As River sleeps, I take out my laptop and go to Pornhub. We never hide porn from each other or lie about not watching it – I accept that he finds other men attractive, and he accepts the same about me. (Well, lately, at least, LOL.)
I watch a guy getting banged out by a daddy guy, and I frown. The thing I don’t like about this is that bottoms always look so…vulnerable. Once that dick enters them, their faces start to look different and they make crazy sounds and they just look…like they are not in control of themselves.
But I think back to that night when that girl gave him a weird, condescending look, and called him a ‘bottom.’ River made a great point during his talk, that everyone wants to assign roles onto gay men that don’t necessarily fit, or make sense for us.
That was one of the weirdest thing to get used to; the fact that I was no longer expected to always be in control. I wasn’t expected to open doors for him or pay for every meal or fix every flat tire. I had to learn that the power structure in the normal male/female relationship was irrelevant to us.
And maybe River was right: maybe the last traces of my hetero brain are lingering in the form of me thinking that all I can ever do is top.
And that’s when I decide: I think I at least want to try this.
I take out my phone and Google a question:
How do you know if you’re a top or a bottom?
The questions are immediately suspicious, though. As I click through I see questions like:
Would you describe yourself as a masculine person?
How “gay” would you say you are?
Do you prefer to be in charge in social situations?
When you play baseball, do you find yourself pitching or catching more often?
And my own personal favorite:
Do you ever find yourself wearing female clothing?
I close out the stupid website and frown.
All of that was stupid. River can be somewhat “feminine,” but he’s what you call a “bossy bottom,” and can be very demanding in bed. And one of my favorite porn stars is a three-hundred-pound muscle daddy who is a totally submissive bottom in bed.
So River was kind of right – none of this really matters anyway, so maybe I’m overthinking it. But still, one last question is lurking in my mind:
What if I can’t bottom, or don’t want to, and this whole thing is really about the slight but undeniable inherent differences in our worldviews and personalities, and it marks the beginning of the end of Chandler and River?
3
River Browning
I wake Chandler up with a blowjob, as I do nearly every day. (Like I said, we’re annoying together and you should just get over it now.) As I shower, though, the previous night’s bottoming conversation hits me like a pile of bricks.
Oh, God. I can’t believe I was so brash.
I asked my “top” boyfriend to bottom for me…I really did that. Holy shit. I know I suffer from foot-in-mouth syndrome, but…this is a whole new level.
Is he horrified? Is he confused? Is he going to dump me?
Thankfully, Chandler doesn’t seem too freaked out when he plops down on the bed beside me with a notebook and some coffee.
“Happy Valentine’s, stinky. You are the love of my life.”
I just smile. “Um. I can’t compare to that, so I am just going to say good morning. Happy Valentine’s, too.”
“Ha. Here’s your gift.”
“But I told you not to spend any money!”
“We both know that was you being coy. You love gifts.”
“I mean, true…”
“But I actually got around that request by…well, combining the two. I didn’t spend anything, but I did make something.”
Chandler hands me a notebook. On the front, he wrote THE BOOK OF CHANDLER + RIVER.
I open it to find a small message he wrote in the corner, and then I flip the pages and find more and more, all written artistically in different corners and nooks of the pages:
Our first real date at that weird café
The first time we got drunk together and I touched your leg
The first time I looked into your eyes and realized you felt like home
The time you tried to give me “lessons” on “how to be gay” and took me shopping at that boutique, but we just ended up fucking in the dressing rooms instead
That time we went to Paula Deen’s weird buffet restaurant in Savannah and ate so much, we got diarrhea all night
The time I brought you to a sports bar and you got so bored you fell asleep
The first time you took me to a gay bar, and I felt worlds opening up inside me that I didn’t even know were there
“Chandler,” I say as I turn the pages. “It’s…it’s us.”
“I know. I hope you like it.”
“I love it. And I got you something, too.”
I reach into my backpack and take out the Amazon box I told him was a book when it arrived. I hand it to him and watch with a boiling stomach as he takes out the sex toy and just kind of stares at it.
“Um. This is a dildo,” he says.
“It is not! It’s a prostate wand. It’s super thin. And it vibrates, too!”
Chandler tosses it onto the bedside table. “Okay, message received. I’ll see you tonight, weirdo.”
~
Chandler – even his name was straight. I swear, there are gay names, like Lance or Parker, where everyone you meet with that name is a big ole homo. And then some names are straighter than a Kansas highway. (Are there curved highways in Kansas? I’ve never been there, but I still don’t get that saying.)
I met him on accident, by the way. I was depressed and drinking too much and then one day there he was, the new guy at work. He was very tall and smelled good and made direct eye contact, all of which are attractive on their own, and together produced a sort of super-pheromone that made me too nervous to breathe around him.
Actually, the first time I saw him, I literally tripped on my own feet – I was walking with two cups of coffee, I saw the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, and I twisted my ankle and launched sixteen ounces of java against a wall. But that’s the effect he had on me – I knew within seconds that I would never, ever forget seeing him for the first time. And I never did.
But of course, he was straight, and therefore unattainable. I knew it because I stalked his social media as soon as I found out his name, because of course I did. And there were no tell-tale signs of a guy who is closeted, like when they follow Lady Gaga or fashion pages or whatever. So I honored his straightness and kept my distance.
Or tried to, at least.
But even from afar, I started noticing that around him, I felt happy. And I think he noticed it, too. Because we started crossing paths more and more. One day he told me it was cloudy outside, and I glowed from head to toe. Then I complimented his handwriting, and he blushed and said it was because his mother was a teacher and had taught him perfect penmanship from the age of four.
Soon it started to seem like he was making up excuses to be around me. He’d come to the coffee machine whenever I went for coffee, even when his cup would already be full. He’d seemingly schedule his breaks around mine, even when he got in trouble for it one time.