My Husband and My Wives: A Gay Man's Odyssey by Charles Rowan Beye Page B
Authors: Charles Rowan Beye
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the bar next door, where townies like myself and the fraternity and athletic crowd hung out.
Thus began the second phase of my life in a gay bar. I guess I went to the Uptowner, as it was called, almost every night of the week, and usually came away with someone to sleep with. Not for the night, surely, because I was living at home while attending university, but for a few hours in a dormitory room or rooming house. These were fellow students, for the most part, Iowa boys, with all the virtues of small-town rural life, that is, basically friendly, not aggressive, easygoing. Just the same, they had an edge, they were wounded people with all the tendencies to lash out, nurse grievances, and feel inferior that came from the knowledge that they were freaks and pariahs in the minds of the larger population, sinners, of course, to the Christian community, which would generally include their parents and other family members.
I found them so different from the men I had met in the gay bars of Manhattan, who were mostly older, more experienced, for whom the mere act of homosexual intercourse was no longer a psychic challenge. The Iowa boys, by contrast, were at the very beginning of their careers as homosexual men and as such working to shape what they perceived to be their identity. At this stage their sexuality was the all-powerful defining aspect of their sense of self. Simply acting on it consumed them utterly, because it made them; it had to be that way if they were to develop any self-respect, perhaps only dimly understood. I think that the hostility and opposition that they sensed everywhere, and often enough confronted more dramatically, made them fight back as hard as they could with the self, their identity they were shaping, which meant in this environment a life lived by thoughts of homosexual sex and its enactment. Most of them did not think beyond the orgasm to the possibility of a relationship with the man who had helped them to it. They needed first to be comfortable acting out their erotic selves and at the moment it took all their time.
I have always believed that their capacity for focusing on the sex act per se was encouraged by the fact that their partner was another male, equally focused. My prejudice is that women are instinctively attuned to creating relationships out of any sexual encounter; heterosexual males are encouraged or forced to think beyond the immediate sexual act because their partners are female. It’s the tired old “commitment” discussion yet again. I know that theories of biological destiny are out of fashion, but there we are. Women are stuck with what comes out of their womb and they jolly well want someone around who will look after them. In the same sense the human race needs to produce new generations and so society invents systems that force people into raising children like a church that calls divorce a sin, like a religion that stones adulterers to death. In a sense, males who attach themselves to a woman have no choice. Left to himself, a male can have an orgasm and get on with his day without thinking; young males more often than not include masturbation as much a part of the morning’s ritual as shaving or brushing their teeth. It is all over in a matter of seconds. Two males working at it together can still complete their mission in minutes and be back on the road or into the office or whatever in no time. Who even remembers? The stupendous incidence of promiscuity among gay males relative to straight males derives in my estimation from what I claim is a biological truth rather than the gay male’s incapacity to make moral judgments.
The fall term of my junior year at the university I had sex with more good-looking, clean-cut, nice young men than ever before or since. But we did not do repeats. And I learned very quickly from my mistake one evening of trying to make the first night a necking session so as to “get to know” him. When I met that particular guy the
Thus began the second phase of my life in a gay bar. I guess I went to the Uptowner, as it was called, almost every night of the week, and usually came away with someone to sleep with. Not for the night, surely, because I was living at home while attending university, but for a few hours in a dormitory room or rooming house. These were fellow students, for the most part, Iowa boys, with all the virtues of small-town rural life, that is, basically friendly, not aggressive, easygoing. Just the same, they had an edge, they were wounded people with all the tendencies to lash out, nurse grievances, and feel inferior that came from the knowledge that they were freaks and pariahs in the minds of the larger population, sinners, of course, to the Christian community, which would generally include their parents and other family members.
I found them so different from the men I had met in the gay bars of Manhattan, who were mostly older, more experienced, for whom the mere act of homosexual intercourse was no longer a psychic challenge. The Iowa boys, by contrast, were at the very beginning of their careers as homosexual men and as such working to shape what they perceived to be their identity. At this stage their sexuality was the all-powerful defining aspect of their sense of self. Simply acting on it consumed them utterly, because it made them; it had to be that way if they were to develop any self-respect, perhaps only dimly understood. I think that the hostility and opposition that they sensed everywhere, and often enough confronted more dramatically, made them fight back as hard as they could with the self, their identity they were shaping, which meant in this environment a life lived by thoughts of homosexual sex and its enactment. Most of them did not think beyond the orgasm to the possibility of a relationship with the man who had helped them to it. They needed first to be comfortable acting out their erotic selves and at the moment it took all their time.
I have always believed that their capacity for focusing on the sex act per se was encouraged by the fact that their partner was another male, equally focused. My prejudice is that women are instinctively attuned to creating relationships out of any sexual encounter; heterosexual males are encouraged or forced to think beyond the immediate sexual act because their partners are female. It’s the tired old “commitment” discussion yet again. I know that theories of biological destiny are out of fashion, but there we are. Women are stuck with what comes out of their womb and they jolly well want someone around who will look after them. In the same sense the human race needs to produce new generations and so society invents systems that force people into raising children like a church that calls divorce a sin, like a religion that stones adulterers to death. In a sense, males who attach themselves to a woman have no choice. Left to himself, a male can have an orgasm and get on with his day without thinking; young males more often than not include masturbation as much a part of the morning’s ritual as shaving or brushing their teeth. It is all over in a matter of seconds. Two males working at it together can still complete their mission in minutes and be back on the road or into the office or whatever in no time. Who even remembers? The stupendous incidence of promiscuity among gay males relative to straight males derives in my estimation from what I claim is a biological truth rather than the gay male’s incapacity to make moral judgments.
The fall term of my junior year at the university I had sex with more good-looking, clean-cut, nice young men than ever before or since. But we did not do repeats. And I learned very quickly from my mistake one evening of trying to make the first night a necking session so as to “get to know” him. When I met that particular guy the
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