Homoflexibility vs heterorigidity

So another couple of fashionable terms from that beacon in a sea of darkness (copyright Theo van Gogh), the shining city on the hill, have reached these shores. And even though they seem to have originated at crazy loony-left campus colleges where they have nothing better to do all day than think up new politically correct vocabulary or go far-out on the dope with the faculty, I think they're quite brilliant.

Not only do they decriminalize homosexuality, they praise flexibility and experimentation. Also, the word "rigid" is generally negative and sounds remarkably similar to "frigid".

In short, when using "heterorigidity", we're sticking it to the buggers. It makes them sound dull, bourgeois, prejudiced even. No eye for deviance, no will to experiment, just two minutes in missionary position followed by a shower.

"Heteroflexibility" and "homoflexibility" will make all sorts of pressure groups foam at the mouth. Good. Here we have a group of people with a certain sexual preference, but willing to take a chance with the other sex, willing to step out of the limits set by bourgeois society, and capable of judging each individual at his or her own sexual merit. It's not the same as bisexuality, because the basic choice has been made, but left open to exceptions.

I'll embrace these terms, because they reflect my desire to step out of the box quite accurately. From now on, please call me "homoflexible".

With thanks to Laurie Essig of Slate.

Mr Haider got caught

Joerg Haider is an infamous name in European politics. The son of a Hitler Youth member, he gained notoriety in Austria by kind-of, sort-of, but indirectly, well, not quite sticking up for former Nazis, who form a significant part of the electorate.

Well, his Freedom Party kept growing, his notoriety increased and when the conservative Austrian People's Party decided to govern with them in 1999, an international boycott of the Austrian government started. This government collapsed after a year, there was a falling out between Haider and his ministers, and he scuttled off back to his native Carinthia, where he remains governor to this day, even though he split off to form a new party, BZOe.

Haider's quite a good-looking guy, in a slimy, skiing instructor sort of way, and there have always been rumours about his sexuality. Apparently there is a Mrs Haider, but she's kept carefully out of the spotlights.

Well, here's Joerg in action.

Mind you, the first shot looks quite innocent, but the others leave little to the imagination. There's no official denial or anything, but there never was one. There's no open record of anti-gay legislation, but then the People's Party used to take care of that.

The official BZOe excuse? "Haider proves once again he is much better at connecting with today's youths than any of the other parties". Well, they have a point there.

This is no Larry Craig affair, and not half as amusing, but I'm sure his former Hitler Youth supporters are not too happy with this behaviour.

Everything you can get, you can fix

Well, opening the student newspaper can be a pleasant surprise.

This week's topic: sex in fraternities.

Now, my uni is not known for it's fraternities - it's not a traditional university, being founded only in the twenties to meet demands for a catholic university in a country known for repression of the catholic South. Then, during the sixties, leftism hit badly: it was the first university to be occupied by sit-ins and was briefly renamed "Karl Marx University" by the student body. The days of catholic higher education were definitely over. This was followed by the loss of the predicate "catholic" in the nineties and the recent move of the Vatican-sanctioned theological faculty to bigger Utrecht.

But the guys in the fraternities apparently have a pretty raucous sex life.

The rules are simple: obviously, you are a member of a class. But not of the traditional type. To make class of 2007, you would have to be pretty busy... Seriously, your class number equals the number of girls you screwed.

If you don't get laid for a year, you have to walk around town wearing a chicken suit... and make sure you score wearing it. No opting out of that one.

The boys readily admit that high quantities mean loss of quality. Drink and drugs obviously play a big role here: 56% of students admit frequent cannabis use, and 10% use stronger stuff. Waking up, and seeing the girl often turns out to be a nasty shock. But they also admit that picking up pretty girls is too much hard work. These plain girls like it and are readily available. And they are promiscuous: some girls are known to keep Excel sheets with names, dates and final grades. This is something I recognise from the gay world.

Now comes the nasty shock: condoms are out of fashion. No-one uses them.

Apparently, the fraternities form a pretty much closed loop of sexual activity and not many STDs get in. Doctors apparently only test for chlamydia and common stuff like that. Not for HIV. "Everything you can get, you can fix", says one boy. But that's not quite true, is it?

This is highly dangerous, and it's beyond comprehension. Only one HIV+ person has to somehow get involved and the whole lot might readily be infected.

The conclusion is inescapable: this particular fraternity is a whole lot more immature and irresponsible about safe sex than the shallow, supposedly generally uneducated gay scene in my town.

A Night on Earth

I still have to fess up on the rancid details of Thursday night, but also have this other little thing to get off my chest.

A Saturday night with the boys on the town. It went, to put it bluntly, badly.

I started with a nice bottle of Chianti to get going. I had been apprehensive about going out, because I much preferred to see my crush again, who suddenly decided to text me on Saturday morning (wtf?), hinting about next weekend. Honestly, I'll take that. I'm such a sucker, but I like the guy.

So I said my date had cancelled (all bold and shit!) and that I would go to town to see this great German DJ, a hero of mine since high school. I wasn't really into it, and once I joined my fantastically metro friend at his down town pad, I was feeling worse.

I hit the beer: bad idea after the wine. Of course people started questioning about the date. I lied, made up a story about meeting a girl through work. I hated that. Then someone else, a guy I hardly know, follows up on this with a comment about gays hitting on him (wouldn't touch him with a bargepole). Just great. It was only mildly derogatory, I reacted well to it, but the overwhelming impulse was to just admit the whole thing. Not the time, not the right audience, wrong vibe. I hit rock bottom at that point, wouldn't recover in this crowd.

We move on, to the venue. Not really a club, more of a hard rock joint hosting a techno party. A bad one. Piercings, dirty rasta hair, and only beer served. No good looking men or women in sight. My DJ is not coming on till two, beats are hammering away, no melody, and I'm pouring down five awful, over chilled beers in twenty minutes. I don't really enjoy the group, hate the joint and this relentlessly monotonous music does nothing for me. I want out.

By about one I'd had it. I took a leak, and just walked out. To the gay strip.

The first club was nice, but I ran out of cash so I had to find a machine. One problem with my town: we hardly have any banks so I had to walk a long way and queue up like a good Brit.

After that unfortunate transaction, I hit another club: it was closer to the bank.

Within minutes I'm talking to a Belgian guy. A bit older, OK looking, good conversation. I was pretty drunk by then, having had at least two more Bacardi Colas since leaving Straightland. Within twenty minutes we're going at it. He was a good kisser and I'm addicted to that, but didn't want to take it any further.

He wants to leave with me. I guess he wants to go to my place, but I'm definitely not up for that. We walk to his car (a VW Fox, piece of shit), parked real close by. He wants me to instruct him where to go, so I vaguely guide him to a street close to my neighbourhood. He parks and starts unbuttoning my shirt, feeling my dick.

In the end I just tell him I'm way too drunk and not into it enough to go further, get out and walk away. I was struggling to get my shirt back on and later I find my fly had been totally unbuttoned. I take a long, piping hot shower when I get home.

Yes, I was a tease, and behaved like a prick to anyone who was around me all night.

Today I pleaded drunkenness and nausea to all my friends. They were nursing hangovers, so it wasn't an issue really. I do feel ashamed, but I wouldn't have enjoyed staying at the hard rock joint and I don't plan to compromise on pleasure any more.

Conclusions for the night:

Older guys are good kissers, I need the experience, but I don't want to take it further;

I have to learn to draw the line in a nice, polite way;

My friends probably know about my sexuality;

I need a few friends to join me in the clubbing thing to be less of a target;

Perv management is important;

I want to make a move on someone myself for once but haven't had a chance yet;

Seedy straight places don't do it for me any more;

Picking up men is just too easy and I need to become a lot more discerning.

Wicked Ways

I can't resist going to the Department Store for Those Who Spend Too Much on Preppy Clothes. I'm sort of, kinda part of their clientèle: I come in regularly and spend too much. On the other hand, I'm single, not a yuppie and don't come in my work suit. I would dearly love to upgrade to the Store For Those Who Care Too Much About Brands, but sanity still has a tenuous grip on me, I'd like to think. So after surpassing one of those typical minor hurdles in life I tend to treat myself, even though I get the impression their staff doesn't much like the look of me. Way too wannabe metro, but too lazy to pull it off. Or something.

So I pick up my pair of overpriced, ridiculously expensive and plain waste-of-money-at-19%-VAT Diesel jeans after much deliberation ("you know you will!"). And then, just as I want to pay and leave this wallet-sucking nirvana, I see him. Perfection.

And boy do I hate him. I don't fall in love here, I just meet the Unobtainable One, the yardstick by which I know I will measure others. Timing could not be worse.

His face is flawless, perfect. No room for criticism, which I will always find, believe me. Blond hair, perfectly cut, semi-short and gelled so that everything lines up exactly. Modelish, really. A tan, fake as a three-dollar bill but subtle. Not cheap, not overbearing, the way I would like to come back from a holiday in the sun but rarely do. Just adding the finishing touches to a perfect face. Emerald eyes, twinkling, stronger, more beautiful than mine, even though I consider them my main selling point. A ridiculous piercing, with a large diamond stud pinned to the flap of the ear that reaches to the ear canal, just shouting out: "don't doubt". And I don't. I see him mingle with his incredibly drab female colleague, and boy is he out.

As I'm sizing him up mentally (about 1.70, smaller than me, bloody store uniform not tight enough to check out the bod), I feel hugely inadequate. I was wearing the worst, floppy, ugly cheap football shirt ("Italia") I have because I was running late. The dentist I had been to had left horrid pinkish goo on my teeth. I was sweaty and wearing cheap-o ersatz deodorant, discounter fragrance as I had run out of my usual stuff. No cologne, because I did not want to get too flirty with the dentist's pretty assistant.

As I wait for Perfection and Drab Colleague to decide who will login to the till, paranoia hits. Hard, like watching Requiem to a Dream on hashish.

I must smell like a grizzly, look like Hannibal after having an old friend for dinner.

He's just a cashier, and you've got two degrees!

It just doesn't count in this arena.

Perfection gets to login to the till, they decide. At the other side of the double till, a quality yuppie had lined up to pay for his Ralph. Perfection has to choose: the freak with the blinding shirt or Fitted Suit. After a second of deliberation, he sashays, he defines the word really, over to me and starts logging in. Perfection is a wee bit effeminate, I suppose.

A choice I would never have made. I wonder what vibe I was giving off. I sense he can read my inner thoughts, understands what's going on. Members of the tribe first? Some sort of homo solidarity?

I don't want to be a pushover in the face of such beauty. So I give him my hard schoolyard stare. I'm good at that one. He folds my purchase over, wraps it in a plastic bag. Movements that are so gay, yet so attractive on him. With a decidedly neutral face (another classic of mine), I pay, thank him and leave.

I'm still wondering: what if I meet this kid in a club, armed with clean teeth, liquid strength, Hugo Boss and a shield of indifference?

Temptation waits

Walking around town as a tourist is a good excuse to check out the local hotties. Which I attempted to do as much as possible without being obvious. Or too obvious, anyway. Which led me to the following observation (personal development alert): my sexual preference is really quite agile.

I used to think I had phases. Maybe it was part of the denial process, but for a period of two years I had a clear preference for women. Before that, men for a while even though I fiercely repressed it. I know I always had that gay part in me, I can even remember innocent indicators of it from my childhood. I know I didn't change to become this way, I have always been like this. But I'm still discovering myself, because I've set my mind free.

In Spain I noticed my eyes occasionally jumped from hot guy to sexy girl. This is new to me, but I like it.

Special

I was planning to do a post on coming-out nuance anyway, but Closet-NS kind of beat me to it.

The old labeling issue comes up time and again for us deviants (not a pejorative). Society seems to demand it. In the acceptance stages of our own development process we brood on it, break our minds over it and try to learn to deal with it. What are we? We're not 100% straight, that we know we for sure, even though we might not be ready to admit it. We are attracted to men, but also to women to some variable degree.

We know about bisexuality, but that term seems to infer some sort of balance in sexual preferences. There's pansexuality, which implies indifference to sex and attraction to personalities and individuals. Interesting, but not applicable to my case. I wish it was, though. It looks hugely futuristic and exciting.

The truth is that I'm probably about 65% gay, 35% attracted to women. Technically, we could call this queer but it doesn't quite fit the colloquialism. The word "queer" just doesn't convey nuance. And how do you honestly calculate such percentages?

Now I'm quite happy with this state of affairs really. I understand my own situation after years of doubt and thinking. But how do you explain this to friends, family, casual bystanders?

You don't want to get into facts or figures, percentages or the Kinsey scale. Society likes to put its members into carefully defined categories. I might not, but it's a fact of life and empathy and good manners seem to demand that I conform.

Society over the years has come to develop ways to deal with homosexuality. Manners and political correctness demand it and humanity has found a way to deal with it (at least in most of Europe and North America). People express indifference to a friend's sexual preference during coming-outs, to the relief of the speaker. That's etiquette, and it's a good thing, but it's often an act.

Society is less ready to deal with scales of sexuality. There's no scripted pattern to deal with those stories yet. Yet I and many like me fall into this category. We want to keep it short and simple, because after all it's private information we don't always want to share with everyone around.

So each of us individually ends up settling for a phrase, a term, a short explanation that will cover the current and expected future situations accurately enough. I've decided to settle for bisexuality even though it doesn't feel entirely correct.

In the end, I like men and women, and this allows me to come home with a girl even though I'm predominantly gay. Others have settled for different terms. That's fine, but wouldn't it be better to find some sort of common ground? Homosexual emancipation has benefited us, but it has also left us with a much too simple boolean choice between two groups that are not exact complements. Maybe we can only win one sexual battle at a time, but the case of the %-sexuals surely needs to be represented.

So where do I stand?

I'm not sure. Actually, I think I know, but I can't summarize it in one word. Kind of annoying, but also kind of exciting.

I'm picky about women. I don't feel much attraction towards most girls my age. It has to do with style, security, experience I guess. I always tended to have slightly older girlfriends. Truth be told, I wasn't really very interested unless they were completely wacky or extrovert personalities. That type really drew me in, being around such women was like being on a very wild ride. I liked that, still do. Relationships with hot girls with little to say tended to peter out quickly, leaving me relieved at the break-up.

I also like boys (20+, of course). I guess I always did, was born that way. I've been aware of vague feelings of attraction since early adolescence, maybe even earlier. I ignored it, suppressed it, paid no attention to it. That wasn't even rational: I just did not think about it. Boys chase girls, that's the way society tells you it is, and I did. Normal people don't deviate from that. And I was normal, wasn't I?

I may be from Holland but our society doesn't handle eccentrics and deviants very well. It's part of what got Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh killed, for example. I will probably do a post on that later on; somehow this distorted intolerance troubles me.

So after my years of trouble and in my mid twenties there's an itch and this time I'm planning to scratch it. This blog will be my diary and my confessional, even though I am, in Oriana Fellaci's footsteps, a Christian atheist. I do religion but I don't do God. I will get to that another day.

One of the main issues I'm dealing with is the boxes I'm supposed to be ticking. How do I honestly explain where I'm at, in terms of sexuality? I'm definitely not straight and somehow, admitting it comes as a relief. I don't think I want to be straight, really. Whether I'm truly bi or gay I am intending to find out.