In your daily life, you can choose where to train your gaze and thoughts, and your brain never has to so much as graze scenes you aren’t into. I left the party wondering: where can I draw the line between “This is what I am” and “This is what I could be if I’d only open my mind, rejected society further, got over myself and my self-defeating tendencies.”
That anxiety gave way to more anxiety about my fragile masculinity’s inability to override all else. Being there gave me anxiety about performing - which had the potential to be a true performance, given the crowd. The largest group I’d ever participated in prior to that party was with five guys (including me), and aside from attending New York’s notoriously kinky Black Party a few years ago, I’d never been to one of these gatherings. I worried about the potential for the spreading of bed bugs.
I thought the environment was uncomfortable - dark, dingy, maybe even self-pathologizing. In reality, the last thing I wanted to do in that concrete basement with black-painted walls, communal beds, slings, and booths affording semi-privacy at best, was have sex. It’s amazing how the addition of just one body to a two-person experience can unlock what seem like infinite configurations. In theory, I should have loved the party - my experiences in small groups (threeways, foursomes) have been overwhelmingly positive, and I have enjoyed porn that depicts orgies. But whatever it is, it’s opaque.Ī visit to a gay sex party in Brooklyn last October left me unsatisfied, in every way. And now, over a decade after coming out - a process that requires conscious engagement with, and ultimately rejection of, society’s homophobic expectations and imperatives that can reverberate indefinitely after saying, “I’m gay” - I’m still being confronted with the uncertainties of my sexuality. I’ve known I was gay since I was 5, and it took me about 20 more years to be comfortable admitting as much out loud.