Savage Love
I think my 13-year-old brother is gay.
I came home from school this past Christmas to visit my family. One night I turned on my MacBook to check e-mail and there was no battery left. I plugged it in and once it was on I was shocked. There were pages of gay porn displayed on my screen. Hoping it was some freakish virus, I downloaded HistoryHound and sought out every Web page accessed on my computer. The results showed other similar entries every time I came home for a holiday.
Only one person might have gone down to the basement to use my computer: my brother. I didn't say anything to our parents, and I didn't talk to him about it either, because I didn't know what to say. If it were straight porn, I would probably have just told him that he shouldn't be looking at material like that, and it would be done. But the deeper I looked, the more disturbed I became. On the sites he accessed, I found violent porn with themes of rape and domination.
I know this kid has a good heart and shows a lot of love to everyone he knows, but how do I talk to him about this without him feeling ashamed? Moreover, how do I address the violent porn? And finally, what should I do as his brother?
Concerned Older Brother In Kansas
Hopefully you're young enough to remember what you were like at 13, COBIK, halfway past puberty already, masturbating furiously, and checking out online porn regularly. Your brother, like many boys his age, is curious about everything that's out there, which could explain the more extreme stuff. Or maybe your brother is gay and kinky, in which case you need to tell him that he can ethically indulge his more extreme fantasies with other consenting adults — when he's an adult.
A few other things you can tell him: Eventually he'll want to come out to the whole family, but in the meantime he needs to be more cautious about his computer usage. Any adult gay men he meets online are not his "gay brothers," but sexual predators. And since most gay teenagers aren't out, he won't get to date much in high school — particularly in Kansas — but you can reassure him that he'll make out like a bandit once he gets to college.
Finally, COBIK, you ask what you can do as his brother. Gay teenagers often get into trouble because they're isolated — they have no one to talk to, no one to confide in, no one to turn to when they have romantic problems. Be his older, wiser, supportive sibling, COBIK, the person he can turn to for advice.
I'm a smart, sexy, kinky girl — I'm bi; I've worked as a stripper and as a "domestic servant"; been involved in a long-term, live-in threesome; enacted elaborate fantasy scenarios for partners; taken it up the ass; yadda yadda yadda. GGG, right? Well, after being single and celibate (by choice) for almost seven months, I've come to a realization that is perhaps "freakier" than any of my past exploits: I don't really like genitals. I would be 100 percent happy being in a relationship where hugging, cuddling, kissing, and maybe some genital-free spanking was the extent of our sex life. No penetration, no pussy licking. Surely there are others who share my, um, desire? How does one bring this up on a date? "Hi, you're really hot — can we just make out and snuggle? Like, forever?"
Passing Up Private Parts
You remind me of a friend, PUPP, a great-looking, much-in-demand guy who was always game for anything. He did sex work, he stripped and he made porn. The more elaborate a role-play scenario, the happier he was to be included. Needless to say, he took it up the ass, too, yadda yadda yadda. Then one day he just … stopped. No more sex work, no more stripping, no more porn. What happened? He burned out and needed to take some time off. Like you, when my friend was ready to date again he just wanted to cuddle.
Was he genital-averse? No, he just wasn't ready to jump back into the deep end of the pool.
I suspect something similar is going on with you, PUPP. You were a wild thing for a while, then you took a break. Now you're getting your groove back — hence your desire to date at all — but you're either not ready or don't want to return to form. Finding someone who's satisfied with just cuddling for the moment will allow you to take things slow.
This article appears in Oct 8-14, 2008.
