I was pretty puzzled a few weeks back when I came across a press release concerning a prominent gay matchmaker who was calling for a 60-day moratorium on anal sex. I’m not so ignorant to think that all gay men like to give or take it in the butt, but I did always see gay dudes as anal pioneers. Despite great trials and tribulations, they took it in the butt for decades so that one day all genders and sexes could bask in the pleasure that dare not speak its name. Today, anal seems to be pretty banal—the Journal of Sex and Medicine found in 2010 that 40 percent of women between the ages of 20-24 have taken it in the rear at least once. So, who was this guy trying to roll back all the sexual progress we’ve been enjoying?
His name is Paul Angelo and he’s a highly driven, clean living, type-A gay Miamian from Poland with an MHA and an MBA. Even though he’s only 35, he’s made a killing hooking up other super successful gay men over the age of 40 through his website. I called him up at about the halfway point of his 60-day moratorium, which started at the end of December and is geared towards his target clients but has implications for all gay men.
So, how does one get indoctrinated into butt sex?
When gay males transition from their teenage years into early adulthood, there is a moment where the gay community tells them they will either get fucked or do the fucking. In my case, I bought into the idea that anal sex is normal and that there were no consequences to it.
But isn’t it normal? It seems like everybody is getting into anal love these days—even straight people. What’s so bad about it?
Well the primary result is pleasure. When you have sex, it feels amazing and you feel loved. It’s like a drug—it makes you euphoric. Some people even describe anal sex as an act of God.
So what’s the problem? That all sounds great.
There are secondary consequences. It does damage to one’s health because of the friction—the tissue there is not like a vagina and cannot lubricate itself. And the fact that it comprises the body in the rectal area contributes to a person not caring about other parts of their body.
How so?
Everything starts with small steps, right? Nobody becomes an addict, an alcoholic, or fat overnight. So, if you engage in anal sex, you’re more likely to do a whole bunch of other behaviors that violate your body.
Like what?
I don’t know if you’re familiar with what fist-fucking is— that’s where someone puts a fist into your rectal area. That starts with just getting fucked and getting so used to it that you progress onto something more intense. A couple years down the road you have a fist or double-sided dildos in your rectum. From there it ultimately leads to becoming HIV-positive, because when you look at that kind of behavior, a person who engages in those activities is more likely to take more risks.
But gay guys love putting it in the butt.
Everything else is an option—like oral and tantric sex. Giving pleasure to one another doesn’t have to involve objects entering the anus. Perhaps we need to rediscover how gay people can get intimate with one another. Maybe men don’t know what it means to be sexual with one another yet, because we’ve resorted to something we borrowed from the straight community.
What do you mean by “borrowed from the straight community”?
Well, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But just because there’s a penis and there’s a hole doesn’t mean that the penis should go into the hole. There is a lot of copying and pasting from the straight community into the gay community. What I wonder is if you were to put ten gay teenagers on a remote island, without exposure to straight sex, would they, by themselves, figure out that anal sex is appropriate for them? Maybe that experiment should be conducted to find out whether anal sex is really “natural.”
You talked before about how good it feels. There are nerve endings down there. Doesn’t the fact that it is pleasurable mean we are supposed to have fun with our butts and that it is, in fact, “natural”?
Drugs makes you feel good, too. But all they really do is cover up the pain. Anal sex might make you feel good temporarily, but the moment you wake up the following day, nothing’s changed and you still have to deal with what you need to deal with.
Do you still get off on anal sex?
To tell the truth, in the interest of complete disclosure, I jerk off to porn with anal sex. That’s how programmed I have been by the gay community. I still find it attractive and pleasurable, but I know that it doesn’t make sense if that takes me away from my long-term goals. I stopped doing anal with my own partner about a year ago.
It seems like denying yourself something that feels good would just make you crazy and super horny, not get you closer to your goals.
I’ve seen tremendous progress in my sex life and my way of looking at who I am, and the same thing goes for my partner. He became a lot more successful in business. A lot of the masculinity that I think had been taken away from him by anal sex has returned and makes him more aggressive, which is good because he has a lot more opportunities open for him in terms of his career.
How does “no anal” impact gay relations?
A bottom, the person who receives anal sex, looks for a person who’s strictly top and rejects other bottoms. So all of their relationships are based on the mechanics of sex, and not on goals.
Do you think a gay man coming out against anal sex is ammunition for people who oppose gay rights or sexual freedom?
I’m gay and am looking at my behavior and being self-critical. That is the only way you improve and go in the direction you need to go to achieve what you want in your life. That’s the message. If every gay person on the planet is against that, I’m still not going to change my mind, because it worked for me.
What if someone says you’re wrong? And claims that healthy anal sex can be part of the road to success?
I’ve studied books from most of the success icons in business and psychology—gurus like Tony Robbins and Warren Buffet. I learned from them and I want to engage in behaviors that are moving me towards that level. So I will fire back at them and say, “OK, show me another person who’s highly successful in all areas of life that’s engaged in anal sex,” and let’s see if they can show me somebody.
I’d imagine there are plenty of rich dudes who like putting weiners back there.
I don’t think they will find anybody. When I look at the gay community, it’s devastated by HIV and AIDS, and the health departments don’t understand how it works because they’re all about safe sex, and safe sex doesn’t exist. Everything’s now moving into bare-backing and no condoms.
What’s your desired result with this anti-ass crusade?
Imagine a 17-year-old kid coming out in this environment—I can see why the highest growth in HIV cases is in the younger population. They go on the hookup websites and nobody cares about bare-backing, fisting, or all the sexual derivatives of anal sex that are putting people at risk for a lot of different things, besides even HIV.
So, you want to save the children from anal?
I think if somebody really likes it and it doesn’t hurt their body, OK. I’m not here to tell people what to do with their lives. But it is important for my message to come out, because people should be given an alternative. And maybe if it comes from a younger guy like myself instead of someone who has religious undertones or is from the straight community, people will listen.
What do you see as the future of gay butt sex?
I don’t think that the environment the porn industry and the gay community is selling is ultimately going to stick. I think when you look at health, when you learn about physiology and how the mind and body work together, I don’t see anal sex fitting in—whether we’re talking straight or gay. Ask doctors specializing in the area of the rectum if it is biologically correct to put something into the anus. Yeah, you can stick anything into the anus, but it’s going to hurt the body and we need to learn how to respect the body.
Where did this dolt come from? So gay men spontaneously decide in their late teens whether to be a top or bottom and are thus imprinted for life? If you’re doing it right, there should be no injury from anal sex. As a well-endowed top, I have had to learn good technique if I want bottoms to come back for seconds. Anal sex does not have to hurt and it most decidedly should not injure. Avoiding both is fairly easy. Psychologically there is no downside to doing anal UNLESS someone is being a bottom when he wants to be a top, BUT that has noting to do with the sex and more to do with the interpersonal relationship of the two partners.
Hey Paul go fuck yourself! I’ll never stop!
Paul you can knock yourself out if you want and your free to follow your moratorium, but asking that others do too and then using these examples of how anal sex is so bad for us without citing any sort of scientific evidence to me is just a waste of my time, and I would not waste one second on your moratorium. You might not enjoy getting fucked or fucking but many of us do and we have no issues with the friction cause we use lube. In my 20 years of getting fucked in the ass and fucking in the ass I have not become addicted to sticking bigger things in my ass either so maybe these theories you refer too are just something you have imagined?
I started to respond to the other comments, then realized that i needed to ask the most important question of all:
How soon will TIM start shooting its first “tv show”, about 10 naive gay boys alone on a desert island?
That would be hot. 10 twinks, make that 10 Brent Corrigans, all learning how to bone. YUM
It sounds too much like the argument against cigarettes, alcohol or marijuana. “We should place a taboo on lesser vices, that everyone agrees aren’t healthful, but are pleasurable and not all that harmful when done in moderation, because minor vices inevitably lead to the major vices (cocaine, heroine, methamphetamine) which everyone agrees are destructive.”
We learned during prohibition that some behaviors are so ingrained in the human experience that trying to stamp them out leads to more, not less, harms and dangers. Though, using my own analogy (see what I did there?), we have seen the use and social acceptability of smoking go way down, both because of education and the way we treat smokers: it’s still legal, but we try to inconvenience them as much as humanly possible, everything from exhorbitant taxes to quarantine. I suppose that could happen with anal sex. But with the way the Internet makes it so easy for like-minded people to find one another, I don’t see the purpose in the moratorium.
By his own admission Paul Angelo already doesn’t engage in anal sex. So what’s the purpose in saying he’s going to refrain from anal sex for 60 days, and not only that, but he wants to encourage others to refrain from anal sex for 60 days. Certainly, there are already plenty enough people who don’t enjoy/engage in anal sex, such that all he really needs to do is start his own online community of non-anal people. Come up with a logo, a slogan, find pornographers who are willing to create hot, sexy images to support his movement and roll with it. It’s really not that new. There were sex clubs during the height of the AIDS pandemic that were geared strictly towards blow jobs and jerking off. Just like there are clubs for all sorts of other sexual interests. The main difference I see is that those of a certain body type or kink don’t try to convince everyone else to be like them while they’re seeking recruits of people who are already members of the club, but just don’t know how to find each other (or exclude everyone else, as the case may be).
And then there are the gay vegans, so I stand corrected 🙂
It sounds like Paul Angelo felt peer pressure about having anal sex and never really liked it. Now he is extrapolating his own experience and believing no one else really enjoys it. The problem is that I was enjoying anal sex long before I identified as gay. I didn’t have anal sex because I was gay. I (eventually) acknowledged I was gay because I enjoyed anal sex and loving men – lots of them. If anything, I didn’t really enjoy giving blow jobs, but did it with gusto because I enjoyed giving men pleasure. I find butt sex much more enjoyable.
I should see if Paul Angelo would agree to a moratorium on blow jobs based on my personal experience. 🙂
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This is fascinating. I am sure many people will instantly condemn the idea. But to an extent I agree. We all have desires, and how we act on them, or how we focus that desire is, in my opinion, guided by lots things including porn and what we are told/taught by others. “You are gay, so you have butt sex”. Some of the best sex I have had has not involved anal sex. There are so many ways to experience sexual desire that I think new ways of having sex and making love should be talked about. Anal sex doesn’t have to be damaging in the way this person describes though, but we can all damage our bodies and many of us do – particularily if we fetishize one area of the body (the ass, the cock etc) to the detriment of the body as a whole. It is worth thinking about – not from a moral point of view, but as an experiemental and affirmative way of advocating gay sexuality.