Tom Daley likes guys too!

[TetRefine]

Why are we using online gay fiction stories to compare to real life and the Tom Daley situation? If gay fiction paralleled real life (including Crosscurrents), almost every straight guy would be at least willing to try some kind of gay sex. And while some are willing, anybody who's ever lived a day in their life knows that its not true 95% of the time. But the gay fiction stories make it seem likes its so common place. Why? Because its a common gay fantasy that every guy has whacked off to at one point or another. Using it to compare to real life, like Yang said, is just stupid. 

[Fishwings]

Why are we using online gay fiction stories to compare to real life and the Tom Daley situation? If gay fiction paralleled real life (including Crosscurrents), almost every straight guy would be at least willing to try some kind of gay sex. And while some are willing, anybody who's ever lived a day in their life knows that its not true 95% of the time. But the gay fiction stories make it seem likes its so common place. Why? Because its a common gay fantasy that every guy has whacked off to at one point or another. Using it to compare to real life, like Yang said, is just stupid. 

 

but 'crosscurrentedness' is such a hip term

[TetRefine]

but 'crosscurrentedness' is such a hip term

 

We should totally trend it on Twitter!

[Fishwings]

We should totally trend it on Twitter!

 

#Crosscurrentedness #CC #GA #Hashtag #So #Good

[methodwriter85]

    Cross-Currents is a real story, though. The author has owned to it being real.

 

If gay fiction paralleled real life (including Crosscurrents), almost every straight guy would be at least willing to try some kind of gay sex.

 

    There were guys who did say no to Andy. Adam just wrote about the ones who said yes, which seems like it came about 6-8 or so guys. Out of a team of probably at least 30-40 guys, that's not that huge.

[TetRefine]

    Cross-Currents is a real story, though. The author has owned to it being real.

 

 

    There were guys who did say no to Andy. Adam just wrote about the ones who said yes, which seems like it came about 6-8 or so guys. Out of a team of probably at least 30-40 guys, that's not that huge.

 

I have a hard time believing it's totally biographical. Maybe parts of it are and the overall themes are, but there are just too many straight guys willing to "go gay" in it for me to believe its all true. 6-8 out of at most 30 (even big D I schools don't roster more than 30 guys, and the character went to a smaller school), means almost a 1/3 of the team was willing to try gay sex. And this was in the 90s if I remember the story right. I just don't believe it. Its an interesting story, but it still has that Nifty Sexual Fantasy element to it that doesn't ring true with reality, even now in 2013. 

 

Oh and Jeremy, if a guy says its true on the internet he must not be lying right??? 

Edited December 5, 2013 by TetRefine

[Fishwings]

if a guy says its true on the internet he must not be lying right??? 

 

What. I was under the impression that Slytherin was an actual care bear IRL and Cia has a lion for a face.

 

My world has been changed forever

[TetRefine]

What. I was under the impression that Slytherin was an actual care bear IRL and Cia has a lion for a face.

 

My world has been changed forever

 

[Fishwings]

 

 

AHahahaa that is gold

[W_L]

Let's all just agree that fact is only as true as what people want to believe Tom Daley is Bi or not Bi, Real Crosscurrent vs. Unreal Crosscurrent, and me being a carefree dog or a cynical gay guy with a taste for life are facts and fictions.

 

No one person's reality is the same as another, but we share common traits that allows us to appreciate ourselves and each other.

[crazyfish]

Y'all pipe the fuck down, and let me work in peace! I got some boy-breaking to do over here. 

[Zombie]

Um not wanting to pick nits, but shouldn't that be "I got me some boy-breaking to do over here"? :funny:

[crazyfish]

Um not wanting to pick nits, but shouldn't that be "I got me some boy-breaking to do over here"? :funny:

You sir, win 2345 brownie, er, cornbread points.

Edited December 6, 2013 by crazyfish

[methodwriter85]

I have a hard time believing it's totally biographical. Maybe parts of it are and the overall themes are, but there are just too many straight guys willing to "go gay" in it for me to believe its all true. 6-8 out of at most 30 (even big D I schools don't roster more than 30 guys, and the character went to a smaller school), means almost a 1/3 of the team was willing to try gay sex. And this was in the 90s if I remember the story right. I just don't believe it. Its an interesting story, but it still has that Nifty Sexual Fantasy element to it that doesn't ring true with reality, even now in 2013. 

 

Oh and Jeremy, if a guy says its true on the internet he must not be lying right??? 

 

    Dear god, if you had said this to Adam when he was my age, you would have gotten quite the earful. Geezus.

[BlueSoxSWJ]

Is this a good place for some Unnecessary Censorship?

 

 

 

[Fishwings]

Is this a good place for some Unnecessary Censorship?

 

 

 

 

Yes, yes very good, forward it to Banger, he's been looking for these

[Y_B]

#Crosscurrentedness #CC #GA #Hashtag #So #Good

 

[Fishwings]

 

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAHAHAAAAAAA

BRB PUTTING IN MY PROFILE

[MikeL]

Um not wanting to pick nits, but shouldn't that be "I got me some boy-breaking to do over here"? :funny:

 

Actually, it s/b "I have me some boy-breaking to do over here".

[hh5]

he's checkin for naughty .. ready to be unwrapped

 

Better check if he's real or not??

 

Anyone see anything inaccurate in the diving?

 

TD donated his speedo ... I wonder how many pairs?

 

 

There's a good reason to be gay

TOM DALEY: "GIRLS RUN UP TO ME AND SCREAM IN MY FACE"

 

Edited December 6, 2013 by hh5

[hh5]

neat trick but can he get em back on

[Adam Phillips]

Hmm. I gotta say, I never expected to have my s**t transformed into short-term memes and postered and real-or-fake Tweeted, but as long as it's all out there like that, I'll say some things. None of this is necessarily a direct response to anything said here about either Tom D or Crosscurrents. It's more a set of general thoughts and feelings about having my name taken in vain in the context of a discussion about a public figure lol.

 

Here's what I think. There are some things we can say about sexuality with some definitiveness...but not as many things as people think. That's all I'm willing to say I know for sure anymore, and it strikes me that the people who speak the loudest and most vociferously about what certainly is and isn't, what's possible and what's not, are people who often appear to have vested interests, and who are "quite sure" about things that nobody is quite sure about. Not pointing fingers; just saying.

 

Crosscurrents was never shared with the reading public as an autobiography. My intent in sharing the story with a large audience--when I finally got around to it--was to entertain. And maybe, in a sense, to reach out through the story to guys who might be wired like me. I'd never met anybody quite like me in terms of wiring, and the email I got in response to Crosscurrents helped me come to understand that I'm not quite the oddball, sexually, that I thought I might be. Apart from any autobiographical dimension, the basic plot elements of the story elicited email responses from sooooo many guys who'd been-there-done-that, it was gratifying to me.

 

Inevitably the question came up about whether or not it's a real-life story. When I posted CC I didn't begin--or end--by saying, "This is a true story." But when people asked, I owned up to the fact that it was essentially autobiographical. I didn't see the point in not owning up to it. There's a smaller group of readers and e-friends who know a great deal about my life now, because we share a lot of stuff...much more than just stuff about sexuality...in a social-media-kind of forum. But as for the story itself, it's not thrown down as a "true story." It's thrown down as a piece of narrative writing that I hope will entertain and touch.

 

Crosscurrents also makes no claims about anybody's sexuality beyond "things are more complex than they seem at first glance." It's not a story about sexual orientation. It's a story about love. I notice that Dan Kincaid's It Started With Brian also came up in this thread. I think if there's anything that can be taken from that story, it's the same thing. I'm efriends with the "Brian" of that story. We've talked a lot. Compared notes. We each, at a point in our lives, were on sports teams where a surprising number of guys fooled around sexually with each other. In that respect, whether or not the theme/meme of gay guys getting straight guys is a gay jerkoff fantasy, CC and ISWB incorporated real experiences Brian, Dan, and I had all had on that front. Dan didn't report all of Brian's stuff with guys because it wasn't relevant to his story. I've only become aware of those in my subsequent friendship with Brian, but they are mentioned at least in passing here and there in ISWB.

 

I have no clue as to what my experiences, or Brian's, or Dan's, say about sexual orientation in general, or, more specifically, about numbers, percentages, or tendencies. And I'm not impressed by people's declarations that "everybody knows that in real life..." etc., etc. I know what I've experienced, and I don't care to defend it with explanations or believe-me-on-this-one defenses. That's not why I wrote CC, and in retrospect, I regret saying anything in public about its autobiographical nature. At the time, it seemed like something I ought to do once I was asked. But the question of "whether such a thing can actually be the case" has taken on a life of its own in a way that gives me a headache and puts me in the position--at least implicitly--of trying to defend my life and life experiences to guys out there who'd assure me--based on...what???? Their own experiences, which somehow negate mine???--that what happened to me never happened.

 

During my student years, my experiences helped me, because they helped me see that whatever kind of freak I was, sexually, I wasn't in some complete other solar system from the rest of the population. I learned that there were other guys who could, and would, under certain circumstances, "go there." For people whose sexuality is somewhat diffuse, self-understanding is difficult. You know you're not gay; your dick's response to women informs you of that. But what are you? And what does it mean for how you live and love? Crosscurrents is a story of a guy's attempt to live out a satisfactory answer to those questions. It's not a thesis on sexual orientation.  I never concluded from my dalliances with straight guys that everybody was like me. Quite the contrary, and I don't think the narrative of CC suggests that everybody is bi. It's merely a narrative reflection of the fact that when I saw that some straight guys would go there under certain circumstances, that helped me in my quest for self-understanding during my late teens and early twenties.

 

The original core that served as the starting point for CC was intended for only one set of eyes and was a response to a specific question I'd been asked privately. But in that response I noticed that it scratched an itch in me. So it began to morph into a "book," and shortly thereafter--during the first five chapters of Crosscurrents--I began to see it as a vehicle for saying some things to "Matt"--and Matt alone--that I hadn't ever said to him quite so nakedly and directly. It wasn't long into that idea, though, before I got it into my head to let other people read it. The overwhelmingly positive response I got to it--especially from guys who've told me their own agonized--or once in a great while, joyful--versions of the same story kept me going. Well, sort of, because it took ten years. 

 

You're welcome to believe what you want about it. Anything I've said in public about it being autogiography has been in response to questions about whether or not it's based on real life. Is it 100% autobiography? Of course not. That being said, regarding the question of whether straight guys will do gay sex, I've had sex--I'm counting oral as "sex" too--with a surprising number of "straight" teammates. A couple more, actually, than Andy encounters in Crosscurrents. I didn't include them all because I thought the reader, uhh, got the point, and Andy was already enough of a slut in the narrative as things were.    It never occurred to me that people would consider the number of straight encounters I'd had not-believable. I had them, so it never occurred to me to second-guess it in the writing, except to ratchet it back some, for the aforementioned reasons. So yeah...I'm not impressed by claims that Andy's "sample group" includes too large a number of straight guys to be real. Of course, I've also been rebuffed by an unsurprising number of straight guys. In other words, a lot. More than the number who'd said yes. "Why so many attempts, slut-boy?", you may ask.    Well, see, after I'd had some initial successes, I was in a mode of saying "nothing ventured, nothing gained," so I made some advances I wouldn't recommend that gay or bi guys generally make. The worst I ever got was a putdown, never a fist to my mouth. Somebody else's mileage might vary tragically. I don't generally give off vibes that you can do violence to me without violent consequence. I'm sure that didn't hurt. And also, I never hit on anybody I didn't know. That may have also helped.

 

Regardless of all that, though, in none of my narrative about all that do I intend to make any claims about men's sexual fluidity or nonfluidity or anything else. Shit happened to me; what it all means I leave to the experts. It just irritates me when people say "that shit can't happen." Tell that to Brian. Tell that to the many people who've written me telling me about their wonderful--or excruciatingly painful--experiences with the same thing.

 

At this point in my life, I refuse to draw any conclusions about people's sexual wiring. I certainly don't think we're all fluid. I've kept track of many of the guys I hooked up with over the years, and almost all of them are married, or married-and-divorced, or married-and-divorced-and-remarried, and most of them have kids, and I know they don't go fucking around with guys. I don't think trying-it-a-couple-of-times in college reveals anybody as bi, or reveals that "we're all bi." I seriously doubt that many of the guys I fooled around with back in the day gave their sexual dalliances with me more than a brief play. Most of them were one-off kinds of things. A couple were more significant. I don't know if any of them ever got with any other guys after college days. I kind of doubt it. I learned something about myself sexually during college. They may have learned something about themselves too...but I doubt that they learned they were all "sexually fluid."

 

What does any of that have to do with Tom Daley, you may ask? Nothing, maybe. And lots. He's seeing a guy. An older guy. Anything beyond that is conjecture. Maybe he doesn't even know quite how he's wired. Why would any of us presume to know more about him than he knows about himself? Yeah, we're at a watershed place in the culture, a place where gay and lesbian, and, I guess, bisexual people can help move acceptance of gay sexuality along by being open about their sexuality. But if you ask me, nobody owes the culture at large a particular way of doing their sexuality, or thinking about their sexuality, or a particular degree of public visibility about their sexuality. And nobody's talk about their own sexuality tells us anything more about them except what the words themselves suggest. Whether Tom's into daddies, and whether he's into daddies if he is  because he has father issues or not, whether he's straight, whether he's gay...all that's ultimately known are the public facts. All the rest is inference and conjecture, and not unoccasionally, borderline slander. Cheap talk, in other words, and in my opinion it's about as tiresome as the question of whether straight guys ever hook up with gay guys. I celebrate Tom's having found someone he loves, but I don't really know the guy, and I have no idea what it means about his life or anybody's. And on the question of whether guys who like guys also like girls, I'd think the answer is obvious: "sometimes." And on the question of whether guys who like guys ever hook up with guys who like girls, I'd think the answer is also obvious: "Sometimes." Probably not usually, in either case. Does it matter? Yeah, I guess it does. Does it mean that everyone who has a definite, conclusive opinion on the matter is right? Rarely. I've seen that firsthand.

 

What counts in the final analysis for me is how a person handles his/her sexuality, including everything he/she says and does about it, in the larger context of his/her life. What counts for me in the final analysis is the integrity he/she brings to that larger context. At the end of the day, at least in my book, what counts for any of us is whether--and how well--we've loved and cared for our loved ones and for the larger human community. I prefer to leave the gossip and the speculation and the judgment-casting and the definitives about "what is and what isn't" regarding people's wiring to those who seem to need that sort of thing.

 

All that being said, if this post has inspired you to check out Crosscurrents, I sure as hell wouldn't mind!  There are aspects of the writing that make me wince a little--I've become a better writer over the years, and I may at some point clean up the things that really bother me in the story, from a writing standpoint--but generally speaking, I'm happy with how it turned out.

 

Sorry to have intruded here. This thread wasn't about me. But c'mon, when people start throwing your stuff around in these crazy ways, you gotta step up and say something!

Edited December 8, 2013 by Adam Phillips

[methodwriter85]

    Adam, you just gave me flashbacks to a letter you sent me six years ago when I told you that I was always going to take a grain of salt in whatever you had to say about you life because it's the internet. Wow.

 

   I do agree with you that have sex with someone once or twice who's of the sex that you're not normally geared towards doesn't really say much. It just says that you were horny, and you were with someone that you knew could take care of that, and well. It doesn't mean that you're sexually fluid...I thought the situation with "Trey" in Cross-Currents pretty much spoke to that. Trey let Andy blow him because he was easy and convenient, and he was able to close his eyes and pretend it was a girl blowing him. But Andy's body just didn't turn him on sexually.

[Mark Arbour]

Hmm. I gotta say, I never expected to have my s**t transformed into short-term memes and postered and real-or-fake Tweeted, but as long as it's all out there like that, I'll say some things. None of this is necessarily a direct response to anything said here about either Tom D or Crosscurrents. It's more a set of general thoughts and feelings about having my name taken in vain in the context of a discussion about a public figure lol.

 

Here's what I think. There are some things we can say about sexuality with some definitiveness...but not as many things as people think. That's all I'm willing to say I know for sure anymore, and it strikes me that the people who speak the loudest and most vociferously about what certainly is and isn't, what's possible and what's not, are people who often appear to have vested interests, and who are "quite sure" about things that nobody is quite sure about. Not pointing fingers; just saying.

 

Crosscurrents was never shared with the reading public as an autobiography. My intent in sharing the story with a large audience--when I finally got around to it--was to entertain. And maybe, in a sense, to reach out through the story to guys who might be wired like me. I'd never met anybody quite like me in terms of wiring, and the email I got in response to Crosscurrents helped me come to understand that I'm not quite the oddball, sexually, that I thought I might be. Apart from any autobiographical dimension, the basic plot elements of the story elicited email responses from sooooo many guys who'd been-there-done-that, it was gratifying to me.

 

Inevitably the question came up about whether or not it's a real-life story. When I posted CC I didn't begin--or end--by saying, "This is a true story." But when people asked, I owned up to the fact that it was essentially autobiographical. I didn't see the point in not owning up to it. There's a smaller group of readers and e-friends who know a great deal about my life now, because we share a lot of stuff...much more than just stuff about sexuality...in a social-media-kind of forum. But as for the story itself, it's not thrown down as a "true story." It's thrown down as a piece of narrative writing that I hope will entertain and touch.

 

Crosscurrents also makes no claims about anybody's sexuality beyond "things are more complex than they seem at first glance." It's not a story about sexual orientation. It's a story about love. I notice that Dan Kincaid's It Started With Brian also came up in this thread. I think if there's anything that can be taken from that story, it's the same thing. I'm efriends with the "Brian" of that story. We've talked a lot. Compared notes. We each, at a point in our lives, were on sports teams where a surprising number of guys fooled around sexually with each other. In that respect, whether or not the theme/meme of gay guys getting straight guys is a gay jerkoff fantasy, CC and ISWB incorporated real experiences Brian, Dan, and I had all had on that front. Dan didn't report all of Brian's stuff with guys because it wasn't relevant to his story. I've only become aware of those in my subsequent friendship with Brian, but they are mentioned at least in passing here and there in ISWB.

 

I have no clue as to what my experiences, or Brian's, or Dan's, say about sexual orientation in general, or, more specifically, about numbers, percentages, or tendencies. And I'm not impressed by people's declarations that "everybody knows that in real life..." etc., etc. I know what I've experienced, and I don't care to defend it with explanations or believe-me-on-this-one defenses. That's not why I wrote CC, and in retrospect, I regret saying anything in public about its autobiographical nature. At the time, it seemed like something I ought to do once I was asked. But the question of "whether such a thing can actually be the case" has taken on a life of its own in a way that gives me a headache and puts me in the position--at least implicitly--of trying to defend my life and life experiences to guys out there who'd assure me--based on...what???? Their own experiences, which somehow negate mine???--that what happened to me never happened.

 

During my student years, my experiences helped me, because they helped me see that whatever kind of freak I was, sexually, I wasn't in some complete other solar system from the rest of the population. I learned that there were other guys who could, and would, under certain circumstances, "go there." For people whose sexuality is somewhat diffuse, self-understanding is difficult. You know you're not gay; your dick's response to women informs you of that. But what are you? And what does it mean for how you live and love? Crosscurrents is a story of a guy's attempt to live out a satisfactory answer to those questions. It's not a thesis on sexual orientation.  I never concluded from my dalliances with straight guys that everybody was like me. Quite the contrary, and I don't think the narrative of CC suggests that everybody is bi. It's merely a narrative reflection of the fact that when I saw that some straight guys would go there under certain circumstances, that helped me in my quest for self-understanding during my late teens and early twenties.

 

The original core that served as the starting point for CC was intended for only one set of eyes and was a response to a specific question I'd been asked privately. But in that response I noticed that it scratched an itch in me. So it began to morph into a "book," and shortly thereafter--during the first third of Crosscurrents--I began to see it as a vehicle for saying some things to "Matt"--and Matt alone--that I hadn't ever said to him quite so nakedly and directly. It wasn't long into that idea, though, before I got it into my head to let other people read it. The overwhelmingly positive response I got to it--especially from guys who've told me their own agonized--or once in a great while, joyful--versions of the same story kept me going. Well, sort of, because it took ten years. 

 

You're welcome to believe what you want about it. Anything I've said in public about it being autogiography has been in response to questions about whether or not it's based on real life. Is it 100% autobiography? Of course not. That being said, regarding the question of whether straight guys will do gay sex, I've had sex with a surprising number of "straight" teammates. I've also been rebuffed by an unsurprising number of straight guys. But in none of my narrative about all that do I intend to make any claims about men's sexual fluidity or nonfluidity or anything else. Shit happened to me; what it all means I leave to the experts. It just irritates me when people say "that shit can't happen." Tell that to Brian. Tell that to the many people who've written me telling me about their wonderful--or excruciatingly painful--experiences with the same thing.

 

At this point in my life, I refuse to draw any conclusions about people's sexual wiring. I certainly don't think we're all fluid. I've kept track of many of the guys I hooked up with over the years, and almost all of them are married, or married-and-divorced, or married-and-divorced-and-remarried, and most of them have kids, and I know they don't go fucking around with guys. I don't think trying-it-a-couple-of-times in college reveals anybody as bi, or reveals that "we're all bi." I seriously doubt that many of the guys I fooled around with back in the day gave their sexual dalliances with me more than a brief play. Most of them were one-off kinds of things. A couple were more significant. I don't know if any of them ever got with any other guys after college days. I kind of doubt it. I learned something about myself sexually during college. They may have learned something about themselves too...but I doubt that they learned they were all "sexually fluid."

 

What does any of that have to do with Tom Daley, you may ask? Nothing, maybe. And lots. He's seeing a guy. An older guy. Anything beyond that is conjecture. Maybe he doesn't even know quite how he's wired. Why would any of us presume to know more about him than he knows about himself? Yeah, we're at a watershed place in the culture, a place where gay and lesbian, and, I guess, bisexual people can help move acceptance of gay sexuality along by being open about their sexuality. But if you ask me, nobody owes the culture at large a particular way of doing their sexuality, or thinking about their sexuality, or a particular degree of public visibility about their sexuality. And nobody's talk about their own sexuality tells us anything more about them except what the words themselves suggest. Whether Tom's into daddies, and whether he's into daddies if he is  because he has father issues or not, whether he's straight, whether he's gay...all that's ultimately known are the public facts. All the rest is inference and conjecture, and not unoccasionally, borderline slander. Cheap talk, in other words, and in my opinion it's about as tiresome as the question of whether straight guys ever hook up with gay guys. I celebrate Tom's having found someone he loves, but I don't really know the guy, and I have no idea what it means about his life or anybody's. And on the question of whether guys who like guys also like girls, I'd think the answer is obvious: "sometimes." And on the question of whether guys who like guys ever hook up with guys who like girls, I'd think the answer is also obvious: "Sometimes." Probably not usually, in either case. Does it matter? Yeah, I guess it does. Does it mean that everyone who has a definite, conclusive opinion on the matter is right? Rarely. I've seen that firsthand.

 

What counts in the final analysis for me is how a person handles his/her sexuality, including everything he/she says and does about it, in the larger context of his/her life. What counts for me in the final analysis is the integrity he/she brings to that larger context. At the end of the day, at least in my book, what counts for any of us is whether--and how well--we've loved and cared for our loved ones and for the larger human community. I prefer to leave the gossip and the speculation and the judgment-casting and the definitives about "what is and what isn't" regarding people's wiring to those who seem to need that sort of thing.

 

All that being said, if this post has inspired you to check out Crosscurrents, I sure as hell wouldn't mind!  There are aspects of the writing that make me wince a little--I've become a better writer over the years, and I may at some point clean up the things that really bother me in the story, from a writing standpoint--but generally speaking, I'm happy with how it turned out.

 

Sorry to have intruded here. This thread wasn't about me. But c'mon, when people start throwing your stuff around in these crazy ways, you gotta step up and say something!

 

Your mind is erotic.

[paya]

Hmm. I gotta say, I never expected to have my s**t transformed into short-term memes and postered and real-or-fake Tweeted, but as long as it's all out there like that, I'll say some things. None of this is necessarily a direct response to anything said here about either Tom D or Crosscurrents. It's more a set of general thoughts and feelings about having my name taken in vain in the context of a discussion about a public figure lol.

 

Here's what I think. There are some things we can say about sexuality with some definitiveness...but not as many things as people think. That's all I'm willing to say I know for sure anymore, and it strikes me that the people who speak the loudest and most vociferously about what certainly is and isn't, what's possible and what's not, are people who often appear to have vested interests, and who are "quite sure" about things that nobody is quite sure about. Not pointing fingers; just saying.

 

Crosscurrents was never shared with the reading public as an autobiography. My intent in sharing the story with a large audience--when I finally got around to it--was to entertain. And maybe, in a sense, to reach out through the story to guys who might be wired like me. I'd never met anybody quite like me in terms of wiring, and the email I got in response to Crosscurrents helped me come to understand that I'm not quite the oddball, sexually, that I thought I might be. Apart from any autobiographical dimension, the basic plot elements of the story elicited email responses from sooooo many guys who'd been-there-done-that, it was gratifying to me.

 

Inevitably the question came up about whether or not it's a real-life story. When I posted CC I didn't begin--or end--by saying, "This is a true story." But when people asked, I owned up to the fact that it was essentially autobiographical. I didn't see the point in not owning up to it. There's a smaller group of readers and e-friends who know a great deal about my life now, because we share a lot of stuff...much more than just stuff about sexuality...in a social-media-kind of forum. But as for the story itself, it's not thrown down as a "true story." It's thrown down as a piece of narrative writing that I hope will entertain and touch.

 

Crosscurrents also makes no claims about anybody's sexuality beyond "things are more complex than they seem at first glance." It's not a story about sexual orientation. It's a story about love. I notice that Dan Kincaid's It Started With Brian also came up in this thread. I think if there's anything that can be taken from that story, it's the same thing. I'm efriends with the "Brian" of that story. We've talked a lot. Compared notes. We each, at a point in our lives, were on sports teams where a surprising number of guys fooled around sexually with each other. In that respect, whether or not the theme/meme of gay guys getting straight guys is a gay jerkoff fantasy, CC and ISWB incorporated real experiences Brian, Dan, and I had all had on that front. Dan didn't report all of Brian's stuff with guys because it wasn't relevant to his story. I've only become aware of those in my subsequent friendship with Brian, but they are mentioned at least in passing here and there in ISWB.

 

I have no clue as to what my experiences, or Brian's, or Dan's, say about sexual orientation in general, or, more specifically, about numbers, percentages, or tendencies. And I'm not impressed by people's declarations that "everybody knows that in real life..." etc., etc. I know what I've experienced, and I don't care to defend it with explanations or believe-me-on-this-one defenses. That's not why I wrote CC, and in retrospect, I regret saying anything in public about its autobiographical nature. At the time, it seemed like something I ought to do once I was asked. But the question of "whether such a thing can actually be the case" has taken on a life of its own in a way that gives me a headache and puts me in the position--at least implicitly--of trying to defend my life and life experiences to guys out there who'd assure me--based on...what???? Their own experiences, which somehow negate mine???--that what happened to me never happened.

 

During my student years, my experiences helped me, because they helped me see that whatever kind of freak I was, sexually, I wasn't in some complete other solar system from the rest of the population. I learned that there were other guys who could, and would, under certain circumstances, "go there." For people whose sexuality is somewhat diffuse, self-understanding is difficult. You know you're not gay; your dick's response to women informs you of that. But what are you? And what does it mean for how you live and love? Crosscurrents is a story of a guy's attempt to live out a satisfactory answer to those questions. It's not a thesis on sexual orientation.  I never concluded from my dalliances with straight guys that everybody was like me. Quite the contrary, and I don't think the narrative of CC suggests that everybody is bi. It's merely a narrative reflection of the fact that when I saw that some straight guys would go there under certain circumstances, that helped me in my quest for self-understanding during my late teens and early twenties.

 

The original core that served as the starting point for CC was intended for only one set of eyes and was a response to a specific question I'd been asked privately. But in that response I noticed that it scratched an itch in me. So it began to morph into a "book," and shortly thereafter--during the first third of Crosscurrents--I began to see it as a vehicle for saying some things to "Matt"--and Matt alone--that I hadn't ever said to him quite so nakedly and directly. It wasn't long into that idea, though, before I got it into my head to let other people read it. The overwhelmingly positive response I got to it--especially from guys who've told me their own agonized--or once in a great while, joyful--versions of the same story kept me going. Well, sort of, because it took ten years. 

 

You're welcome to believe what you want about it. Anything I've said in public about it being autogiography has been in response to questions about whether or not it's based on real life. Is it 100% autobiography? Of course not. That being said, regarding the question of whether straight guys will do gay sex, I've had sex with a surprising number of "straight" teammates. I've also been rebuffed by an unsurprising number of straight guys. But in none of my narrative about all that do I intend to make any claims about men's sexual fluidity or nonfluidity or anything else. Shit happened to me; what it all means I leave to the experts. It just irritates me when people say "that shit can't happen." Tell that to Brian. Tell that to the many people who've written me telling me about their wonderful--or excruciatingly painful--experiences with the same thing.

 

At this point in my life, I refuse to draw any conclusions about people's sexual wiring. I certainly don't think we're all fluid. I've kept track of many of the guys I hooked up with over the years, and almost all of them are married, or married-and-divorced, or married-and-divorced-and-remarried, and most of them have kids, and I know they don't go fucking around with guys. I don't think trying-it-a-couple-of-times in college reveals anybody as bi, or reveals that "we're all bi." I seriously doubt that many of the guys I fooled around with back in the day gave their sexual dalliances with me more than a brief play. Most of them were one-off kinds of things. A couple were more significant. I don't know if any of them ever got with any other guys after college days. I kind of doubt it. I learned something about myself sexually during college. They may have learned something about themselves too...but I doubt that they learned they were all "sexually fluid."

 

What does any of that have to do with Tom Daley, you may ask? Nothing, maybe. And lots. He's seeing a guy. An older guy. Anything beyond that is conjecture. Maybe he doesn't even know quite how he's wired. Why would any of us presume to know more about him than he knows about himself? Yeah, we're at a watershed place in the culture, a place where gay and lesbian, and, I guess, bisexual people can help move acceptance of gay sexuality along by being open about their sexuality. But if you ask me, nobody owes the culture at large a particular way of doing their sexuality, or thinking about their sexuality, or a particular degree of public visibility about their sexuality. And nobody's talk about their own sexuality tells us anything more about them except what the words themselves suggest. Whether Tom's into daddies, and whether he's into daddies if he is  because he has father issues or not, whether he's straight, whether he's gay...all that's ultimately known are the public facts. All the rest is inference and conjecture, and not unoccasionally, borderline slander. Cheap talk, in other words, and in my opinion it's about as tiresome as the question of whether straight guys ever hook up with gay guys. I celebrate Tom's having found someone he loves, but I don't really know the guy, and I have no idea what it means about his life or anybody's. And on the question of whether guys who like guys also like girls, I'd think the answer is obvious: "sometimes." And on the question of whether guys who like guys ever hook up with guys who like girls, I'd think the answer is also obvious: "Sometimes." Probably not usually, in either case. Does it matter? Yeah, I guess it does. Does it mean that everyone who has a definite, conclusive opinion on the matter is right? Rarely. I've seen that firsthand.

 

What counts in the final analysis for me is how a person handles his/her sexuality, including everything he/she says and does about it, in the larger context of his/her life. What counts for me in the final analysis is the integrity he/she brings to that larger context. At the end of the day, at least in my book, what counts for any of us is whether--and how well--we've loved and cared for our loved ones and for the larger human community. I prefer to leave the gossip and the speculation and the judgment-casting and the definitives about "what is and what isn't" regarding people's wiring to those who seem to need that sort of thing.

 

All that being said, if this post has inspired you to check out Crosscurrents, I sure as hell wouldn't mind!  There are aspects of the writing that make me wince a little--I've become a better writer over the years, and I may at some point clean up the things that really bother me in the story, from a writing standpoint--but generally speaking, I'm happy with how it turned out.

 

Sorry to have intruded here. This thread wasn't about me. But c'mon, when people start throwing your stuff around in these crazy ways, you gotta step up and say something!

 

1) Throwing your stuff around here was a result of certain individual's mental jerk-off thinking they have patent for the only truthful explanation of what we have witnessed or how this thread should have been named. Nevertheless, whatever Tom Daley did, qualifies as a coming out. He was agonising about it for some time, he was afraid of the reaction of others and his family and how it might or might not influence a career. Nobody needs to come out as straight but almost everyone who chose one of those labels from the "LGBT" has had to come out or is hiding in the closet. Nobody was slapping labels on Tom Daley from the beginning of this thread - which after all was only meant to celebrate an important moment in Tom Daley's life.

 

2) Also, the relationship he is in now is important enough for him to come out to the public about it (he might have been under duress by The Sun publishing a story on his private life or not, it was still a big deal for him). So nobody can compare his relationship with a man to fooling around with buddies on a college team. We don't know Tom Daley's future nor who he marries, divorces or remarries but can be sure he is in a serious relationship with a man.

 

Nit picking on guy being singular or guys from the title being plural and making conclusions solely on that is just ridiculous. In mathematics, or mathematical logic, you only need 1 example disproving the statement to make it a negation. I might be treading now thin ice since I have not studied the maths in English but what I mean is "Tom Daley is straight." (i. e. he only likes girls) is not valid any more because him dating a guy means that there exists at least 1 guy in the world that makes Tom Daley fall in love with him. Therefore, Tom Daley likes guys too. It DOES NOT MATTER that he is dating only one guy right now. He could date more guys at once, but then we would label him a slut.