and cut your hair
Do you think it's going to make him change
I'm just a boy with a new haircut
and that's a pretty nice haircut
              --Pavement, from "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain"

However, I never have had sex with a man, and as you've noticed, I do refer to myself as straight. A contradiction? I say not. I refuse to call myself bisexual because, fundamentally, I am completely unequipped to consider any emotional, romantic, intimate contact with another man. It is just how I am built -- the thought of "dating" a man, of holding their hand, worrying about their happiness, taking vacations and spending holidays together, fills me with the same deep uncomfortableness that the thought of fucking my mom does. And to me, "sexuality" has very little to do with what you will fuck and what can get you off, and has everything to do with the emotions involved, with the decisions that will fill you with happiness and giggling and a deep, resonating sense of fulfillment, not just the decisions that will fill you with sperm. To deny this is not only to insult me, but to insult all the brave men and women who have the courage to stand up in this conservative air of ours and declare, "You know what? I love this man/woman of mine!"

This is not to say that I am not confused. Frankly, I am. With everything that I've told you, it should come as no surprise that I've never felt at ease with my body or at ease with my attitude and behavior about the world. There are no schools I can call myself a pupil of, no manifesto I can point to and say, "If you read this, you will understand me better." I feel like a neuter; I feel sexless; I feel like my body is but a shell designed to carry this definitionless soul around in.

For the longest time, I thought that this was an issue of my sexuality. I was convinced that if I could just figure out my orientation, everything else would clear up of its own accord and I would become whole. So, I set out. I devoted myself to really figuring out what it is that I like, what it is that I want, and most importantly, what it is that I DON'T want. And you know what? I figured it out. I really am very comfortable with my sexuality, with the choices I make both physically and emotionally. And you know what? I still felt like a neuter.

There are two things that have happened to me this year that have offered a radical new solution to me, a possibility for contemplation that never really occurred to me to question in my 28 years on this planet. Strangely (or serrendipuously) enough, the two incidents occurred within two weeks of each other. First, I read an article by Karen Green, a woman I hardly know and have exchanged maybe two sentences with in my entire life. Second, I was fucked in the ass by my girlfriend. Who, you may imagine, I know a bit more intimately than Karen.

Fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly
Don't try, try, try, try, try
It's a brand new era
it feels great
It's a brand new era
but it came too late
              --Pavement, from "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain"

When we met, I was just getting through a two-year period in which I didn't date at all and hadn't had sex once. Frankly, it wasn't by choice. Every time I initiated contact with a woman, I was either turned down, or the first date went comically, horribly wrong (which fueled a lot of great writing, mind you, but did not exactly do wonders for my self-esteem). At the point when Jane and I met, I had almost convinced myself that I was simply no longer attractive and would never find a mate again.

So. That was the beginning. And a few weeks later we were in bed one night, idly discussing sexual fantasies, and I had asked her to show me the toys she owned. She was pulling out various rubber and/or electric devices, things she used on a regular basis not only on herself but various ex-lovers, when we came to this big black thing with a hole in the middle, surrounded by straps.

"What's this?" I asked.

"Oh, that's a strap-on for a dildo," she said. "Yeah, I like to wear that under my clothes sometimes."

"Ha-ha-ha!" I laughed. "No... really?"

"Yeah, really. It's a common activity in the dyke world."

"...Really?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Um... I don't know. It makes me feel powerful. It makes me feel strong and macho and agressive when I'm wearing it under my pants."

"Have you ever fucked your lover with it?"

"Oh, sure, all the time. But..." and she saddled up to me, "here's one of MY fantasies. I've always wanted to fuck a boy with this."

"Oh."

"Yep," she said, looking off into space. "That's something I'd really like to do. A lot. A LOT."

And so, our relationship continued. It was filled, as you may imagine, with its joyous, funny moments (like when we both developed a crush on the same co-worker of mine) and not-so-funny (like when we got into a shouting match on a public sidewalk after seeing "Female Pervasions"), and even moments that were simply uncomfortable (like when we saw "Chasing Amy" -- talk about a film we should never have gone to). She admitted that many of her gay friends were disappointed in her for "going back to the dark side;" I admitted that many of my straight friends considered me a hero for what they considered "turning a lesbian." And when I told her that it bothered me that she referred to herself as a dyke, even when being introduced to people with me as one half of a couple, she said, "Well, what do you want me to say? I'm certainly not straight, and I don't want to be lumped in with the popular image of bisexuality. I'm not exactly a dyke either, but it's the one community that I have the most in common with. So that's why I call myself a dyke. And you'll just have to deal with it, Jason." Which I did, as well as I could.

And one late, drunken night in bed, after hearing her fantasy mentioned casually several more times since that first, and me sufficiently three-sheets-to-the-wind and sufficiently enamored with her, I whispered, "You know, if you'd like to fuck me, you could." And so she did.

I'm not sure what to say about the experience. I found out quickly that I don't like anal sex -- it hurts and is very invading and frankly, gave me no pleasure at all. And when the time came for me to turn around and fuck her in the ass, I quickly realized that it is a much more difficult activity to pull off than is shown in porn tapes. Also, the act of having my legs in the air and someone dominating my limbs was a physically uncomfortable one to me, but one that I supposed I could get used to over time.

The real problem began the next day. About a half-hour after I left her house, I was struck with a really disturbing thought, one that really rattled me -- suppose Jane enjoyed the act of fucking me more than she enjoyed it when I fucked her. The thought left me feeling really empty. After all, Jane's sexual attraction to me, her desire to have sex with me, to have me bring her to orgasm, was one of the few things in the last two years that really reconciled my body and my mind, made me feel like I had a sexuality, made me feel like the straight, sexy man that I fundamentally am. The thought that she was deriving more pleasure from a fantasy in which she was in actuality a gay man and that she was fucking another gay man (and yes, this was another common fantasy she talked about) not only negated these positive feelings I was having, it actually went the opposite way -- it made me MORE of a stranger to my sexuality than if we had never had sex in the first place.

I had a sneaking suspicion that this fear of mine was unfounded, but I wasn't sure. I didn't want to discuss it with Jane, because the experience had left her with lingering feelings of pure joy and ecstasy (she later admitted that it was a highlight of her sexual life), and I didn't want to do anything to taint that memory.

So, I set about to solve the problem the only way I know how to solve problems -- I read. I read through a book called "Doing It For Daddy," and I read through the magazine "Black Sheets," and another called "Pucker Up," as well as some other things. What I learned was something that I suspected but nonetheless surprised me -- that this was indeed a rampant fantasy among the lesbian and bi communities, this fantasy about being a man, about fucking a man, a desire to have a phallus, a desire so strong that they indeed strap on fake ones underneath their clothes, an activity so common that there is an entire subculture built around it.

Among the women who explained their actions and delved into the reasons, their theories were surprisingly consistent. Realizing of course that not every woman said this exact thing, there were certain unifying ideas that kept coming up: that these women didn't necessarily want to actually be men; that these phalluses were essentially a manifestation of the power and aggression and dominance that the male world holds; that wearing a phallus gives them a physical and emotional feeling of empowerment, of being in charge of their destiny and their world; that the act of fucking a man was to them the act of taking control of themselves, a very intense and physical declaration of their own sexuality, a declaration that they do indeed enjoy sex and have the right to enjoy it and have the right to be agressive in bed; that the fantasy gravitates around gay men mostly because most of the women in question are so sick and disgusted by the straight world that it would not be a turn-on to imagine being one, that gay males were about the only males they could stand; but that fundamentally they were women, they enjoyed being women, they were proud of their womb, wouldn't have it any other way; and that this fantasy about having a penis didn't prevent them from enjoying female sexual activities, even (more often than I ever imagined) that unique pleasure they get from us men's fleshy rods, those permanently-attached phalluses that I had just assumed so many of them loathed. Reading and understanding these stories made me realize that Jane's enjoyment of our act was much more about getting to realize a long-standing and emotionally-boosting fantasy, and not about wishing that I was gay. And least we forget that base motivation behind sexuality that I mentioned earlier, the act also served as a nice way to get her sexual organs buzzing, to get that clitoris hard and tingling and full of blood. Which it was, I can attest, by the time we finished.

Strangely enough, Jane and I broke up the same day that I met Karen Green for the first time. It didn't really have to do with sexual issues or orientation ones -- it had mostly to do with the fact that my first novel comes out in a month and I have gotten so overwhelmed with the amount of work involved with it (I am part owner of the small press putting it out) that I have found myself with no time to devote towards putting in what I need to make a relationship work. However, I am really glad for the short amount of time that Jane and I were together. Along with Karen's article, our relationship stands as one of the events that has pushed me towards a much better understanding of myself not only as a heterosexual, but also a male.

Copyright 1998, Jason Pettus. All rights reserved.