Sex
LGBTQ+
I’m gay and I’m not a top or a bottom – I’m a ‘side’
into bed. But neither of these – top or bottom – accurately describe what I prefer to get up to in the boudoir, so my response has always been a guarded mix of shrug and mumble.Here’s the tea: I’m actually a ‘side’, a term coined by American psychotherapist and sexologist Joe Kort to describe those, like me, for whom penetrative sex – in either position – does very little. Getting the peach involved is, quite literally, a pain in the ass, but as for the aubergine, let’s just say that hands and mouths always understand the assignment way better. To continue the food metaphor: if man-on-man action were a dinner party, I’d have zero interest in sitting down to a bland meal when the amuse-bouches are so good. I confess that I indulged in a lot of sex in my 20s – penetrative sex. It oddly took yonks to realise that what society calls foreplay is, to me, infinitely sexier than sex, and once I had, it curbed the rapid growth of my ‘body count’ in a hot second. Turns out the ‘A-gays’, as my friend calls the queer gatekeepers – our community’s very own, very catty mean girls – often can’t stand boys who do everything but butt. They simply don’t get it.