But, he continues, “Even the people who fantasize daily about just pounding someone or being pounded by someone, when they’re really honest with me, they discover that this fantasy is actually rooted in a deep desire to be free. “Some people who read that are probably going to be rolling their eyes,” he says. He says that if he was to pick any guy walking around Dallas’s gay strip and were able to have them honestly answer what they’re looking for in sex, they’d say something along the lines of freedom, connection, loss of loneliness, loss of pain, self-respect and respect from his partner, and pleasure rooted in safety. It showed that, at any given age, only about 35% of guys (or less) had actually participated in anal sex during their last sexual encounter. It was an online survey asking about the most recent sexual encounter of nearly 25,000 gay and bisexual men ages 18 to over 60 from across the United States - the largest study of its kind. It was then that I recalled a study conducted by George Mason University a few years back. That, combined with the endless obsession in the gay community of whether guys are “tops or bottoms” contributes to a perception that most gay and bi guys enjoy anal sex. It’s easy to understand why they feel this way: America (and most of the world) lacks LGBTQ-inclusive sex education, so the vast number of us learn about sex through porn, and most porn scenes involve gay anal sex.
Lots of young guys I’d met at LGBTQ conferences around America weren’t into anal sex either, and most of them felt like a weirdo because of it.
I’d totally been there before - throughout most of my 20s, in fact - and I tried to reassure him that, contrary to his beliefs, he wasn’t a freak or a failure.