"Hi Holly,
I'm a man who considers himself straight, but sometimes I imagine being tied up and sucking other men's dicks. I don't want to date them or have sex with them; I just want to get tied up and suck dick and that's all. Does this make me gay? Does it make me bi? Does it make me kinky? Does it make me submissive?
Help me, Holly: what am I?"So I'm going to answer these questions in one fell swoop here:
You are what you are.
You're a straight man who fantasizes about being tied up and sucking men's dicks. What else is there to say? What would a label add, what would it clarify? Whether you'd like this in reality or leave it in the realm of fantasy, or whether you'd like to do other things with men or with BDSM, can't be answered with a label.
I'm not just telling you that I can't extrapolate from a letter. (Although, seriously, I can't.) I'm telling you that most likely you can't extrapolate. Sexuality isn't symptoms that give you clues to your syndrome; sexuality is the symptoms.
I don't think words like "straight" and "gay" and such are completely useless. But they're only descriptions. If you're a man and everyone you've felt attracted to has been female, eh, you might as well call yourself "straight"? But that doesn't "make" you straight. It doesn't tell you anything about which women you'll be attracted to, or give you a guarantee you'll never be attracted to any men, and it sure as hell doesn't mean that you "should" be attracted to women.
The people who write me these letters seem very aware of what their fantasies, desires, and actions actually are--much more acutely aware, it seems, than most people who simply have a label. Frankly, I'd hate to see them trade in this awareness for "I'm a kinky bi man."
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I don't mean to just give this as advice from on high; it's something I'm wrestling with myself right now. I've been trying very hard lately to hold the lines of:
-I play because I want to, and this makes me kinky; I don't make myself play because "I'm supposed to be kinky, better live up to it."
-I play with people besides Rowdy sometimes, and this makes me non-monogamous; I don't make myself play with other people because "what kind of crappy non-monogamist am I if I don't fuck this dude?"
Both of these have been struggles. Once you establish the persona as this kinky poly super sexy sex person, it's hard as hell to violate that and say "you know what, I'm just not feelin' it." The pressure to live up to your labels is both internal and external. There are times when I really want to relabel myself "kinkyfluid" and "polyfluid" or something, just to emphasize that these are things I do sometimes in some ways; they're not things I've made some sort of commitment to doing.
Fixing the label isn't the real solution, though. The real solution is to fix the expectation that the label can ever speak for me.
I'm a person who sometimes likes some kinds of kinky play (list available on request) and sometimes likes to play with certain people who aren't my boyfriend (now accepting applications). That's what I am, and trying to figure out what that "makes me" isn't a recipe for happiness; it's a tragic oversimplification.
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