Sexual Disorientation: Dog Days, Dog Years

Delve into the jungle of the newly out and single. TNG Managing Editor Corey discusses dating and sex - or lack thereof - in his new Wednesday morning column, "Sexual Disorientation."

I began to hear whispers of it in elementary school. They talked about it in the cafeteria, when the lunch ladies were distracted with more mundane tasks, and on the buses below the noise of the engine. During recess we would climb onto the jungle gym, out of the authority's reach, and quietly say its name:

Sex.

Of course, it would take longer for some of us than others for the concept of sex to materialize. For gays, and especially "gold-star gays" - those who never had sex with a hetero partner before coming out - it may well have been a long wait from those days on the playground to finally making something happen. How many queer people have found themselves at twenty, or thirty, or dare-I-go-higher, without having really entered the world of sex and dating as a result of orientation complications?

Maybe a better question is, what happens when you do finally come out, often with mountains of baggage and sky-high expectations?

I was talking with a conservative gay friend last week who said it was excusable for queer people to be somewhat promiscuous when they first come out, given that they have so much experience to catch up on. Instead of beginning sexual exploration at the age of twelve or fourteen, they have to wait (in some cases anyway) several more years, with curiosities and desires all building up inside.

I likened the concept to dog years. Each year for a human is said to be experienced like seven years for dogs. I've also been informed that a dog experiences as much in its first year as humans do in their first twenty, a fact which only made the dog years concept more interesting to me. The way we saw it, the twenty-or-so guys my friend had hooked up with in two years was a lot in terms of heterosexual time, but wasn't so much in "gay years" - a measurement that took into consideration the fast pace of the gay dating scene and the fact that, having been closeted for two decades, he had a lot of catching up to do.

For me the concept was compounded by the big gap between coming out and beginning to date - two events which I always imagined would occur at pretty much the same time. In my imagination I would come out, learn the ropes, and have a life partner within a week and a half. While not everyone is the "marrying type" like I am, I suspect that many closeted gays imagine that coming out will at least coincide with sexual success, whatever that might be for them; if not a steady relationship, they will envision immediately having lots of sex, or lots of hot dates, or something of the sort.

But in my case, having any kind of a romantic life took awhile (or at least felt like it from where I was standing). I came out in August 2007, on the eve of my junior year at Georgetown. It took me a few months just to get used to the fact that I was gay and to begin to feel comfortable in my own skin. Then in December I went abroad for five months, spending most of my time in the Middle East - not the ideal place to explore homosexuality. From there, I spent two months working non-stop for the Obama campaign on the other side of the country.

And thus, it had been a full year of being openly gay and without so much as a hug from another man. Instead of living in this "dog years" concept of having ten times the number of experiences as a mortal heterosexual, I had been living in "dog days" - a hot, sultry period of being stuck in the mud, waiting and wondering.

It was only a year, but it felt so much longer to this heartsick young homo. I didn't phsyically stay in any one place long enough to develop a "gay community" or to find "gay spots" around town to hang out in; I didn't have many gay friends, and soon stopped worrying about finding guys I might possibly date. In a world that so often portrays the young gay man as cliquey, promiscuous, and living in a bubble, I couldn't help but feel that I had missed the proverbial boat.

It turns out that I did have one stereotypical gay feature, and that was the instinct to be melodramatic - for at the age of 21 I had decided that I would probably die alone and sexless sixty years later, my body given to science as the last virgin on earth, my money donated to charity. Lo and behold, it didn't work out that way - I just needed to be patient.

In August 2008 things started happening. They began slowly but soon started snowballing. As the expression goes, when it rains, it pours. In fact, not too long ago I found myself so wet that I decided maybe I needed to slow down and get an umbrella - some kind of shield, an intermediary between the possibility of a romantic connection and choosing to pursue, allow, or imagine one. It wasn't that I was hooking up with lots of people or falling in love with every other pretty face, but I did start to feel like a kid in a candy store - a little confused, a little overwhelmed, and suddenly needing to figure out what it was I really wanted.

It would seem that I had grown so used to not having a sexual existence, from 20 years spent in the closet and a year out and alone, that I had a hard time adjusting to a world in which there were real possibilities. Not only were there possibilities, but there were many possibilities - sometimes more than one at a time. I couldn't let something happen just because I had nothing better to do, and I had no reason to pretend I was interested in men when it clearly wasn't clicking. There were plenty of fish in the sea, and while I may not have been the most experienced fisherman, I wasn't without the ability to reel one or two in. But if I wanted to make something work, I would have to start participating in my least-favorite activity on earth - choosing.

I had learned my first rule of sex and dating: There is no room for indecision. Forget the dog years theory, forget those dog days spent in heat; entering the dating scene and just grabbing whatever fruit falls from the tree will only waste more of your time.

That being said, the choices aren't always easy. But those are stories for another day.


Be sure to check back next Wednesday morning for the latest "Sexual Disorientation." Meanwhile, you can read through my related posts from the past.