The Seventh Sex

You know how it is, you can remember something someone said and not who said it. You’ve got a vague recollection of the orator, the context and the time it was said but no matter how hard you try you can’t pin down who said something or when. Maybe you guys can help me here but if you can’t, that’s cool.

I think it was a comedian who once said that when the creator defined sexuality he played a big joke on us all. He told us there were two sexes and one orientation. Heterosexual. But what he (or she) actually created was any number of sexualities and just told us that the only one that wasn’t sinful was heterosexual.

From quite an early age I was aware of homosexuality in men. We had a gay couple who my father used to do business with. With no sense of irony at all my father bought his entire collection of Abba LPs from them when they were moving house. Thinking about it now makes me chuckle.

Later I became aware of women who like women and the intriguing phenomenon of the existence lesbians hoved into view. Wow. Competition for girls and from other girls.

Then there was bisexuality and the possibilities that it presented. In fact as I progressed through my adolescence I became more and more aware of the possibilities that the apparently infinitely variable scope of human sexuality offered to me.

I thought about it a lot. After all adolescent boys are programmed to think about sex every few minutes so that was hardly surprising. But what I think was unusual for a boy of my upbringing was that I though about the possibility of me being something other than heterosexual. I don’t mean that most men haven’t considered if they are straight or gay at some point in their life but I don’t think most actually regard the possibility of being anything other than straight as a momentary lapse, a wavering of their utter conviction that they are totally “normal”.

The thing is I don’t think about blokes in a directly sexual way. I never have but. But it’s part of my personality that I always investigate possibilities, even in the hypothetical; I suppose it gives me the assurance that I’ve at least considered all the possibilities.

So, for me thinking through my sexuality and working out what made me tick wasn’t some pivotal moment of teenage angst about whether or not I fitted in. It was at the same time both an intellectual exercise and an exploration of the possibilities open to me. I have to concede that at that time I wasn’t so worldy wise and the infinite variety of sexuality that does exist was still a mystery to me.

After all that, and even now, I find myself being boringly heterosexual. I’m not even bi-curious. What a bummer eh? I have feminine characteristics and like to think that I can be sensitive but nope I don’t fancy blokes. I’ve been called gay at school, but that’s because I didn’t act like a mindless dolt and treat women like shit. In some ways I wish I did have non-conventional curiosities so I could investigate new sexual avenues, but I don’t. And anyway that’s probable a good thing because I’m still discovering new aspects of sex with Suze and I don’t think I could cope with much more. LOL