SEXIS WRONG

though, I’ve been wondering if perhaps that approach isn’t
just a tad too liberal, if the essence of male queerness is
not in fact somehow fully dependent on getting (or giving)
it up the ass. Certainly it’s a familiar whine of homophobes:
“That’s an exit, not an entrance, you stupid fag.”
Those same homo-haters may in fact jack off to pictures of
women getting it on with each other, but lesbians don’t fuck
each other up the butts. (Or, if they do, at least they sensibly
use dildos.) Queer men, on the other hand, insist on shoving
our very own flesh up each other’s poop chutes, and that
squicks numerous straight men—the ones who aren’t doing
their girlfriends up the ass, anyhow. (I have it on good authority
that some straight boys, as part of their countless appropriations
of gay male culture, are getting fucked by women
wearing strap-ons…so maybe it is a small world after all. Still,
I think that most of us would agree that when it comes to
buttfucking in theory and practice, homos hold most of the
important patents. How many women, for instance, do you
think have fisted their husbands? Not nearly enough, I’ll venture.)
After I fuck Patrick and see him out the door, I microwave a
cup of leftover coffee and sit down to read the Sunday newspaper.
Seeing as how it’s Easter, there’s an investigative article
on the Resurrection, real hard-news stuff. And one young
born-again fellow is quoted as saying, “If there weren’t eternal
life through belief in Jesus, then it would make no sense
to be a Christian.” Well, say what you will about God’s love,
about the pleasures of doing good and all that swell stuff,
let’s face it—eternal life is clearly Christianity’s Big Gimmick,
the free toaster when you open a new account. Traditionally,
Jews haven’t focused on the afterlife: You did the right thing
because G-d told you to, and that was that. After all, wasn’t
it those rotten ol’ pharaohs who were always fretting about
what would happen to them after they died?
Then the Christians came along and started offering Heaven
as the carrot and Hell as the stick. Sure, the Egyptians had
already come up with the dead-and-resurrected-god shtick.
Lots of other religions had, too. But Christianity doesn’t require
mummy wrappings and gilded tomb tchotchkes to assure
immortality. You just have to do good. Or, if you’re part
of the salvation-by-faith crowd, even that’s not a prereq. You
just have to say the magic words, and hey, presto, your self
will never, ever die.
Queer essentialist Leo Bersani, in the title of a famous essay,
asked: “Is the rectum a grave?” Well, unlike your basic,
garden-variety vagina, the nether rosebud is more likely
to issue feces than rugrats. And certainly, the advent of HIV
has made the gentle art of sodomy seem even more fraught,
more freighted with fateful whatever. But a grave? Isn’t that
a bit extreme?
If the universe has an endpoint,
the pious Christian would rather it
not be located just slightly above
the perineum.
Perhaps the basic issue, the leitmotiv as ’twere, is mortality.
You know: death. Entropy. Dissolution of all that is, including
our precious egos. To put this as inelegantly as possible,
yesterday’s food is today’s shit. We’re not only part of the
food chain, we are the food chain, in miniature. Every dump
we take is a memento mori. Nothing is forever. Everything
passes. And is flushed.
This is distressing to some folks. Not just on a visceral,
“Phew! That stinks!” level. On an existential level. On an “I
can’t stand the thought that someday soon, I’ll be no more”
level. You know.
Mid-April
A new Pope has just been elected; a job promotion for the
erstwhile Cardinal Ratzinger, the ex-Hitler Youth Inquisitor
who’s stated that he and his god think what I do is an “evil…
disorder.” Yet another reason to wonder why an organization
of supposedly celibate men—albeit one riddled with child
molesters—should be allowed to pontificate
on hot sex between consenting adults. And
yet another reason to prefer the Dalai Lama.
The same day, I go over to visit a chunky Latino
boy, figuring I’m going to be the Daddy top.
But Junior has other ideas. Soon enough, I’m
flat on my back while the boy slides his smallish, delightfully
uncut, and very hard dick into me. Since I’m in the middle
of writing this extended essay on buttfucking, I try to maintain
a certain reportorial objectivity. Nope, can’t do it. I don’t
get fucked all that often, and mi hijo knows what he’s doing;
whatever he lacks in genital heft, he more than makes up for
in brutal enthusiasm. He pounds into me, whispering sweet
nothings like, “Does Dad like having his boy’s cock up his
ass?” Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do. And when Ernesto
comes into his condom while I shoot messily onto my belly,
I think “Hey, Pope Benedict the Whatever, that one was for
you.”
Well, actually I didn’t think that, not then, but I wish I had.
I know, I know. Childish anti-authoritarianism, right? I should
really grow up. That’s a way the Freudians have put queers
296 EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SEX IS WRONG