STRANGELOVE
Or How I Finally Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bears

By Frank Jackson

This is only an excerpt…

I think when you come out — and I think I’ve said this before — you should get a goddamn handbook. And somewhere in chapter two should be a play-by-play guide to the prostate and its pleasures. O, the rapture! O, the joy! And oh, shit, why didn’t anyone tell me about this? The first time I really experienced “the other orgasm,” it blew my mind way more than blowing my wad ever did. Jesus Christ and Mary as well, it was beautiful. The screaming, the gnashing, the gyrating, the whole damn lot of it — why had I not been told? I had always assumed (don’t laugh too loud at me here) that bottoms were just generous; they just liked to give their bodies for the pleasure of others. I know, I know, the ignorance of the young. But how was I supposed to know? I’m sure someone must’ve written “Frank Talk” for the 1990s (okay, maybe the 1980s), but I sure hadn’t read it.

And then I got angry at all those clueless, inconsiderate tops — some of them far more experienced than I, and thus, I thought, knowledgeable in the ways of men and their asses. What the hell was wrong with them? No fingering first? No finding the Sweet Spot? No waiting for a minute, then going slowly, then going faster, then going holy shit that’s fast oh my god yes do it please oh god yes, and then going slower again….?
So no wonder I wasn’t a bottom; I’d never been properly fucked. To think that I really thought it was just about generosity… I’m telling you, when word about the prostate gets out to the general public, we’re gonna have a whole lot more guys out at Fire Island. (Just what Fire Island needs: more bottoms!)

But for me, it took years. It took me a long time to like bottoming, and thus a long time to admit that I liked it more than topping (which I still do, and still enjoy, but not as much as getting fucked). And, surprise, surprise, as I grew to understand and accept myself, I stopped chasing after the twinks as much. 

Now, as my friends know, I still go for the Tadzios and Timberlakes of the world, and, for whatever reason, I still prefer them in my porn. But when I’m out cruising, I’ve come to like more… mature men. I wouldn’t say I’m into bears specifically – I’m not – but I’m sure not anti-. When I see a man, while of course part of me still looks for a certain physical ‘type,’ a bigger part of me tries to imagine him fucking my goddamn brains out. And that means looking beyond the boys.

I know, obviously, that bears are just as often bottoms as tops (more often, in my experience), and that sometimes the delicate twink turns out to be the piledriver in bed. But what I’m talking about is something deeper (pardon the pun) – energetic, even. It’s about accepting that sometimes what I want is a man to take me, not a boy to take me by the hand. I still think boys look better, aesthetically speaking, but fucking is not really about aesthetics, and as I’ve come to know myself more, I’ve come to desire properties other than body shape or smoothness. Not out of charity, or out of some bogus-enlightened equanimity among bodies, but out of my pure, selfish, holy desire to get fucked and fucked again.

This is just an excerpt from this issue of White Crane.   We are a reader-supported journaland need you to subscribe to keep this conversation going.  So to read more from this wonderful issue SUBSCRIBE to White Crane. Thanks!

Frank Jackson is an itinerant meta-theologian living in the arcadian wilds of New York State.  Frank Talk  is a semi-regular feature of White Crane.