When Straight Men Stray

Senator Craig from Idaho gets arrested for allegedly making improper advances to a male undercover cop. He claims afterwards that he is not gay. I for one have no reason to doubt his statement. Straight men performing sexual acts with other men is not unusual. If anything good could come from this unpleasant situation, it would be a better understanding of the fact that straight men occasionally stray "gay".

I wouldn't want to wade too deep into the question of what does it mean for a person to be considered gay or straight. However, I will mention one interesting thing I heard on the subject some numbers of years back. It was a statement from the then director of the Kinsey Institute (located in sexually active Indiana). She said that, 1) science didn't know yet what caused heterosexuality, and 2) straight/gay were defined by who a person falls in love with. I liked that the definition steered away from who you have sex with, since there are gay people who don't have sex with their own gender and there are straight people who sometimes do.

Still, I'm not sure if this makes the discussion clearer since it would be easy to fall into a side discussion of loving someone versus being in love. Instead let's go with the sense of attraction, skipping love and sex altogether. I don't think Senator Craig wanted to go for long walks on the beach with his cop, or spend a evening with him at a romantic candlelit dinner. He would want to with his wife or at least some female, but with his potty paramour, he would only want to take care of business. It's just an extension of masturbation.

So why wouldn't a straight guy just wait until he got home to the missus or just jack the hammer himself? I think straight men would deviate into stall balling for two reasons. One is that when they need to get off, they need to do it right now and with whatever is available. Two is that men need variety in their sexual activity. Same-sex sex provides the unusual thrill that makes up for the other 90% of the time when they are harpooning their hag in the stale old missionary position.



Straight men, whether they be politicians or twenty-something internet studs, can and will have sex with other men. Thank goodness or we wouldn't have some of our favorite adult entertainment websites. The only problem really is that we need to get people out of public restrooms, parks, and bookstores. I think the best solution would be to add darkrooms to sports bars. I would put up with a few quarters of watching football for a little backroom Monday Night Bar-balling.

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When straight men have to do that gay thing

Sex With A View

Hot sex and the expression of one's political views don't go well together. Finding out that you and your love interest are a rightist and a leftist is worse than finding that you are both primarily bottoms. You should be able to put it aside for a night of hot, sweaty monkey love, but it is likely to prevent you from having a longer relationship.

Even if you only expect to have a one night stand, it is still better not to bring up politics at all or at least not during intimacy. It would be okay to show a general support for your country by singing your national anthem in the same way that it was done in the movie Shortbus, but bringing up questions about the war (dominatrix scene, same movie) is not a good thing during sex unless you too want to be punished for it. Politics can really get passions going, but not the good ones.

I remember I had an experience once with Didier, a young man in Paris, where the action was great, but afterwards, when I told him "Je suis un Américain," he felt it necessary to give me a jab with his view of American policies. When I defended my country's honor he tried to stop the discussion but it was too late. Fortunately, all the fun stuff had already occurred and it was only a vacation night on the town, but under other circumstances such a discussion by itself would have prevented any further relationship.

Of course, this is only a problem when the political views differ, but how would you find out your views are concordant without risking an unfortunate revelation? In some places you can trust that you are surrounded with like minded people but not so in other places. You can't necessarily tell by appearances, as a rough looking daddy may be a tree-hugger and a light hearted gay twink a neocon. The best course of action is not to say anything that could get your prospective partner started on expressing his views. If you can avoid this you won't have to clarify later that, "When I said I was interested in your oral skills I wasn't talking about your ability to express political rhetoric."

If you do accidentally get into a political discussion, keep in mind that Americans would rather talk about things that other people agree with than argue with anyone who doesn't. Americans have strong views, but they are like a person laying on a sofa who is watching video on TV that he hates, but the remote control is out of reach and he doesn't feel like exerting himself to do something to change the channel. Instead the person just lays there and thinks how much he hates what he is seeing. So try to change the topic of conversation and hope for the best.

If you want a long term relationship it probably would be important to know upfront if you are compatible politically with your intended, but if you are going for a fling, focus on who's on top or bottom, not left or right.