Getting to the bottom of married men

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gay_health_getting_to_the_bottom_of_straight_menIt was going to be a quick trip to the supermarket. I didn’t even want to go in the first place but I had visitors from Cape Town and they wanted breakfast.

Luckily it was early and I got parking right by the entrance of the mall. I zipped through the aisles grabbing the necessary and as I swept a two-litre bottle of milk off the shelf an Adonis checking out the nutritional info on the side of a milk carton stopped me in my tracks.

He looked like he just came from a Homotography photo shoot with bulges in all the right places. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and his hair was elegantly messy in a spiteful kind of way. I decided I also needed long life milk so I ditched the plastic bottle and headed over to him.

“Did you know that low fat contains more calcium than full cream?” He looked at me and smiled as he scanned the length of my body. I lifted my shopping basket slightly to mask my growing desire for the stranger.

“I’m impressed” rolled off his lips and I tried to top my cheesy pick-up line with something about protein. The words curdled when I saw his wedding ring. “Shopping with your wife?” I asked, hoping he would say he was married to a man. It turned out he was straight, i.e. married to a woman, and I felt embarrassed for hitting on him.

I made up an excuse, fled to the nearest paypoint and started unpacking my basket. When I looked up he was queueing behind me holding a single box of milk. “The scanner’s not working,” the woman at the till said with a click of the tongue as she started punching in bar code numbers. I was stuck…

Quite unexpectedly, Adonis extended his hand and introduced himself to me. We exchanged names and silence set in again. He was obviously trying to put me at ease after I had overstepped the boundaries. Then he asked if I came there often and that’s when I became suspicious about his intentions.

“Eh eh,” the till lady said, echoing my thoughts. She finally got the bar code for the bacon right and I felt relieved as I headed out with my groceries. Halfway to the exit, Adonis caught up with me. “Put your stuff in the car and meet me downstairs,” he said, giving me a piercing look.

I got to my car and tried to make sense of the weird invitation. Was he going to abduct or strangle me; was he part of an organ harvesting syndicate? But he didn’t look evil. Au contraire! My curiosity and hormones got the better of me. What did I have to lose, except maybe a kidney? There was only one way to find out…

I got to the basement where he was standing anxiously behind a pay station. We started walking towards a storeroom in the corner and I asked why he had the keys. He told me his wife owned the flower shop upstairs and this was the chilling room where they kept new deliveries. As he locked the door behind us he murmured that he had never done this before. I grinned in disbelief because up until now he had been very assertive for a novice.

We unbuttoned each other’s jeans to let our excitement out – en garde. I had barely touched him when it was Niagara Falls. Luckily my watch was waterproof and I realised he must have been telling the truth: it was his first time with a man. But unlike most satisfied men who generally “roll over” he continued to pleasure me with his mouth. I warned him when I got close and tried to pull his head away. But he persevered knowingly and I let him.

As we buttoned up our jeans I said we should do this again but he was scared to give me his phone number. He thanked and complimented me nonetheless and said he really would have liked to sit on my lap – that had been his fantasy since he was a teenager. Maybe there’d be a next time…

I saw him in the mall a few days later, this time with his wife. He didn’t look in my direction and I also pretended he was a total stranger. I’m sure he appreciated my discretion but this got me thinking. If you’ve been having gay sex fantasies, why get married to a woman before exploring or establishing your sexual orientation?

Maybe we’ve been brainwashed by decades of Plascon and Ricoffy ads where the perfect family has always been a man, a woman, two kids and a fluffy dog. WTF! How many men live a straight lie that ultimately ends in disaster. The 2002 movie Far from Heaven and the recent series Masters of Sex depict this with poignancy. The social label you choose to wear should not jar with who you’re sexually attracted to or who you have sex with.

Not all married men who have occasional sex with men are gay or even bisexual. Whether it’s an experiment, an adventure, disclosed, consensual or not, these men are generally not as informed about safe gay sex practices as the average gay guy today.

This kind of intel is more freely available in gay saunas, gay media and other avenues not frequented by straight men. It’s okay to have a thing for married men but it’s up to us to educate them in this regard: Don’t be daft, cover your shaft.

This article is a submission from Health4Men, a project of the Anova Health Institute NPC, funded by USAID through PEPFAR, and represents the contributing writer’s personal views.

Health4Men would like to hear from you too! Gay and bi men from throughout South Africa are welcome to submit articles about their own lives, primarily regarding sexuality, sexual health and relationships. Selected articles, like this one, will be published in print and online. For submissions please mail media@health4men.co.za.

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