First in line

First in line

Remember that old question about whether you're born gay or whether you're made so? That question which every gay man and woman has probably asked him or herself at some point of life. I did too. Not whether I was ever induced to have sex with a man, but whether my continuously having sex with men automatically meant that sleeping with a woman wasn't half as fun. That's the old gay vs bi and bi vs straight and gay vs straight question. Why am I gay?

The first time I had sex, I knew I was going to have fun. I had not planned the occassion, and like most people, my first time came completely out of the blue. But I guess I was prepared for it. I 'rose' to the occassion, pun intended, and satisfied most of the kinky thoughts and desires that had existed in my closet. No one forced me to have sex with them - they offered me sex, and I took it, because I was curious and well... horny.

;-)

I actually had sex with a woman after that. I kept on telling myself that maybe I was just bisexual... this was alright, even normal, that I lusted after men, and I tried to force myself to lust after women too. But Baywatch left me cold. Pamela was slutty, but I liked the guy she was french kissing on the beach, and it was his speedos I was thinking of, rather than hers. It was clear that this line was not going to work.

It took a brief affair with a close female friend to make me realise that I was gay. Not bisexual. And certainly not straight. I'm not attracted to women at all. My flatmate says, she's more comfortable around me, a gay man, than she could ever be around either a straight guy or a straight woman. I still don't know what to make of that.

And then there are the stories from other people around me. The stories about classmates who've later 'turned' straight. Next door neighbours who raped them when they were younger. Experiments with cousins in the dead of night. Whispers and threats and loves and persuasions. No single first experience is ever the same, though you may be tempted to classify them under Schoolboy Sex or Neighbourly Nudge or whatever. When I first started having sex, I kept on asking them about their first experiences. I found it turned me on, to some extent. Or it horrified me, which in turn helped me feel tender towards them and infuse some real passion in the sex that followed. I'm not sure who it helped more: me or them.

And it never answered my question of whether we're made gay or whether we're born this way.