• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Lesson#14

I Am a Gay Man

by Dan Savage

Wendy had something special, a certain something very few twenty-one-year-old women have today. Wendy had pubic hair.

Wendy’s pubes were the only thing that came to mind after I spent two days wracking my brain trying to think of something nice to say about her vagina. Wendy was good to me. She gave me what she thought I wanted—no, that’s not fair. She gave me what I told her I wanted. She gave me what I had spent the previous three years trying to convince myself I wanted.

Pussy.

And how do I pay her back? Two decades later I write an essay about how thoroughly her vagina horrified me. (Please note: I said Wendy’s vagina horrified me, I didn’t say Wendy’s vagina was horrifying. It’s an important distinction, one we’ll be discussing further, at length.)

I wanted to open up by saying one nice thing about Wendy’s vagina—I didn’t want to come across as a gay cad (a gad?)—before I set off on a little stroll down Repressed Memory Lane. So here it is: Wendy’s vagina was well concealed. Unlike today’s waxed, shaved, defoliated, clear-cut vaginas, Wendy’s vagina was discretely hidden under what, by modern standards, could only be described as a Van Gogh haystack of curly brown pubic hair.

Wendy’s vagina was nothing like the glistening pink roadkill I’d seen in my older brothers’ porn magazines. It was so well concealed, I didn’t get a really good look at it. Not that I tried, mind you. Whether I failed to get a good a look at Wendy’s vagina because her pubic hair concealed it so completely or because my eyes instinctively shifted from her knees to her navel and back, skipping everything in between, well, that’s lost in the mists of time. Whatever the reason, whatever resulted in Wendy’s vagina being so well concealed—her pubic hair or my squeamishness—I am forever grateful for it.

A few relevant details about Wendy: She was twenty-one. She was my eldest brother’s ex-girlfriend. I lost my virginity to her in a tent, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the summer, in the middle of my fifteenth year. According to the laws of the great state of Illinois, Wendy was guilty of statutory rape. If Wendy were twenty-one and banging fifteen-year-old boys today she could easily do twenty-five years in prison and forever be labeled a “sex offender” when she got out. But back in 1980 the role of sexual initiator was still an honored one. So even when my brother and parents found out—and I made damn sure they all found out—no one thought to call the police. Not even my father.

Did I mention my father was a cop?

Now the details get more sordid: My first time? Sloppy seconds.

Alex, age twenty-three, was Wendy’s idea, but I didn’t object—not to Alex being there or to Alex going first or to Alex being so fucking hot. Wendy felt Alex should be first because Alex knew what he was doing and I didn’t. Alex elbowed me in the side and told me to watch him.

I watched Alex like a dog watches steak.

Then it was my turn. I remember thinking that Wendy’s vagina felt nothing like my right hand. It was . . . damper. More humid. And looser—much, much looser.

I humped away at Wendy. Then I started to worry. What if I couldn’t keep it up? What if I couldn’t come? If I couldn’t finish, I feared Alex and Wendy would look at each other, say, “Oh my God, he’s gay!” in unison, and then Alex would beat the shit out of me for watching him like a dog watches steak.

I kept humping, humping, humping.

My concentration began to flag, partly deflating my erection, as condensation dripped onto my back from the top of the tent. I think Alex was getting frustrated—it was hot in that tent, and he was ready to split—but he was too gentlemanly a statutory rapist to leave before I finished. So Alex did something that I, at fifteen, figured Alex could do because he was straight. To help me get there, Alex reached between my legs and cupped my balls.

It helped.

I slept with Wendy in part to scandalize my family with my blatant, and unexpected, heterosexual behavior. I made damn sure my mother “overheard” my late-night