Why Straight Men Experiment With Other Men
Every time I publish a story about a straight man experimenting with another man, someone comments that it happened to them. Others read it with fascination, fantasising about the possibility.
As someone who played rugby when I was younger, worked in masculine environments, and was very closeted for a long time, I had my fair share of these experiences.
This opens up the entire can of worms. Are they really ever straight to begin with?
Straight to gay is kind of like a spectrum. You could be 1% gay, which means very little until that one time after too many beers, and you haven’t cum in a while, then you’re talking to your mate, also a little inebriated, and then your knees touch, and then you can’t drive, so you stay at your mate’s place, and then you get there… and that’s when that 1% kicks in.
The internet likes to divide men into neat little categories. Straight, gay, bisexual, end of discussion.
Real life is messier than that.
Over the years I’ve met married men who were curious, gay men who spent years convinced they were straight, bisexual men who hated the label, and straight-identifying men who had one experience with another guy and then carried on with their lives as though nothing unusual had happened.
Curiosity Is Usually Where It Starts
So why does it happen?
Curiosity for one.
I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve been somewhere and a colleague, or a friend who for whatever reason has discovered I like cock. Several drinks in, they start asking questions.
The questions are almost always the same.
When did you know? How did it happen? Who was the other guy and where did you meet?
Erm… in a bar like this one, with a guy like you who asked a lot of questions very much like this one.
What starts as curiosity doesn’t always stay there. Sometimes it remains exactly that. A few questions, a laugh, another beer and everyone goes home. Sometimes it goes through the hole. Or the door. You know the one.
I joined the military at a young age, mostly to get away from my family, and for free training and future prospects. But what I really discovered was that I did it to escape my life and be free to explore myself more and my sexuality.
Turns out that’s exactly why many other guys join the military.
Let’s just say some of the best straight experiences for me were in the Australian Air Force. Other guys like me, who were terrified of touching the untouchable, but then touched it anyway.
They couldn’t put their finger on what it was until they found me easy to talk to, get to know, and then they did put their finger on it. Many times.
My best friend from high school and I joined the local rugby team. A couple of years later, we ended up experimenting together. We kissed, we stroked each other, and then he spiralled.
OMFG am I gay now?
Attraction isn’t always identity.
People aren’t necessarily gay because they put their finger on it once, or twice, or maybe even three times.
But if they’re regularly putting their finger on it? That’s no longer straight curious. That’s bi. And for someone who hates labels, I simply use it for ease of communication.
The Men Who Couldn’t Let It Go
What fascinated me wasn’t that these men experimented. It was how differently they reacted afterwards. Some laughed about it and got on with their lives. Others couldn’t stop thinking about it. The experimentation itself was rarely the interesting part. What came afterwards usually was.
A couple of decades later, I’m still struggling to tell the story of Richard in its entirety. It’s still too painful, and decades have passed.
Richard later became Ash in The Hole in the Door. Later still, he became Q in one of my books.
Different names, but the same man.
Richard simply could not accept the possibility that he might like men as well as women. The conflict between who he thought he was and what he was feeling became unbearable. Ultimately, he made the worst possible decision.
He wasn’t the only man I met who wrestled with that conflict, but he was the one I never forgot. We were close, and it happened at a time when I was still trying to understand myself.
Years later, when I wrote The Hole in the Door, I realised I’d spent far longer trying to understand men like Richard than I had writing about the sex itself.
When I wrote The Hole in the Door, it was originally to explore a few memories through fiction. The premise was simple enough. A door with a hole in it had been donated to the Western Australian Museum, where I’d grown up. I thought I’d build a story around it.
Instead, the story took on a life of its own.
What Glory Holes Taught Me About Straight Men
Through that door, and others like it, I met many, many men who were adamant they were straight. Some were curious, others were lonely, and many were just horny. A few simply wanted to know. Others already knew far more than they were prepared to admit.
For many of them, anonymity wasn’t simply convenient, it was essential.
They liked glory holes because they offered distance. A cock or an ass through a hole allowed them to continue running with their existing identity because they weren’t exactly engaging with the man on the other side.
The mental gymnastics involved in this are Olympic level, but then that’s not for me to judge. I was just often the innocent or not-so-innocent bystander on the other side.
I can simply testify that glory holes are definitely real, straight men do use them, and straight men do experiment with other straight men in environments where they feel safe enough to explore something they don’t fully understand.
Are Straight Men Who Experiment Really Straight?
The internet loves asking whether these men were ever really straight to begin with. After years of meeting them, I think that’s often the wrong question. A few were clearly kidding themselves, while others seemed perfectly comfortable calling themselves straight despite what had happened. Most fell somewhere between those two camps, which is probably why the debate never goes away.
What interests me far more is why the possibility affected them so deeply.
For every guy who laughed it off and got on with his life, there was another who tied himself in knots trying to reconcile what he’d done with who he thought he was.
Richard was one of those men.
He certainly wasn’t the last.
Want to find out what happens when these straight men put their finger on it? There’s hundreds of stories here.
