I think there are multiple pleasures, that are both personal, social and biological.
Personal
Personally I’ve enjoyed the closeness with a male partner, a Bottom, whether in love/a relationship or not. There’s an inherent trust that one has to establish with a Bottom because you’re doing something both socially verboten and physically-sexually challenging to penetrate the exterior and interior sphincter muscles. I have done so with a lot of guys and I try to be present—-not wild, whoo hoo porno sex—-but hey, let’s have fun and enjoy each other sex and also we’re in this together, I like you enough to do this with you—-I’m not just fucking to get off—-I’m engaging in thoughtful, present sex for our mutual pleasure—-which is often different from other men’s constant gay experiences/same sex experiences. Many times Bottoms talk about being fucked in almost revulsion from Tops—-they talk about wanting to be kissed, touched, rimmed, body contact—-talking about body contact!——as if it’s unusual for it to occur.
In that connection, I try to be present, be with someone, even if it’s just a hook-up, a one night stand, with someone I’m attracted to, not just to get my rocks off. I teach in workshops with men to reframe some of the language they use—-instead of horny—-seeking intimacy—-more adult, more expansive, of a greater truth.
I aim for intimacy in topping a dude. In time spent, positions, closeness, checking it, treats and cool water and towels on the nightstand, teasing, joking, laughing——treating lovers—-even temporary ones, like friends (and conversely, friends like lovers.)
Some of the satisfaction I get then is in that intimate connection, to being allowed to penetrate a man, to make him vulnerable in sex, sexuality, to expose him to my own self, my own masculinity, and maleness and be a safe space—-a protector, a provider, of pleasure.
Social
Socially, it’s a great way to get to know someone. To become a part of someone else, their body and their desires, and find their inner self, to be allowed into their sexuality, their psyche. What I mean in that is that LGBTSGL folk as a construct, an identity, an acceptable sexuality, is relatively new, I’m maybe the second, third generation, of this wave of Identity Progression/advancement and thereby, now, social acceptance. Being a part of social-sexual act with someone is slightly revolutionary, in the sense that it used to be a veiled, whispered, closeted, deeply closeted thing—-now not so much. Now someone can elect to share this experience with me and me them—-and we can use locations and the internet and social centers to find one another.
To be with a like-minded person from amongst billions of people, to make such an intimate connection and be able to do so so freely here in NYC, and other states, towns, countries, I’ve had sex in, is wondrous.
You feel that when you penetrate a man, when you’re with him—-it’s like a balloon, a whooshing, that comes out of him psychically, emotionally. Those are the best Bottoms to be with, those who relax, who feel into that connection, that freedom, that revelation. And it makes, even temporary connection sex fun and enlivening and delicious. It, not always from love, is close to it as it is a love of the freedom to be, to recognize to connect in such a way.
Biological
A friend and I, Michael Foster (one of the dozen smartest or so people I’ve met in life) and I belonged to a men’s organization that I would bring my workshop participants to. He and immediately geeked out—-he was a teacher at a museum and then a full time coordinator for the men’s group—-and we would observe the hundreds of men and their issues and thoughts. But we would consider them not simply as individuals but also as men, people, humans, acting out an identity, a sexuality.
I was bringing a broad range of materials form all over the world, making a deep dive research, for myself from a decade before, and then as a teacher then, about sexuality-identity, etc.. One of the things I came upon was the work of sociologists, sex therapists, psychologists around male sexuality, with other me, and the examination of How and Why these men, did what they did. Was their biological causation. Which is where I found many people using differing language about biological or genetic impact to sexuality and sexual positionality.
I was close to establishing a language for what I was seeing in the hundreds of men, from 14 to late 70s, in my groups—-like watching birds fly, en masse, through the sky, acting certain ways as a pack, as individuals. Also as the teacher/facilitator, I was trying to provide questioning men with concrete answers to their own inner ideas and turmoil and desires.
From Dr. Pat Allen, I was able to cull accurate descriptions for Masculine and Feminine energy, regardless of physical-biological sex. We got there!
Able to discuss and discern in one another identity by energy—-internal self direction whether one was a Masculine energy man of a Feminine energy man—-using Dr. Allen’s work as a baseline. I wanted to and her years and years of research, which she specifically delineated past physical sex and sexuality I was able then to roll alongside the Imago system, designed by Drs. Harville and Helen Hendrix, psychologists. Ultimately their teaching about Imago being how we learned to love—-a psyche-mentality-love emotional map that we designed based upon our parents/caregivers.
From there I was able to incorporate Keith Swain’s work, his surveying of thousands of men who had sex with men, to the Alpha and Beta Mating System and it’s descriptors of men as primarily Alphas or Betas in physicality and mentality/emotionality make up—-further from A and B, incorporating both A primary, a secondary with B primary, b secondary, and the applicable traits by the ABMS self-exam survey (including in the book).
Armed with all of this information, teaching over years, thousands of men, Michael and I started ad hoc experiments, asking men questions.
Like when they went to nightclubs how they attracted to men? Pheromones, sweat, semen—-was it possible to give off “scents” to attract men?
Betas—-primarily Bottoms, being able to scent out unconsciously Alphas based upon their having higher levels of testosterone (conversely Betas having higher levels of estrogen) affecting their physicality, intentionality, and sexuality. Alphas being primarily Tops and Betas Bottoms or versatiles, based upon hormones and then the question of how that attraction happened.
Yes, we had guys go to clubs after gym workouts and further, what if they—-Alphas masturbated before arriving or even kept on sweat clothing or applied semen to their sweat glands areas. (It works—they reported higher attractions-connections.)
I explain all of this to you to go further into what Michael and I discussed, which I think—-my thinking ability being to bring together disparate information/data—-seeing patterns and connections in the mass of confusing data.
Michael (who died of pneumonia suddenly as we were working out correlating data, how to bring together people, etc.—-he was a double Masters in sciences)—- and I also discussed why men did things, based on hormones. Men topping and bottoming and most importantly HIV transmission as such a prominent issue in the LGBTSGL community, pointedly Black and Latino groups having such high infection rates.
We hypothesized that Betas, Bottoms, ultimately the positionality most infected by HIV/Tops were doing so out of a biological urge to essentially merge estrogen to testosterone.
That we, sexed human beings, are drawn to each other biologically, regardless of our physical biological sex by those hormones. That those hormones thereby are affected by say another switch in us, our DNA, which effects sexuality.
Think of it like a slot machine. But similar to a slot machine, with multiple slots—-Sex (Biological), Sexuality (Personal), Gender (Social) were affected by the myriadical combinations but at the same time teh combinations affect one another.
What the fuck does that mean, Kyle?
It means that estrogen signals people, regardless of physical/biological Sex to get penetrated and testosterone to penetrate. Now of course we can override this all. (Which is where we bring in “free will” and the variety and diversity of Sex, Sexuality and Gender identities throughout time and to be explored now and in the future.)
But this also suggests in Topping, that a Bottom is trying to get—-testosterone——and a Top to “impregnate” to estrogen.
Now to incorporate the personal—-it does feel—-having been with men and women—-there is a desire, a biological “feeling”——under the attraction that we mentally experience and ride along. And when you talk to other Tops, who are aware enough and capable enough to try and discern the under-feeling (Bottoms as well) there is an impulse to do something, to give something to the person—-male or female you’re penetrating.
Which brings us yes, logically to barebacking, breeding, sperm-semen into another human as a desire to fulfill—-yes, having talked to Bottoms—-to receive—-we’re trying to give and receive biological information.
Even if you can’t get the receptacle pregnant. I’ve been teaching for years that just because your fire hose is pointing to, penetrating a different receptacle than a vagina-uterus——don’t mean the impulse to impregnate is lost in the liquid-jetstream.
Which yes, folds back into that under-feeling being some of the human—-male impulse—— to receive semen and to insert it—-which yes, would lead to an unexpected fourth slot into our human slot machine—-Disease-HIV-Sexual Transmitted Infections—-opportunistically being detrimental to that under-feeling, biological impulse. Which would explain the rampant infections over the past few decades and the continuous ignoring of STIs to those willingly practicing unsafe sex, without condoms or PRep, to even the desire to become HIV+, on purpose, in “breeding” from men. Yes, breeding being an apropos, though unintentional, terminology, to that under-feelings impulses in same sex attracted males. In discussions, in sex, in my own experiences (hence, why I wrote about it and lots of other things in my own books—-check out the other books and dive deep into other books on sexuality) there is a desire, that yes, can’t be biologically fulfilled with a man I might be penetrating—-but there’s something there, an impulse, an under-feeling that in topping I’m trying to….get to.