Yup. Gay-Straight Alliance? No one thought of this possibility or indeed, I doubt that anyone would have understood the purpose of any gay-lib activism. Many of the dudes I was fooling around with did not see themselves as gay. They were just getting their rocks off.

The few guys who admitted to themselves (and possibly to the closest 2-3 buddies they were fooling around with) that they 'liked' it, viewed all sexual activity as something totally private. A notion that a degree of activism was needed in relation to anything that we deemed was purely sexual and private was entirely outlandish. Straight guys were having sex (or at least bragging about it) before marriage, and no one thought that we should have an activist entity supporting their activities.



The notion that some of us had our private dorm-unrelated housing at the gentle age of 18 must have favored the notion that oral sex (if indeed, 'practical') was not really worth our 'time and money' because we were able to get 'more' due to our upgraded housing/privacy arrangements.

Some of the experience must have had to do with the nature of the sexual act in itself. A sucker dude mostly controls the action. If you are being sucked, you are trying to lead him onto the right path, so that you would climax in your time, and we would call it quits.

Tops tend to dominate bttms when it comes to anal play. They tend to be in charge. This is where the power play is really tilted in favor of one of the players. The result is often an increased sense of passion. Even a somewhat average top can bring about a degree of ecstasy for the both players or at least for the bottom dude.

So, we basically shared the view that oral was a beginner's stuff, practical and easy to accomplish but nothing to write home about. Anal sex was the real thing, and if the bttm dude was begging for more, and shouting your name, you were doing it right, and so was he.


Eastern Med cultures are very hierarchical. You always needed to know your place in the pecking order. Big dude, big endowment, plus private housing? That could only read: top.

Small, new dude in town, in need of new friends, etc. That said clearly: bttm.

Naturally, this value system disadvantaged versatile guys, because they were simply not a part of the general equation.

The solution here was for the versatile guys to 'agree' to bottom for a demanding top, because he was going to give them something that they wanted: exam questions with ready-made answers; a weekend together, and sometimes it was only a pair of fancy sunglasses.

Essentially, giving away small gifts, buying meals or paying for a cab ride, movie tickets, etc., was the usual face-saving strategy for the guys who agreed to bottom. Small gifts (strange enough) did not suggest that they were pimping themselves out for peanuts but that their role was viewed as valuable, desirable, and worth a special consideration.


Sex, any sex without kissing was deemed, well, infantile. You reached legal age, and you started to recognize that whatever you were doing 'mattered' to some extent. So, you owned your sexual acts, too. If a dude even considered refusing to kiss, he would have been branded a scared 'chicken', 'girly' because he was not willing to put out, and he'd be out of your clique pretty soon.

Every club has its rules...


A specific sense of integrity is THE single most masculine trait in Mediterranean cultures. You did something - you owned it. The notion that you could come back, and hang around the guys acting as if you did not share some very intimate history whereas you did, was entirely unthinkable of. Everyone was willing to respect that you were having a GF, and that you were not looking to fool around anymore (if that was the case), but every one of your ole' time buddies expected to be recognized as such, in private, behind the closed doors, and all. You were supposed to stand your ground as a man, and the pretense that nothing ever happened would have been the worst betrayal of your manly status.

Naturally, a few men found the memories of their past exploits to be too haunting, and too difficult to cope with. If you wanted to start from a clean slate, no one was standing in your way. You stopped communicating with your 'old' buddies and moved on. No one thought that this was wrong or even unusual. Many of the college friendships were mostly sexual in nature, and if a dude found a more pleasing/desirable arrangement, he moved on as expected.

KD

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