There have been terrific experiences and terrible ones; then there\u2019s all those dick and ass pics<\/p>\n\n\n
I <\/span>can\u2019t say I know what it\u2019s like to be a gay man. For one, I\u2019m technically bisexual and queer. I\u2019m attracted to the person and the gender, and I have had lovely relationships with men, women and non-binary folks. To me, this makes me hella gay: I\u2019ve been a woman with women, a man with men, a gender-curious person figuring it all out with other gender explorers.<\/p>\n Also, I sing and wear rainbows. As a child, I loved theatre and performance. My grandmother used to ask me to perform in her living room. \u201cMake all your faces for us,\u201d she\u2019d say. The world saw a petite five-year-old girl with long brown hair and expressive brown eyes. In retrospect, I could just as easily have been a flamboyant boy loving the dress and the attention.<\/p>\n What I loved about my time dating women as a woman\u2014before I realized anything material about my own gender\u2014was the amount of fun we had while figuring out what we liked. There was no expectation about how sex was \u201csupposed\u201d to work, or about who would do what at home. There was no prohibition on talking about your feelings or expressing love and affection for those you cared for. You could be warm and open and vulnerable and sweet and tender and have the hottest, most intense kink scene of your life\u2014in one session.<\/p>\n It also helped that we knew how to enjoy every part of our bodies, how to ride waves of sensation for hours. We could come so many times we lost count, if we wanted\u2014or we could forget about orgasms and spend a day tracing every curve, getting to know details we\u2019d somehow discovered just then, even if we\u2019d played many times before.<\/p>\n This is still my favourite kind of sex. It\u2019s not about gender, really\u2014it\u2019s more a frame of mind.<\/p>\n How I came to realize I was actually a queer man, not a queer woman, is another story. After I came out as trans, my mom asked, \u201cAre you still bisexual?\u201d \u201cYes, mom,\u201d I said. I am! I still swoon for butch dykes, still fall for bookish guys in glasses, still appreciate gender-bending in all its beauty.<\/p>\n This story, though, is about finding my footing in the abyss known as Grindr.<\/p>\n I had been on testosterone for about six months when a friend I\u2019ll call Scott turned to me and said, \u201cYou need a Grindr\u201d\u2014the app gay guys use to find hookups. I looked at him in disbelief. \u201cI\u2019ve always dated and hooked up with people I\u2019ve met in person,\u201d I replied. \u201cBesides, am I going to be the only trans guy on Grindr?\u201d<\/p>\n Scott took my phone and started filling out my profile. A few minutes later, I was officially registered: I had a name, a photo, some sort of bio and a lot of \u201ctribes\u201d\u2014like \u201cTrans,\u201d \u201cMuscle,\u201d and \u201cGeek.\u201d After Scott left my house, he tapped me\u2014Grindr\u2019s version of a \u201clike\u201d\u2014and sent me a message: \u201cGood luck out there, handsome!\u201d I put down my phone and left Grindr alone.<\/p>\n A few days later, my husband, Raj, asked me, \u201cHow\u2019s it going on Grindr?\u201d I hadn\u2019t really looked, so I pulled out my phone and checked. I found a sea of isolated body parts: Headless torsos in profile pictures. Messages containing dick pics or ass pics, but not both. And, usually, no words. (Sometimes, one little word would come through. \u201cSup?\u201d) Mostly though, it was dicks and asses. One profile read, \u201cIt\u2019s 2019. No pic of your hole, no chat.\u201d Really? I\u2019ve never wanted to see someone\u2019s hole before meeting them.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never wanted to see someone\u2019s hole before meeting them.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n So I didn\u2019t know how to cope with the expectation of sending dick and ass pics when I don\u2019t have a standard flesh dick and I\u2019m not particularly interested in anyone else fucking me in the ass. I do, however, have lots of silicone dicks; I actually like that they\u2019re in various shapes and sizes, and my partners can choose the ones they like. Also, I\u2019m thankful that I don\u2019t have a refractory period and that I\u2019m always hard. One hilarious bit of transitioning was when Facebook realized I was a dude: I started getting ads for Viagra. I laughed, and thought, \u201cThanks for the correct gendering. And also, I will never have that problem.\u201d I wasn\u2019t going to send pictures of a dick I didn\u2019t have, I didn\u2019t want to send pictures of my actual crotch and I didn\u2019t want to send pictures of my ass. Basically, old-fashioned though I may be, I much prefer sending pictures of my face. The face is the most expressive part of our bodies, and watching people\u2019s faces during sex is half the fun.<\/p>\n One day I walked into my bedroom after work and was surprised to find a music stand with my three dicks on top, arranged from small to large. I wondered what happened, since I hadn\u2019t put them there. Turns out Raj had surprised me by taking dick pics for me. He said, \u201cLook! I thought you should have dick pics for Grindr. So I arranged a photo shoot.\u201d I burst out laughing, and thanked the universe for having such a fantastic husband.<\/p>\n It still took me a while to have my first hookup on Grindr. I got a message from a blond guy in glasses asking how my day was going. \u201cI\u2019m exhausted from a long day at work,\u201d I said. \u201cWell, I could come over and service you,\u201d he said. My eyes lit up. I hadn\u2019t thought of that! So we negotiated activities and safer sex precautions. I checked in with Scott on safety. \u201cIs this really a thing that people do?\u201d He reassured me that yes, inviting strangers over to your house to fuck is definitely a thing that gay men do. I checked in with Raj on safety: He preferred having a stranger at our place rather than me going off into the unknown. Raj settled into the guest bedroom, expecting this to take awhile, since I typically play for hours.<\/p>\n So the dude showed up. He looked like his picture, hooray! And he was familiar with my anatomy. He went down on me beautifully, and I came a few times. Afterwards, he said, \u201cI feel better. Do you feel better?\u201d Yes, I did. And then he left. It was simple and kind and exactly what I needed at the end of a long day.<\/p>\n I went into the guest bedroom and snuggled Raj. He looked at me and asked, \u201cWhat happened? That was only, like, fifteen minutes.\u201d Truth: It was really short. But honestly, that\u2019s all I had the capacity for that day. I was tired and it was a sweet release. Then Raj and I, feminist nerds that we are, spent the next two hours processing this experience: He couldn\u2019t imagine this happening in the straight world, mostly because of the patriarchy and all the attendant safety concerns. But also because there\u2019s so much more of a dance around desires and expectations and flirtations\u2014it\u2019s just not normal to be that direct and also kind.<\/p>\n I wish I could say all my experiences were that great. They weren\u2019t. Some guys thought I was a girl: \u201cSorry, I\u2019m into men, so I\u2019m not into you,\u201d or, \u201cOh man, I\u2019ve been looking to hook up with a girl for awhile.\u201d Some guys fetishized trans people, and would write \u201cTS or CD only\u201d on their profiles, saying they\u2019re looking only for transsexuals and cross-dressers. One of the worst offenders was the guy who had \u201cwhites only\u201d on his profile, then continued creating new accounts and messaging me after I blocked him, asking, \u201cWhat? You\u2019re white, why is this so bad?\u201d Ugh. I couldn’t believe I even had to explain that.<\/p>\n \u201cI wish I could say all my experiences were that great. They weren\u2019t.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n I try to focus on the fantastic experiences instead. In small town New Zealand, right after someone rejected me for not being born with a dick, a gorgeous man sucked my testosterone-grown cock for 40 minutes. Cosmic justice! On my way to the airport in Denver, I stopped by the apartment of a 6 foot 3 inch-tall jock and fisted him before my flight. At home in San Francisco, a bi guy came over and had trouble getting it up, so I asked him to fuck me with his hand the way he would with his dick. I came a few times, and he said, \u201cThat was amazing.\u201d I replied: \u201cLook, dude, we can use our whole bodies. Your dick is optional.\u201d<\/p>\n One of my favourites, though, was flipping a leather daddy in the Castro. He was in his mid-40s and swore that he never subbed for younger guys. I\u2019m switchy by nature\u2014meaning I enjoy both dominant and submissive roles in BDSM scenes\u2014so I raised an eyebrow, made a mental note and negotiated our first scene with me as the sub. The second time we played, while we were making out, he paused, looked at me all confused and asked, \u201cI\u2026 think I want you to flog me?\u201d Hell yes, I could do that. So I strung him up in his doorway. As I flogged him, he said, \u201cOh, you\u2019re good at that, boy.\u201d Eventually I untied him and moved him to his couch, while keeping him under me. Some slaps and caresses and careful positioning later, he\u2019d shifted from calling me boy to calling me daddy. My switchy self beamed. I was gay man enough.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There have been terrific experiences and terrible ones; then there\u2019s all those dick and ass pics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":835,"featured_media":184597,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editorial_slug":"131","_editorial_slug":"","exclude_from_latest_block":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15],"contributors":[899],"topic":[86,131,141],"clients":[],"series":[],"timeliness":[],"editorial_format":[],"type-of-work":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/835"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184594"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":185675,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184594\/revisions\/185675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184594"},{"taxonomy":"contributors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributors?post=184594"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=184594"},{"taxonomy":"clients","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/clients?post=184594"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=184594"},{"taxonomy":"timeliness","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/timeliness?post=184594"},{"taxonomy":"editorial_format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/editorial_format?post=184594"},{"taxonomy":"type-of-work","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type-of-work?post=184594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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