Extraordinary Ordinary Pornography

Last night, I found myself watching, and then re-watching, a homemade porn video online. It had been filmed with a cheap camcorder set on a tripod. It was twelve minutes long, filmed straight through with no zoom-in shots, no cuts, no fade-outs, no editing of any kind. It was not an S&M scene with fancy dungeon equipment. It wasn’t a group/orgy scene, or shot on “location” at some destination like a beach or a doctor’s office. It didn’t even open with someone undressing someone else, which is one of my personal favorite parts of amateur pornography. The clip opened in a pretty ordinary looking bedroom, showing one guy from the waist down, already naked, and another guy, from the waist up, also already naked. In the first ten seconds, the second guy moved his mouth to the first guy’s penis, and then the guys had sex in several positions, until both of them came. It was, like I said, homemade, so these were not actors, and the camera was secondary to the two guys just thoroughly enjoying each other’s company.

In short, the video had the premise of the most ordinary homemade porn videos on the internet. And this is exactly why, the first time I watched it, as this video came to its close, with the guys laughing awkwardly about cleaning up, I found myself crying. It was the first time I had ever, in my whole life, seen two men – one who looked like men I am attracted to, and another who looked like me – genuinely experience pleasure together in a way that made it seem as if that is an ordinary —  even, dare I say, normal — occurrence.

Of course, guys who look like me aren’t especially common, since I’m a trans man, which is a small percentage of the population. And guys who look like me who enjoy sleeping with men are a small slice of that already small group. Images of visible trans men in romantic relationships with other men are almost entirely non-existent. No romantic comedies show us out on dates; no grocery store commercials show us arguing over cereal. Even in the world of pornography, where the “exoticness” of our bodies could be used to draw in viewers based on curiosity alone, we are not particularly known, with the notable exception of the porn star Buck Angel. Bi, gay, and queer trans men are left to craft our desire like birds’ nests, cobbling together every spare scrap that could possibly, maybe, be useful in helping us inhabit our sexual selves.

My own desperate  search to find trans men like myself participating in sexual activities with others has included finding pictures of a trans man from the BDSM community dressing in women’s clothes again while being whipped in public. It’s led me to learn about all sorts of other kinks, some of which I might never have otherwise known I was interested in, and some of which gave me nightmares, in my quest to piece together something resembling a sexual orientation.

I’ve been asked in every corner, even by well-meaning friends: “are you sure you’re not into girls? Really sure?” I didn’t want to be sure about that. I wanted there to be another option. I wanted to be something that was known, something that existed. And it was only with reluctance that I finally began to admit, that yes, I was sure I’m a gay trans man.  Out loud, anyway, I said “gay trans man.” It has only been inside my head that I have translated that phrase to mean “freak.” And as everyone knows, freaks can really only have, you know, freaky kinds of sex, involving, oh, orgies in dungeons with sadistic Masters who require them to wear dresses at the threat of whippings.

My own experience has proven this wrong; all the men I’ve been with have been, above all, gentle and kind, and the time we spent together would probably put most hard core BDSM enthusiasts to sleep. But it’s easy – and here is where I start sounding like a crazy person, but – it is easy to think sometimes that I’ve imagined all of it. Because in a culture where men like me are invisible– and on the rare occasions we aren’t,  are seen as part of a one night only freak show – when this is the story about reality being told day after day, week after week, year after year, it becomes very easy to question my own memory, my own judgment. How is it actually possible, I wonder sometimes, that a guy who could have had sex with anyone would have chosen to have had it with me, with someone with a body like mine? Clearly, I have been thinking to myself, I must be delusional. Clearly, I’ve been thinking, I must be slowly but surely returning to my childhood habit of creating imaginary friends.

But yesterday these doubts weren’t so clear. Yesterday, for twelve minutes, the concept of the possible that lives inside my head – memories of skin against skin, daydreams of the future – matched up with the idea of possible that was outside my head.  This otherwise ordinary video had no moment where someone began to unzip anyone else’s pants, no moment where someone began to tug at someone’s clothes- no moment I usually love most, the moment before bodies are entirely revealed and I can still pretend that one of them looks like mine, before it is clear that none of them do. No; all this video hadwas a fleeting moment where one man’s hands slid neatly down the long scar of the other man’s chest before fitting into the curve of his undeniably feminine hip bone, seeming to fit perfectly there – lingering just for a moment – just before they both began to make the unmistakable sounds of two men undeniably enjoying each other’s company.

Worship at the Temple: A Stranger and A Hotel Room

Sure, we grow up hearing “your body is a temple,” but for many of us that phrase is akin to “everyone is beautiful.” People say it, but they are words in theory, not in lived practice. Those who weigh more than society thinks we should, those who are not considered “able bodied,” those whose penises are “too small,” those who have survived breast cancer and whose bodies tell that story, those who are survivors of sexual and/or physical assault, those who are struggling with sexual orientation, those who are transgender and whose bodies have betrayed us since middle school – for some of us in these categories and for many more, our bodies can feel closer to prisons than to temples. Sex for us may not be a frolick. It may be a walk through shame and apology, for even as “everyone is beautiful” floats through our minds as a sweet abstraction, we still beg for the lights to be turned off, and afterwards, we move as quickly as we can to the bathroom, hoping to get the door closed before we start to cry.

My relationship to my own body has been a strange one. I am transgender, of course, the kind known in common parlance as “born as a girl, now a guy”, which naturally leads to certain assumptions: People assume I’m interested in women, for one thing (“why would you transition if you’re interested in men?” people have asked. “Why not just stay a girl?”) and also that I should hate every “female” part of my anatomy. And I’ve spent the last twelve years or so questioning what attraction even means. I’ve wondered: if I think someone is nice, funny, cute – but if sex does not once cross my mind – is that still attraction? Is it attraction if someone says “I’ll sleep with you, I guess, even though you don’t have a penis?” These questions may sound ridiculous – the kinds of questions twelve-year-olds ask – but I always thought the things people said about actual attraction somehow did not apply to me. I’ve always been outside easy exchanges and supposed instinct, subtly encouraged to “make do,” to not ask for too much.

I’m writing this now, though, knowing it wasn’t just because I’m trans. It’s also because desire is something buried, something secret, until we choose to share it. No one can speak to us about thirsting our want unless they actually know what it is we want. And though we may carry it within ourselves for years and decades, that doesn’t mean anyone else – anyone else on Earth! – knows what that is, unless we tell them, which means that until then, anything they tell us about it is, suggest to us about it, should be completely and utterly disregarded. And it also means that we should get down to the truly important business – reaching into ourselves to pull our desires out of the shadows and into the light so we can get a good long look at them.

I’m writing this because, a few weeks ago, I spent two hours with a stranger in his hotel room. A stranger who was one of the hottest men I have ever seen. A stranger who probably very few people in my life would imagine me being attracted to. Most people in my life think that I’m interested in women, even if I’ve told them otherwise. But even those who know I like men, I think, imagine I like gentle, men, – boys they can imagine as non-sexual if they try, boys who they can imagine me cuddling with rather than having sex with. But this stranger – a man who was kind, but strong, a grown man, who was clearly a sexual being – and I did not gently cuddle. And I did not question, even for a fleeting second: What is attraction? I’ve been on this planet for around three decades, and for the first time ever in bed with another person, I did not feel broken.

Yes, in some ways, this is just a story about a one-night stand.

But it’s a story of something else, too – a story about holiness. When we think of the word baptism, we usually think of a body of water: a pool, a river, a lake. But when we become washed in the dual tides of genuine want and genuine pleasure, when we become anointed by sweat converging in slick, sweet patches, when we realize that “I” no longer lives in the head, but in the toes, the shoulders, in the body of another whose edges are blurring with our own — we do not enter the sacred as broken or striving; we enter the sacred as whole, as complete. We are transformed because we are, in that particular moment, in that particular place, fleetingly, but, for once, ourselves, and it is so unlike the heaviness of what normally hangs above our shoulders. We realize, suddenly, that we are not the answers to all of the complex questions that hound us. We are simply a collection of muscle and laughter, of surrender and wanting. We are, in that moment, in that place, blessed beyond the mumblings of any priest, beyond the singing of any choir. We are blessed beyond any measure; we are transcendent – because we can truly see that we are human and that we are alive.

I’m writing this because I know now that the answers are not easy. Not for me, and maybe not for you. But just because they are complex for us, it does not mean we are exempt, that we are outside. I am a transgender man who is attracted to men, and maybe that doesn’t make sense to some people. And I’m drawn to men who like my centaur body for what it is, not those who like me “even though” I’m trans, and maybe that doesn’t make sense to some people, either. But here’s the thing: It doesn’t have to make sense to them. Those “shoulds” are not determined by law or by ethics, just people who have very particular ideas about gender and sex that are different from my experience. Because what I’m talking about here – it’s about adults, attraction, absolute consent, and joy. And the last time I checked, there is nothing that doesn’t actually make sense about that. It’s about basic things that others take for granted: wanting and being wanted, feeling whole.

I’m writing this because all of us have a right to these things, even those who might need a reminder.

Feeling Wanted: An Ignored Piece of Sexual Health

I had some, uh, experiences today that have really made me think about the concept of “sexual health” in a new way.  Normally, when someone uses that phrase, he or she is probably talking about sexually transmitted diseases, maybe birth control, or maybe advocating that a woman get her “yearly visit.” But this isn’t really everything that’s involved in being “sexually healthy,” nor, maybe, more imperatively, does it cover all the things that are related to sexuality that help a person be healthy and well-balanced. Today, I just want to write about one of those things: the feeling of being desired or physically wanted by another human being.

I am a transgender person: more specifically, a person labeled female at birth who transitioned to living as male as an adult (known in shorthand as FTM, short for “female to male”. You may have never even heard of that before if you belong to mainstream culture, where “transgender” is often only thought to mean someone labeled male at birth who later “becomes a woman.” Men like me are a small group, but we are made even smaller by media coverage, which virtually doesn’t exist (other than the sort-of publicized cases of Thomas Beatty and Chaz Bono), and which never puts us in a particularly sexy light. Although I don’t speak for all my trans brethren out there — many of whom have had experiences different than mine — I will say that I’ve gotten the message over the last several years, from media outlets, from friends, even from other trans friends – that a man without a standard penis is the least sexually desirable type of person there is. Indeed, I’ve gotten the idea that I should feel grateful to anyone who might be interested in me physically, and that I should readily accept the fact that they are probably only interested in me because they think I’m a good person or something and that they feel sorry for me and my body.  I’ve had several sexual partners, but almost always, this is how it felt: An interaction with a person – a friend – who liked me as a person and who was willing to tolerate my trans-ness but didn’t particularly enjoy it. In other words, for the last (roughly) three decades — as in, my entire life — I have never once felt genuinely physically desired or wanted by anyone. Now, you might be thinking, “oh, everybody has that problem every now and again, we all feel ugly sometimes,” but I want you to really think about this: Spending your ENTIRE life feeling like you have a body that nobody wants to look at or touch, that you are undesirable and unwanted. Because that, my dears, is what we call “sexually unhealthy.”

Because of this, I’ve gone through phases online of pretending to either be a non-transgender woman or a non-transgender man, believing this would be the only way to interact with anyone in a digital space about anything sexual, particularly about my own body.  But this ended today, when I threw caution to the wind and not only posted pictures of myself to an “adult” site online while describing myself as what I am — a transgender man — but made myself available for live “chatting”. I’m not going to write details here about everything that went on with the guys I “met” today, because it might come across as bragging and/or gross, which is totally not what I’m trying to do here AT ALL. This post isn’t really about sex, really — it’s about self-image, and the way that sexuality and perceived desirability translate into how we feel about ourselves as wanted or unwanted, how we carry ourselves, how we envision our futures.

One of the men I talked with today asked to see a picture of my entire body naked. Not just little pieces, but my chest, my head, my whole body. And my dears, I obliged him, because no one has ever asked to see my entire body naked before. And do you know what he said in response? He said (and I quote): “you got a hot body.” And when I looked at what I had sent him, do you know what I saw? I did not see a man belonging to the Most Undesirable Group in the World. I didn’t even see the slightly chubby, dorky, nonsexual guy who normally greets me in the mirror. I saw a man who was wanted. And writing this is almost making me cry – it’s making me all shaky inside – because no one has ever told me what he said to me before, never in my life.  And when I told him that sometimes I think nobody wants to be with guys like me, he said, “Don’t say that. You’re so hot.” I talked to two other gay guys who each said they’d never been with a transgender man before but wanted to be. And others, whose comments I’ll spare you here out of decency — all positive, all from men who knew that I was transgender and who were interested in my body just the way it is.

I have the vague awareness that I should probably feel guilty or ashamed for everything that went on today – since it’s definitely inappropriate and “gross” to publicly share – but here’s the thing: I don’t feel bad – not at all. Actually, I think I feel right now like how other people feel after sex, but which sex has never made me feel (yet):  Wanted. Confident. Like I actually have something to offer.And in the last few hours, I’ve decided that access to this feeling – not always, but at least at some point in one’s life – is just as necessary for well-being as getting screened for sexually transmitted diseases. And by participating in a culture where we think it is acceptable that there are people who are simply “undesirable,” whether they be transgender, or overweight, or HIV positive, or whatever else is “Other” — we are participating in the act of denying other people a basic piece of humanity.  Because here’s what else I’m learning: Everybody is desirable. No, not desirable to everyone (of course – but that would lead to trouble anyway). But – no matter who you are – there IS somebody out there who would love to see a picture of you naked, and who would tell you “you have a hot body,” if you gave them the chance. But those of us who have been told so many times that nobody will ever want us — we rarely give people that chance, or ourselves the chance, to actually realize that we DO have something to offer. We rarely allow ourselves the ability to break the cycle. But we should, and we should refuse to feel guilty for claiming for ourselves what others are already given – what is granted to them without question. It is just as much our right as it is theirs, even if our chosen method (such as sending naked pictures to strangers) is different from theirs (finding an “appropriate” boy or girlfriend to have a conventional monogamous relationship with). I know that when I wake up tomorrow, there will be a different man waiting for me in the bathroom mirror than there was this morning. What about you?

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Tonight as I was walking down the street, after most of my online exchanges had ended, a man stopped me to ask me for money to catch the bus, and for the first time in several years, I made eye contact with a stranger asking me for money, and I saw, looking back at me, a human being. And I took out my wallet and I gave this man a dollar, and after I gave it to him, he looked me back in the eyes and shook my hand and said, “God bless you, man. Really.” I’m not sure he was thanking me for the money. I really think he was thanking me for engaging with him – for talking with him, for making eye contact, for granting him just that little speck of humanity. For seeing him. And I have wasted one dollar on much worse things than that. I can speak from today’s experience – I know what a difference it can make to actually be seen: It can make all the difference.