“What’s love got to do with it?”
Tina Turner
Last year I attended the Positive Gathering here in BC and I went to a workshop for gay men about gay sex. Or that’s what it was supposed to be about. Very quickly the discussion turned to intimacy. The men in the room were more interested in developing emotional relationships than just talking about “hot sex”.
While I’m one of those men more interested in sharing ALL of me (with deference to Billy Holiday here), I think there’s still a divide for many gay men about what exactly sex and relationship are. I came out in 1979 when the divide was clear: you could have sex or you could have a relationship, but you couldn’t have both. Or the “both” you got was muddied with non-monogamous encounters on the side. In the early days of HIV we made the assumption that gay men weren’t interested in dedicated relationships – perhaps that was true, perhaps not, but we talked about safer sex as play, not as a loving expression of intimacy in a relationship.
Sex is not a minefield: it’s more like a maze. If we’re searching for sex it’s for that perfect guy with the perfect abs and perfect teeth and perfect cock. He doesn’t exist and so the search is ultimately a never ending story – the hunt goes on and on…
Intimacy isn’t much different. We’re hoping to meet “him” – whoever “he” is. And he must be as perfect as the sexual conquest. He must have the nicest smile, best manners and the same political leanings as I do. He must be handsome and he must be smart. He must be secure and he must be sane. He doesn’t exist either and so the search continues.
Younger men seem to (and I clearly state “seem” to) have it a little more rounded than my generation. Today I hear about more young men finding boyfriends and settling into relationships rather than engaging in park sex and bath sex. Perhaps they’ve learned that you can be sexual with your partner and enjoy it. My generation didn’t quite get that – but it was the party era: discos and drugs and sex were all a part of the “scene”. Of course young men have the problem of living their lives online – a place that lacks intimacy and closeness, but gives the illusion thereof.
That’s why I think I found the discussion at the workshop so intriguing. Men my age were finding “just sex” to be less than satisfying: there was a greater longing for intimacy and closeness. I read a quote from a man on the Internet some years back. He wrote “sex without meaning gets old pretty fast”. I think he’s right – and here remains the dichotomy of wanting to be close while being inundated with hookup sites and casual encounters. We purchase ideals where no ideals exist.
Sex is intimate in and of itself, but when the act is simply a means to orgasm, it’s an empty gesture. You get something, I get something, we spurt and someone goes home. Relationships on the other hand require tending to: they are a lovely garden and you can’t let the weeds get hold or the whole thing is lost. We can find our gardens with each other and we can have sex too. We can choose to be in monogamous or we can choose to be open. But we have to accept that there are many ways to express ourselves intimately and propose the most healthful ways of doing that. We have to be honest about who we are and what we want in our lives and we have to make space for those things to develop. Failing to accomplish that, we fail our true selves.
While being “sex positive” is a good thing, I think we also need to understand and embrace that “relationship positive” is an equally good and beneficial path.