Are we sluts?
Looking inward and answering the really hard questions.
Preface: I started this before the inauguration, and yes I know I already talked about Faggots and Their Friends on this Substack, so no need to clock me! Enjoy!
“Romantic love, the last illusion, keeps us alive until the revolutions come”
I found Faggots and their Friends between Revolutions in the queer section of my favorite book store in Columbus. It was the beginning of my fall semester of my senior year. Three months of summer in Berlin had left me notably androgynous and confident, with long hair and a newfound passion for makeup. It goes without saying that I found Larry’s Kramer’s manifesto at the perfect time.
I was living with my gay guy childhood best friend, and my dearest trans sister in a shitty apartment on West 9th Street south of Ohio State’s campus. We called it Icon Haus. The building was poorly constructed out of cinder blocks and wooden panels. We occupied apartment E, the unit that faced the alleyway and dumpsters. It was three stories and felt like a treehouse.
I graduated from Ohio State and after a summer of working at Ulta Beauty, I moved to Brooklyn. My dad and I filled his pickup truck with my belongings and drove 616 miles to New York. My dad stayed in a hotel in downtown Brooklyn my first two nights to help me get acclimated, and we also got to spend some time together around the city. We were given a tour of Silver Art Projects, a non-profit artist residency in the World Trade Center, by a friend of a friend.
It was a humid day in August and my dad and I took the train to the Financial District to enter 4 World Trade Center, and up to the 28th floor. Jared Owens, a multi-disciplinary artist, gave us a tour, and introduced us to some of the participating residents of the program. I was starstruck to discover that Tourmaline, a trans rights activist, artist, and filmmaker, was a part of the program. Tourmaline wrote the foreword in my copy of Faggots, which was my introduction to her work. Meeting her felt clandestine, and was a perfect welcome to the city.
I’ve been in New York for just over two years now, and my life has changed considerably since my time in Icon Haus. The majority of my college education was under the Biden administration, but in the wake of the election, I have returned to Faggots to find solace in Kramer’s wisdom as we enter, arguably, the worst era for queer rights in the 21st Century. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about what will be left, if and when our rights and resources are taken away: community, resistance, art, love, and cum (or as Kramer calls it, the “tasty orgasm juice”).
“Some of the faggots are so poor that they have to live on only what is free. The tasty orgasm juice is free. So some of the faggots live on it. From other faggots they receive this juice quickly, secretively, and in abundance”
When I first read those words, I had very little experience sexually. For a while I was insecure about my delay to anal sex; and kept my virginity a secret until losing it my first month in New York. The guy who I did it with still doesn’t know. He was nice, and we smoked American Spirits on my Bedstuy roof afterwards (if you’re reading this - hi!).
Needless to say, my most recent review of Faggots has instigated a deeper reflection into the realm of gay male sexuality in the dawning of MAGA Fascism and my relationship to my own sexuality.
Are we sluts? Three powerful words echoed by another piece of media that has defined my young adulthood in New York (Am I cliche?). What makes someone a slut? How do you know if you are a slut? And is being a slut good? Or is Charlotte right, in that “Nobody wants to marry a whore!”
Urban dictionary defines the word slut as “a person who is known to have had sex many times with different individuals.” My follow up to this is, of course, how do you define sex? Regardless, this is certainly the truth for me. If it wasn’t clear enough, it was made obvious to me when I was literally called a slut by an old friend of mine.
Me and this person, who I’ll call Peter, had an unusual relationship. We kissed each other passionately every time we were together. Things never graduated past making out, but I felt a deep attraction to him that I believed was relatively mutual, a flirty friendship I was comfortable with. There were a few instances when Peter and I would share guys in Hell’s Kitchen, sometimes even rotating between multiple guys. We would trade off kisses between older Italian men and beefy circuit gays, who delighted in us both. The boundaries were obliterated, and not having experienced this in Ohio, it was all very exciting, and felt aligned with the queer freedom I read about in Faggots.
I never really wanted to have sex with Peter, however. It was almost as if we used each other’s charm and bodies to get a mutually desired goal, by means of kissing one another and being, well, sluts. This continued for the first years of my friendship with Peter, until John came around. John was Peter’s older friend with benefits, who was in an open relationship. I met John at Animal in Williamsburg, and tagged along as they embraced each other. Peter left John and I to get a drink, and before Peter left, gave us a look and said “I’ll let you two get acquainted.” wink wink.
To me, this was a green light to start making out with John. John didn’t hesitate either, and when Peter returned, he looked at me with disdain, grabbed his coat, and stormed out of the bar. Confused, I followed my friend out and tried to explain the situation, and how I falsely assumed he had given me the go-ahead to kiss his trade. Peter was not okay with the advance, and after apologizing profusely, he forgave me.
Strike number two happened at Playhouse in the West Village. We were talking to a DL guy who said he was straight, so it wasn’t long until Peter was grinding on him. They made out, and I watched from a distance, proud of my friend for scoring some trade. Peter disappeared for half an hour, and the guy made his way over to me, and soon we were all over each other. Peter returned, and said “I can’t believe you would do this to me again.” I was stunned.
He didn’t forgive this one as easily. I didn’t hear from him for months. I sent him flowers with a long note, cursing my promiscuity and pleading for his friendship. I felt lucky to get it back, if only for a brief moment. Although Peter accepted my apology over text, I didn’t see him for awhile, until we ran into each other at Ladyland Under the K Bridge. We hugged, and kissed, and allowed him to relentlessly tease me for my slutty behavior. We were able to laugh about it, which was a good sign. Why cry over kissed trade?
A couple facetimes ensued in the following weeks, and by all metrics we were back to normal. Before the scandal, we only saw each other a couple times a month anyway, so the lack of face-time didn’t concern me. It wasn’t until the day before my birthday, at someone else’s birthday party, that I realized my slutty behavior might have lifelong consequences.
Peter and I caught up, laughed, and recounted our stories from summer. Later, I went to the other room and spoke with a straight guy I sort of knew and discovered he also went to Ohio State. Now that we finally had something to talk about, we went down memory lane together. Campus bars, mutual friends, eating dry ass chicken breasts at Scott Dining Hall. He started to leave and said, “Well I guess I’ll see you tomorrow!”
“What’s tomorrow?” I asked. “Oh…uh….Peter’s party?” The little FOMO-troll that lives in my brain started banging on the sides of my skull with a club. Furious, I went to find Peter in the kitchen, popped out my hip and said “So you’re having a party tomorrow?”
“Oh yeah...sorry. I didn’t want to worry about you being a slut.”
My stomach dropped when I realized how serious he was. The right thing to do would’ve been to leave, but I desperately tried to play it off, rather unsuccessfully. Seeing how hurt I was, he fumbled a few lies to cover his insult, saying how he knew it was my birthday the following day and how didn’t want to step on my toes, also saying he didn’t invite anyone else, including my roommate at the time. I asked her if she heard about the party, and Peter had in fact invited her and her girlfriend. The lies were bonus insults on their own, I couldn’t believe it.
Since then, Peter and I haven’t spoken. So I guess I really was a slut. Whether or not his retribution was valid isn’t the question. It’s more the fact that my actions with my own body completely upended a friendship I coveted. The loss of this friendship worked out in the end. I realize now that my idol-worship of Peter took away all of my own power. Maybe kissing his trade (twice) was my subconscious’ way of getting my power back. Maybe we’ll see each other again at another party, knowing New York we’ll probably end up sitting next to each other at a musical, or stuck on the same train.
In the aftermath, I’m still asking myself if I’m a slut. As gay men, a lot of our identity is fixated on hookups and hookup culture. Sometimes I wonder if it’s our biggest strength or our biggest distraction, or maybe both. The world seems to be falling apart, and with our rights getting taken away from us every day, it seems all the more reason to suck and fuck each other into the sunset - even if it means weeding out a bad friend or two.