Thoughts on Daniel Radcliffe and being gay

As usual, the media (and hoi polloi, bless them) just have to see two guys hugging for them to immediately assume at least one of them is gay.  The innuendo and rumour mills were going full blast after this report and these pictures in Britain's The Daily Mail.

Thing is, what do you mean by "gay"?  

1. You can lust after blokes but not necessarily love them or even like them
2. You can love them, but find the thought of sex with them uninteresting or even icky
3. You can be 95% heterosexual but there is one bloke who does it for you.  But you love him and lust after him
4. You can not much mind either way.  An orgasm's an orgasm, a hole's a hole.  Warm mouths or clever hands have no gender.
5. You can prefer woman but if you haven't had it for a week/a month/ a year, a man will do (prison, the British Navy, etc)
6. You can get close to other men and then express your affection in a physical and sexual way. But you aren't interested in anonymous sex or gay bars.

Now I don't know about the delicious Daniel Radcliffe.  He may or may not be gay.

But younger guys who seem to be much easier about this than our generation was, aren't afraid to express their liking physically (which is not the same as sexually -- our society is so afraid of sex that they see physicality leading inevitably to sex.  Which is rot)  One of the pernicious side effects of generations of homophobia is that perfectly straight men are afraid to express their affection and love for other men.  Gay lib is also straight lib.  Accepting that men can love men (without it necessarily being sexual) will allow straight men to hug and kiss and cuddle with other straight men without wanting to fuck them silly.  And of course, if they did find a wayward attraction, they might well enjoy sex with each other.  Gay, straight, or just human?

Daniel Radcliffe is very gay-friendly, and easy with gays.  But that doesn't mean he finds men sexually attractive, any more than a gay bloke who likes women wants to have sex with them.

He's not a macho lumber-lumber "me big, me strong, me kill someone", but that doesn't make him gay.   Even if he is acting a gay man.

If he be gay, though, he's certainly welcome to visit. :-)

Having Sex with Straight Blokes

I've had my share of sex with straight blokes.  What's interesting (because it throws so much light on the way men, straight or gay, think about sex and intimacy) is that they mostly had no hangups at all about the sex.  Most wouldn't reciprocate -- I'd suck them off or let them fuck me, and I had to bring myself to orgasm afterwards -- but, once they'd agreed to sex, they always enjoyed it.  So far as I could tell.  Groaning oh fuck that's good is a sort of hint.

The difficulty they all had (apart from the obligatory I'm not a homo you know, or I'm not gay or I have a girlfriend) wasn't with the sex.  It was with the cuddle after sex.  I was looking for affection, I was looking for love (not in love)  I wanted hugs and kisses.  The sex was nice, but not essential.  They were to a man profoundly uncomfortable with this.  I realised why so many women go on at men:  they need the affection which men are brought up (or is it innate?) not to show and perhaps not even to feel.  When their bloke forgets their birthday or their anniversary it proves what they deep down suspected:  he doesn't really love them.  I did a post about the different perceptions of gay and straight men of gay-straight friendships which was also the very first post to this blog, way back in 2006.  I guess you might say that it's a bit of an idée fixe with me.

Straight men can be as bitchy and cruel as any gay man -- after they've had their sex.  When I lived in shared house, I was forever fielding phone calls from Trisha or Charlotte or Patty asking for Bruce or Jimmy or Kevin.  When told  who was on the line, the men would shake their heads emphatically and urge me to say they were out, in hospital or had emigrated.  This was a day or two after I'd heard the bed squeaking fit  to bust when Trisha or Charlotte or Patty came home from the pub with one of the blokes.  I hate lying.  I can't lie.  So it was always awkward.  It was no different, though, to the way my tricks would treat me.  It was obviously a male thing and I was equally obviously the odd man out.  My experiences were that I could get sex anywhere, as often as I liked.  But I couldn't get affection from men, straight or gay.

In recent years, that's changed.  Maybe I'm getting to know a better kind of bloke.  Maybe as I and my mates get older, the hormonal fires are dying down.  In some ways, over the last few years (though not often) I have had some intimate moments with straight guys, and have been given emotional support when I needed it.  It's touched me and moved me when that's happened.  When my son was very ill and I was beside myself with worry, three friends (who are straight and know I'm not) spontaneously hugged me close.  Nice.

I'm going to write a novel based on my experiences in shared houses with straight guys.  I will use things that happened to me or which I observed in different houses, and use my author's prerogative to bring them all together to make a story, about three straight guys and one gay gay and how they all end up having their minds (and their arseholes) broadened (to paraphrase George Melly in his book Rum, Bum and Concertina*) I'm sure there are guys out there who will never feel even the slightest attraction to another guy, and there are some who will never feel that for a woman, but there are far more than I ever realised in the middle.  The hardest thing for so many of them is not to be fond of another man (they can do that) or to fuck another man (they can do that too) but to combine both.  My story will explore that paradox.

By the way, I'm writing up a storm:  for the first time in three years I'm really enjoying my writing.  I'll talk about that later.


*from the British Navy saying: ashore, it's wine women and song; at sea, rum, bum and concertina.