Save an Uber, Ride a Cowboy is a column exploring queer millennial sex culture. The stories presented here are based on true events. Identities have been changed to protect the privacy and reputations of those involved.Ā
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Two young fags were on a bus when, inevitably, the conversation veered into their orientationās capacity to sustain conventional relationships.
One them was a career slut, while the other found himself in a very millennial more-than-fucking-but-not-quite-holding-hands-in-public dynamic. The slut told his friend he was overthinking it: if the sex and conversation were good, there should be no problem.
But evidently that wasnāt enough for Ethan, just as it’s not enough for lot of young queer men.
A mixture of the B43’s bright fluorescents and the fact that newly-coupled Ethan wasnāt going to sleep with him made Riley edgy. He suggested that his friendās desire to define his relationship in crowd-friendly terms was bred from personal insecurity.
āMaybe,ā Ethan shrugged, ābut Iām not sure we can ever separate our insecurities from our relationships.ā
Riley looked at his friend.
āIn some way, arenāt we always trying to get rid of our insecurities with someone else?ā
Fuck.
Several days after Ethan had left New York, Riley still mulled over his words. Although he didn’t feel compelled to find a life partner tomorrow, Riley intimately understood this impulse to fill gaps within himself. But did that imply that the hype over coupling was partially based on it being the opposite of a deficitĀ ā a kind of emotional Vicodin for loneliness? The high sounded tempting, but Riley feared the comedown.
Young queer folk have no problem with love as a concept, but the way in which it manifests gets sticky.
Thereās one crop who consider monogamy a bullshit heterosexual notion, advocating for open relationships: āFuck many, but cuddle with only one.ā However, this lifestyle is about more than just indulging physical impulses. Radical queers view monogamy (and by extension, marriage) as an assimilation techniqueĀ ā heterosexual molds meant to constrict and normalize queerness, an identity that lends itself to unconventionality. Why define queer love by a different orientationās rules?
But it isnāt easy to unlearn conditioned ideas of what relationships should look like.
Mark stared deep into the soul of his whiskey sour at a dive in the Lower East Side,Ā āI want to be in an open relationship, but my boyfriend would never go for it.”
Riley rolled his eyes, “Have you actually talked to him about it?ā
āI donāt have to! I know him and I know heād be hurt if I even brought it up.ā
āBut isnāt it better to be honest about what you need? You donāt seriously think youāre not going to sleep with someone else this summer,āĀ Riley sipped his rum and coke, ādo you?ā
āI would never cheat on him,ā Mark shot back earnestly enough that even Riley believed him.
Mark and his boyfriendās situation is common. Two queens caught between old and new perceptions of love. Itās not as simple as selecting a lifestyleĀ that jives with you; somewhere between sucking your first dick and waking up to a partnerās morning breath, gay men will begin to realize how royally heteronormativity has fucked them.Ā While on the surface, it may appear like they operate separately from the norm, queers spend much of their romantic lives running back towards it. We bed a non-typical gender, but ultimately, we usually select partners whose traits complete traditional pictures of hetero relationships: top for bottom, butch for femme, etc.
What motivates this? Probably the long internalized ache of never feeling ānormal.ā
Regardless of the acceptance we experienced in our upbringing, a persistent need to fit in still plagues many queer folksā romantic decisions. Weāre culturally conditioned to value hetero concepts of love over our own. Fast-forward twenty years and weāre suddenly caught thinking our relationship isn’t real unless it bears some semblance to the values we were raised with. Markās boyfriend probably canāt envision a meaningful relationship that isnāt monogamous.
However, itās reductive to say that queer folk who embrace nontraditional couplings are more intellectually liberated than their monogamous counterparts. For many, monogamy is not a trap.
āI think I want to break up with my partner,ā Patty told Riley one day at work, ābut we live together, so I figure Iāll just tough it out until the end of our lease.ā
āWhen is your lease up?ā
āA year.ā
She had a point. The slow dissolve of love is childās play compared to navigating the New York City housing market solo.Ā Five months later, Patty had ditched then gotten back together with her partner.Ā
āBeing single in New York was not as fun as I remember,ā she confessed on a rooftop in Brooklyn, “people kind of suck. And when you have someone nice waiting at home, sleeping around loses its appeal.ā
Riley went drinking later that night.
While itās true that the sensory overload of New York (bright lights, hot people) can make it difficult to commit to one person, monogamy thrives in the city for those who look for it.
New Yorkās twenty-five in āqueer yearsā is the jaded equivalent of thirty-four in other towns. Frankly, people just get tired. Theyāve played the field aggressively and long enough that the game isnāt fun anymore. So they find their rock and sign a two-year lease. Stability is a commodity in a city that’sĀ constantly changing.Ā
Riley wanted to buy into the fantasy that New York was crawling with sexual deviants, but the reality was that at only twenty-one, he had lost nearly all his fuck buddies to monogamy.
A boy once told him while they were walking together,Ā āWow, look at that gay couple holding hands. I want that.” Riley had to suck his dick to shut him up.
A few months later, that boy found someone who wanted what he wanted; Riley found his hand.
Sometimes when he gets high, Riley wonders if heās really committed to a radical queer lifestyle or if heās just kidding himself. But before he has time to answer the question, thereās always someone new to distract him.
āHonestly, if Iām conditioned, Iām not so sure I want to unlearn it,ā reasoned Ava between drags of a Malboro menthol. āI donāt really have the energy for all that.ā
The photos featured are fromĀ gaytona.beach, a project highlighting photographer Andrew Harper’s experiences on Grindr.