I’m a college freshman. I thought that college would be the place to come out, but the sad fact is that college hasn’t changed anything. I’m still unable to admit my sexuality to my friends, teammates, classmates, and hallmates. I have thought about joining the LGBT organizations, but those guys are too “out” for me. Not that there’s any problem with that. I just don’t think that being gay is anyone else’s business unless I want them to know. The hardest part is seeing other freshmen go out to parties, hook up, and date when I don’t have the opportunity to do so. I’ve resorted to going on Craigslist, but my encounters have been weird. What should I do?

Closeted Undergrad

You’re not required to disclose who you’re going out with, CU, or the gender of the folks you would like to go out with. But keeping your sexual orientation a secret indefinitely—not your sexual interests (which you can keep to yourself), but your sexual orientation—will ultimately warp your psyche and your life.

Think about it from the other side: What would the straight guys on your team have to do in order to hide their straightness from you? They could never mention their girlfriends, go out on dates, or hook up with someone they met at a party. They would have to hide their porn and be careful not to check out girls in public. They could never get engaged, get married, or have kids. They might be able to have furtive, secretive, and shame-driven sexual encounters with other closeted heterosexuals they met online or in places where closeted straight people gathered to have anonymous sex, but finding love—true and lasting love—would be extremely difficult.

It wouldn’t be impossible—some gay people managed to find lasting love back in the bad old days—but it would be difficult. And the sneaking around and hiding and lying would ultimately warp their psyches and their lives.

If you don’t want to get warped, CU, you’re going to have to come out. And once you’re out, you don’t have to hang out with gay people with whom you don’t click, and you don’t have to be gay the way, say, the LGBT groupers on your campus are gay. Remember: Gay men who are out at your age (18?) tend to be a bit gayer than the average gay dude. They’re out in part because they can’t be in. And God bless ’em and more power to ’em and the gay rights/liberation movement would never have gotten off the ground without ’em. But since you can pass, CU, you’ve had the option of waiting.

You have, of course, the option of never coming out. But as you’re discovering, CU, it’s hard to date in the closet, and DL-enabling sites like CL and Grindr aren’t going to deliver the kind of connections you want. So long as you’re limited to quickly arranged hookups with guys you don’t know, can’t risk getting to know, and can’t be seen with in public, all of your encounters are going to be weird. Not because all the guys on CL or Grindr are weird—there are good guys on both sites—but because you’re trying to have a life and keep it secret, and that tends to attract weirdos without lives.

Look, CU, you’re only 18. You’ve got time. But what you’re going to realize, in not too much more time, is that dating and finding love—or even just sex—inside the closet is nearly impossible. You can remain in the closet and keep your business secret, but you won’t have much of a life in there. And when you realize that, CU, you’ll come out. First to a friend or two, then to your family, then to everyone. And once you’re all the way out, you’ll find that the guys you’ve been focusing on—the “too out” guys—aren’t the only gay guys out there. Just some of the best.

I know it’s hard. But you can do it. All it takes is opening your mouth and saying the words.

Last night, I was blowing a male friend. When I glanced up from “my work,” I saw that he was texting someone. I didn’t say anything and finished the job, but I was offended. Another friend says I should’ve mentioned it because he might have been taking a picture. At the very least, what he did was rude. Any insight from you?

When Blowing Blows

He was taking pictures or making a video and may have been e-mailing pics/vids to his buddies in real time—don’t be an idiot, WBB—and you should’ve snatched that camera from his hand and stuffed it so far up his ass you could’ve sent yourself a picture of the roof of his mouth. Please cut this out and tape it to the mirror in your bathroom: Any girl who’s uninhibited enough to blow a “friend” has to be uninhibited enough to blow up at that friend if she spots him taking sex pictures without her consent.

I’m a straight male, age 26. I’ve been with my girlfriend for seven years. We’re lucky in that we have a group of friends who are into having sex with us. My question is, what is the proper etiquette for condom use between my girlfriend and me when others are present? We don’t use condoms when we’re alone, so we haven’t been using condoms when we’re in front of others. They are using them, and I use them if I have intercourse with another girl, so the risk for the two of us intuitively seems minimal. Is there anything we should be concerned about?

Group-Sex Rookie

If you and your girlfriend have been tested and you’re “fluid bonded” (ugh! That term!) and you’re not having sex in front of strangers at, say, a swingers club or party where someone might misinterpret your condom-free sex as a license to initiate condom-free sex with randoms to whom they are not fluid bonded—preventing these worst-case/biggest-idiot scenarios is why many organized swingers clubs require condoms-for-all during group/public parties—then I don’t see why you and your girlfriend should have to use condoms with each other. So long as you’re careful about always putting on a condom when you need one, you’re both willing to assume the higher risks of acquiring one of the STIs that can be passed through skin-to-skin contact, and seeing you two go condom-free doesn’t make your friends so insanely jealous that they can’t get it up/on in your presence, then knock yourselves out.

This is in response to Messed-Up Junk. His junk sounds just like my junk! But my junk isn’t messed up. I’m a transman—so a two-inch “micropenis” actually sounds pretty damn good! Anyway, I wanted to say this to MUJ: Don’t let your junk stop you from hopping in bed with whomever you damn well please. I know lots of guys with junk like yours who get plenty of action from lots of fine ladies—and gents. As long as your junk gives you sexual pleasure and you are willing to pleasure your partner, there is much fun to be had. Yes, having a body that’s different can be terrifying. Be honest and up-front, but don’t let your head and your fear get in the way of hot sex.

Pumped-Up Junk

Thanks for sharing, PUJ.

Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.

mail@savagelove.net

113 replies on “Savage Love”

  1. Sheeh! Have some balls and slap that phone out of his hand! The nerve!

    As for the 18yr old closeted dude—it gets better! Make some friends who you feel comfortable being yourself around. Or just bring it up with the ones you have, and perhaps they won’t care as much as you fear. Every gay kid goes through this, and it just feels so much better to clear the air and not walk on eggshells around folks. There’s lots of people to be friends with, everywhere. And even if you do go to a LGBT meeting, maybe you’ll fall for some nice straight-acting over-achiever dude…or maybe you’ll fall for a hairy queeny guy! Either way, fun times!

  2. Having grown up in the conservative heart of Mormonland, I was pretty much a closeted straight person. Furtive hookups in cars, pretending I didn’t live with a boyfriend for months and months, cycle of shame and denial about any sexual attraction to men . . . fun stuff!

  3. And WBB, Dan’s right: that camera should have been shoved so far up his slimeball ass you could have taken a picture of the roof of his mouth while he yelped like Mariah Carey.

  4. Methinks a girl who is blowing her ‘friend’ may not have high enough self-worth. We love to pretend that men and women are equally capable of having meaningless sex, but it’s not true. The fact that she let him get away with treating her the way she did is just pathetic.

    This is why I object to “slut” being re-claimed as a sex-positive term. Sluttiness usually comes from a place of lack of self-respect, in the guise of “sexual freedom”. Guess what- it ain’t free, ladies! You give away part of yourself to every man you are sexual with. Do yourself a favor and take the time to get to know him well enough to be sure he’s worth it *before* you go there. Unappreciative assholes don’t deserves blow jobs.

  5. “ladies, you give away part of yourself to every man you are sexual with”

    How does that work, exactly? Am I giving him my pancreas? My wisdom teeth? My toenails? And is it only het girls who have to worry about this loss of our body parts?

  7. Ah, I love you, EricaP – my thoughts exactly.

    I’ve come to recognize…and embrace…and enjoy…that I’m a one-man slut. No problems with self-esteem anymore!

  8. Another note to CU, there are more flavors of gay than Baskin Robbins. Just because you are out doesn’t mean you need to go shoe shopping with your best girlfriends or wear leathers and curl your black mustache. Out is who you are, not an image of something you may think you have to be. You mentioned teammates, you might want to have a look at Outsports, which promotes gay athletes in all sports, not just the “gay” ones, ;-P Good luck!

  9. To letter #2 – STOP blowing “friends” or men or guys or whatever until they’ve earned it. Never blow them until you’ve sat on their face or they’ve gone down on you several times. Why? It is logical before the peanut gallery on here gets all bent out of shape: because of precisely the attitude of this guy and of so many men she has written about here. Hearing about some guy leaning back and acting like he’s entitled whilst getting a blow job is very common indeed therefore that attitude needs to be knocked the hell of out of ’em so they can learn the give and gives of real sex. Porn has gone down the pan nowadays and it has a lot to answer for this hateful attitude towards women in general. The general puritannical attitude of Americans creates an atmosphere of behaving as if sex is some “weird” event instead of simply, well, sex. So, my dear, if you enjoy giving head then learn how to receive it and receive it FIRST because there is nothing worse than an arrogant, selfish little snot nosed brat in the bedroom who happens to be man-shaped. And, unfortunately, they’re quite common, indeed. Does this sound selfish at all? Get over it because the day you hear about a woman behaving like this asshole, you can best believe there will be literally – and I do mean literally – thousands of men who are doing worse and with no self-analysis or thoughts to their actions whatsoever. If a man hates women THAT much then he has no business expecting her to suck his cock. Makes sense, really. It is also VERY uniquely American to “brag” (in the manner of this fool here) about some woman blowing a guy instead of actually engaging in the enjoyment of it. Men in America have a lot of growing up to do. From what I can see, the women are all too willing but how can anyone get on board when you’ve got some idiot filming you for god knows who to see? Sex is sex so stop turning it into a fucking sport! Newsflash, it is BORING. The more I am away from that country the more sorry I feel for the inhabitants of it.

  10. “STOP blowing “friends” or men or guys or whatever until they’ve earned it. Never blow them until you’ve sat on their face or they’ve gone down on you several times.”

    Excuse me?
    What if I don’t want to sit on their face?
    Ever?

  11. Also: as a sidenote, I have to say that I’m skeptical you would criticize a man who went down on his female “friend” without her reciprocating because he enjoyed it.

  13. Can we, the peanut gallery, all agree that Frederica @61 comes off as a condescending and pretentious whatever-the-female-equivalent-of-a-douche is?

  14. Hi @65/Debug, if the sum total of your comment is to diss someone, please save it next time.

    @Fredicka_Bimble, I appreciate the sentiment, not the overkill tone.

    @mydirasis, I’m really curious. Cool if you don’t care to receive oral, wondering if this is how you feel both ways. It’s the “only one is okay” that I think is a signal of something messed up (usually self-esteem as someone pointed out).

  15. @newtinmpls

    I’m not sure I understand your question “only one is okay”? Both ways?

    My feeling of oral sex is something along the lines of “why are you hitting that nail with a screwdriver when you have a hammer right there?”.

  16. Frederica, would you agree with this rephrasing? “Consider if you are getting as much from a sexual relationship as you are giving. If you tend to give more than you get, give some thought as to why that might be.”

    That seems like great advice for WBB, and good advice in general. But I think it’s important to acknowledge people like dianasquiver @51, who has clearly given plenty of thought to her “kink for being ignored.”

  20. @61: (said in Inigo Montoya impression) You keep using that word. “Logical.” I do not think it means what you think it means.

    Your demand that he prove himself worthy by going down on you several times before you will consider blowing him is the very sort of self-entitlement that you ascribe to the opposite sex. Nice bit of projection you have going there. Clearly you feel entitled to oral yourself, even to the point of racking up a debt before you will even consider contributing. If that were appropriate, why would it be wrong of him to demand the exact same treatment of you in response? “Five blowjobs before I will even consider going down on you.”

    How about, if you enjoy giving blow jobs, just give them and enjoy it? (It did occur to you, did it not, that if you enjoy the activity, then you are getting some benefit out of it all by yourself, regardless of the other person’s contribution?) And if you enjoy receiving oral, try opening with a nice request for some, instead of an ultimatum? (In other words, how about you wait until your partner displays an actual objectionable behavior before you start in on the boot camp style training him out of it?) And try not to conflate the two in your head.

    For you to implement your plan the way you describe it, you would have to either:
    a) keep quiet while studiously avoiding going near his crotch. I don’t know about others, but that would probably give me the signal that you just don’t like oral, which is unlikely to get you any; or
    b) lay out your demands explicitly, which would give me the idea that you were either 1) into domination play, which isn’t my thing, or 2) a nutjob who wouldn’t know “logic” if it went down on her.

  21. Forgive me for being so bold as to suggest some communication here, but if I were (as a gay man) blowing someone and they took out their phone/camera, I would ask, “What are you doing?” If they were taking pictures I didn’t want taken, we would stop then and there and I would insist that they be deleted immediately. If they have already been sent out, obviously there is nothing I can do, but I can at least control what I can control to curtail future use. If it were that the guy was texting, I would quite likely want to know more about that. Is this not a good time for your calendar? Is the quality of the work not sufficient? Sure he will likely flag, but let’s be honest, if it ends out working out for us both, there are ways to get him up again, and then start the fun.

    I don’t think being reactionary solves much. If he is getting off on your being used, your outrage will likely feed his fantasies. If he is just an inconsiderate dunderhead, then help him to learn what it means to be considerate. Either way, you can control only yourself and not him. Believe me, I am not suggesting this out of some sense of superior self-control. I am suggesting it because the preceding comments seem to just get more and more inflammatory, which tells me that something about their suggestions isn’t working.

  22. Dan, you say that people who are out when they’re 18 tend to be more effeminate and unable to hide. I find this comment not only offensive but enabling of those people who rationalize being in the closet in college as some kind of mark of masculinity, or who stay in the closet because they create a dichotomy between themselves and the “Effeminate” gay guys who cannot pass. The truth is that many “non-effeminate” gay guys do come out early in college, but the closeted gay guys never know it–as if they could have any sense of the gay community of a college by peaking at it from behind a curtain and never engaging with it. Plus–they create self-fulfilling prophesies–all of them meekly waiting like children for some leader to make coming out okay. Your 18-year old needs to have those stereotypes broken down; perhaps you, Dan, didn’t come out til later, but many of us came out and were extremely frustrated that the vast majority of our fellow college students wouldn’t do so yet. We (they) need to be praised for coming out early–not belittled with the implication that we only came out because we had to, while those that “can pass” stay in the closet–because they “can pass” and not for the real reason–because they are not emotionally mature or courageous enough to put aside their victim complex and finally deal with what they want, who they are, and the dangerous self-delusion that they stay closeted because either “being gay is no one else’s business” or “being gay shouldn’t define who they are”–because being bitter and being alone will very much define who they are.

  23. @67 Sometimes someone needs to be told frankly that their writing style reflects badly upon themselves. I didn’t call her names directly (thankfully, I don’t know her) just described how she “came off” in her comment. Since knew she was being inflammatory (trolling): “…peanut gallery on here gets all bent out of shape…” so I asked for consensus from the other so-called peanuts here.

    Play thread-cop if you wish, but I’ll need you to show me your badge before I follow your rules.

  24. @76 “Dan, you say that people who are out when they’re 18 tend to be more effeminate and unable to hide. I find this comment not only offensive but enabling of those people who rationalize being in the closet in college as some kind of mark of masculinity…[It enables] the dangerous self-delusion that they stay closeted because ‘being gay is no one else’s business'”

    Well said, Maxinny. Good for you for challenging some out-dated expectations.

  25. In response to GSR’s question:

    One thing to keep in mind when deciding whether or not to ‘wrap up’ in a group sex situation, even with one’s ‘bonded’ partner is the etiquette involved in leaving the deck clear, so to speak, for the next guy that might want to go down on her. Women seem to enjoy that….so I’ve heard. And I’d hate to deprive my partner of that action by leaving a mess.

    Some guys will dive into anything, oral sex-wise. Some will only clean up after themselves. Some won’t even go there. So my policy is to slip a condom on unless I’m sure we’re performing a finale at a party. And I’d appreciate other guys doing the same for their women if they want to share them completely.

  26. In response to GSR’s question:

    One thing to keep in mind when deciding whether or not to ‘wrap up’ in a group sex situation, even with one’s ‘bonded’ partner is the etiquette involved in leaving the deck clear, so to speak, for the next guy that might want to go down on her. Women seem to enjoy that….so I’ve heard. And I’d hate to deprive my partner of that action by leaving a mess.

    Some guys will dive into anything, oral sex-wise. Some will only clean up after themselves. Some won’t even go there. So my policy is to slip a condom on unless I’m sure we’re performing a finale at a party. And I’d appreciate other guys doing the same for their women if they want to share them completely.

  27. WBB- You finished? If its my man catching my “blow-face” that’s HOT but not a friend. I wouldn’t blow my friends though so I’m biased on the situation. Either way, was it multiple keystrokes like a text or was it an aim and thumb action? You have to have a good idea what he was doing, you weren’t that far from him.

    @81 I enjoyed your perspective and look forward to this so called wrap up in group sex. Ill be conversing with my man.

  28. @77 Hunter78: Maybe WBB should bite harder right after she shoves the camera up the douchebag’s ass. Better yet—bite it all the way off, and spit the piece of junk in his ugly face.

    Yeah, you’re right. That gave me some pretty violent ideas.
    This ridiculous Repig waged “War on Women” has me pissed.

  30. @83 You and every sane person in America. Though I don’t think biting off some jerk’s piece is going to get them out of congress any sooner. The mainstream television news really should have been reporting on this stuff months ago when they started talking about rape audits.

  31. what the fuck is a “rape audit”?
    not something I’m super keen on googling…

    Also, grizelda, you never got back to my much earlier question to you. :p

  32. @86
    It’s a bill called H.R.3 or the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act, it passed the House in May and is still waiting for the Senate.

    From the Huffington Post article:

    “Marcus Owens, a former longtime IRS official, told Mother Jones that if a woman received a tax credit for medical costs related to abortion, “on audit [she] would have to demonstrate or prove, ideally by contemporaneous written documentation, that it was incest, or rape, or [her] life was in danger. It would be fairly intrusive for the woman.”

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/04…

    http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/0…

  33. @86: mydriasis: Whoa!! I missed something—sorry!! What was your question from much earlier? It’s apparently not in regards to this particular blog.

  34. 62
    “STOP blowing “friends” or men or guys or whatever until they’ve earned it. Never blow them until you’ve sat on their face or they’ve gone down on you several times.”

    Excuse me?
    What if I don’t want to sit on their face?
    Ever?
    Posted by mydriasis on October 13, 2011 at 12:17 PM · Report

    63
    Also: as a sidenote, I have to say that I’m skeptical you would criticize a man who went down on his female “friend” without her reciprocating because he enjoyed it.
    Posted by mydriasis on October 13, 2011 at 12:19 PM · Report

  35. Who made up the 2nd letter? They need to be kicked in the behind for being so stupid. So should the person that made up the 3rd letter.

  38. @87

    That’s awful.
    America confuses me. So rich, so many schools, massive scientific community… and yet has the human rights attitudes of a poor, ‘third world’ country. I can’t quite get my head around why.

    Anyway I’m sorry to hear that.

  39. mydriasis @86: “Also, grizelda, you never got back to my much earlier question to you.”

    grizelda @88: “What was your question from much earlier?”

    mydriasis @89: repeats a question posed to Frederica @62-63.

    grizelda @93: tell me again, what was the question?

    mydriasis @94: again, seems to refer to the question at 62-63.

    Hey, mydriasis, do you realize that grizelda and Frederica are not the same person? Or are you referring to your question to grizelda on Oct 9th, in the Messed-up Junk thread, about her nationality? I’m pretty sure she’s a US citizen, for what it’s worth.

  41. It’s worth repeating some observations that came out in past SL editions, namely that not all women enjoy receiving oral sex (not early in the sexual relationship anyway), and not everyone views giving and receiving oral sex as equivalent acts, i.e. that the one reciprocates for the other.

  45. 96: EricaP: Actually, I think mydriasis was responding to nocturnomath regarding a post from October 8th. No sweat. Life happens. It added to the blog.

    And you’re right—I’m about as American mutt as Mom’s apple pie, and part of the 99%.

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