Sex and that southern guy

I had been browsing Grindr earlier in the day, and priest was not the vibe.

I attended a wedding reception where I was seated next to a very charming man.

The groom had informed me I was at a "really good table." But when I arrived, I discovered my table included myself, one of my friends and her boyfriend (who do qualify as "really good," but I see them all the time so they don't really count), a cute therapist from the south, a Catholic missionary, and a fucking priest.

Now, don't get me wrong. I do think priests can be cool. Some of them can even be "really good." I know many priests. I have priests among my friends.

But I had been browsing Grindr earlier in the day, and priest was not the vibe.

But I knew the groom as someone with good judgment. So there must have been something to this table. So I guess I had to play hide and seek with the "really good." I kicked off a conversation with the southern therapist man next to me.

He was cute. In Grindr body categories, he was probably somewhere between "slim" and "toned"--probably "slim." He had some nice little facial hair and a nice little smile. We discovered that we both appreciated classical education. He'd met the groom through some Catholic events. It took me far too long to get my eyes on his ring finger and see that it was empty.

Then I sensed the game afoot.

I asked him if he'd come with anyone else to the wedding. He clearly hadn't, since he was sitting between me and the priest. But I was fishing and that was a nice bit of bait to dangle out in front of him. I asked him what the dating scene was like where he lived. He said he wasn't really dating. Green flag. But also a red flag. I should have seen where this was going, but I ignored the signs. I peppered my questioning of his situation with questions about school and his practice and remarks about Aristotle and Freud.

This went on for a while. It must have become abundantly clear to everyone else what was going on, because we were leaning in towards each other in this very intense conversation and ignoring the rest of the table. (Sorry, priest, but that's what you get for choosing a life where if I sleep with you, I've really made some bad choices.) Therapist man finally leaned in close to my face and asked, "So you're gay, right?" "Yeah, are you?" "Yeah."

Fuck yeah.

I texted the groom, "ok I see what you did here." He texted me back the smiling devil emoji. 😈

Game on.

Then things started to get interesting. There was more laughing. If we weren't interested in the rest of the table before, we really weren't interested in those heteros now. (Ok, maybe missionary guy and the priest aren't heteros, but they weren't as cute as southern therapist guy so they might as well have been.) I made a comment about how I can't get through a first date without talking about religion. He asked, "So does that mean we're on a first date?" I smiled and said, "Well we wouldn't want to disappoint the groom."

We talked about how we both want to go to Italy regularly. I thought about how it might be fun to go to Italy together. Not that I was looking to marry the guy. But connections like this don't happen every day. I was in an "infinite possibilities" mood. Grindr was a distant memory. Until the bomb dropped.

I can't remember exactly how we got there. But at one point he dropped that he was celibate.

You read that right.

If you're normal (i.e. not Catholic in the way I grew up) you'll probably respond like my present set of gays when I told them this story: "WHAT??? WHY???? EWWW!"

Which brings us to the point of this essay. Because I am a tease, this isn't about a sexcapade. It's about celibacy. Gotcha!

I know just a bit about celibacy. I once wanted to be celibate for life. I was celibate until the age of nineteen, and then intermittently until about the age of twenty-five, and then for about a year, and then on and off for a few more years before deciding that they way I was pursuing celibacy wasn't really helping me be good at celibacy, and it was causing me to be bad at a lot of other things in life.

My views on this stuff are complicated, and a bit muddled. I'm Catholic. People sometimes ask me what I think about Catholic teaching about sexuality, and especially about same-sex sexuality. My answer changes every year. The current answer is, "I think that logically it's internally consistent, which makes it compelling in many ways, and it's consistent with the recent tradition of the Church. But we don't live in a world where the teachings, as they're presented today, are broadly consistent with human flourishing, as understood within the natural law tradition."

In short: it's a nice dream that tends to translate into a lived nightmare.

Or maybe that's putting it too strongly. It's a nice dream that usually translates into being kinda weird and emotionally both distant and needy, and also pious like a superstitious old grandmother, except you're thirty-five and you secretly go to the club from time to time (which is kinda cool if you're a seventy-five year old grandmother but not so cool if you're a thirty-five year old closeted homo). There are exceptions. I know some people who seem to be doing the gay celibacy thing really well while being cool people and flourishing adults. But, again, they tend to be the exception.

I used to be really good at being celibate… back when I was straight. My college girlfriend once told me that she wanted to feel more "desired" by me. But, being a good Catholic Theology of the Body boy, wasn’t it better for me to respect her than to desire her? I was very respectful. My preference with the ladies was deep conversation and, if necessary, holding hands. No premarital sex for me!

Of course, things changed once I watched Glee and was turned gay. Now I go to weddings in the hopes that I'll find a boy who desires me and would be interested in being a bit disrespectful to me. 😈

But I am evolved hedonist. (Not really. I actually think I’m less of a hedonist than many celibate men I know.) I have read The Ethical Slut. I know terms like "ethical non-monogamy." I want to be disrespected sometimes, but within a container of respect. I like to get a little messy sometimes, but not in a way that will result in lives falling apart. So I didn't push it with cute therapist guy. I told him he was cute. I was interested in a make out opportunity, but I wasn’t going to take him home.

Though I've moved away from my own pursuit of celibacy, I can respect his. There are many ways to feel alive, to feel loved, to live a life of passion and intimacy.

And sex isn’t everything. I've had some great sexual experiences. But I’ve had negative experiences as well. I’ve been victim to sexual assault. But even with consensual experiences, I haven't always felt good during or after sex. Sex isn’t always good, even if the other party is hot. Actually I’ve found that, the hotter the guy, the worse he tends to be at sex. I think about John Hamm in that episode of 30 Rock where he never had to do anything because he was so good looking (it’s season 3, episode 15, if you’re curious). He was probably bad at sex, though people were probably so enamored by him that they didn’t even notice.

The secular media tends to overly idealize the spontaneous hookup, while Christian media tends to overly demonize it. The spontaneous hookup probably won’t be the most hottest thing you ever experience, and it probably won’t be the worst thing you experience either. In reality, the hottest thing you ever experience will be premiering a choral work in Nideros Cathedral in Tronheim, while among the worst things will be betrayal by your Christian community. The spontaneous hookup won’t be the best or worst thing you over do. It’ll be somewhere in between. (If you engage in anonymous hookups—which I don’t always recommend—please be safe. You can find some tips here and here.)

Lately I've been less interested in spontaneous hookups, partly because sex with men you don't know is hit or miss and I'd often rather be reading a book. If I was celibate, I'd save a lot of wasted time. Good sex takes time to find and cultivate and maintain. If I spent less time on that, I'd have a lot more time to write.

And there is something spiritually appealing about celibacy. Sexuality is energy, and sublimating that energy can help drive creativity and passion for all kinds of pursuits. Being celibate can be like having a boring job. After I graduated law school and was struggling to find a good law firm gig, I worked more or less as a glorified document sorter. I helped categorize emails and excel files in preparation for litigation, an extremely monotonous job that requires very little legal knowledge. But that boring monotonous job freed up a lot of mental capacity. I wrote constantly, jotting down notes on my phone throughout the day. After a few months with that job, I had written a book. Like celibacy, boring jobs can be great for artists.

Along with creativity, the transcendent has long been associated with celibacy. Before Christianity, celibacy had been pursued in the ancient world as a way to have a deeper connection to philosophy or the divine. And throughout the history of Christianity, women have pursued celibacy in religious life as a way to free them from the expectations of married women and pursue lives of divine focus or social justice or philosophical influence.

Today, maybe celibacy is an exercise of self-hatred for some. But the tortured self can also be a great artist. In 2014 when Sam Smith told MTV, "I'm just going to try to fall in love and make them dump me so I can write another record," a lot of people rolled their eyes while also secretly hoping that would happen so we could get another hit album. There is a similar dynamic in the movie Challengers: Art’s tennis is best when his romantic security is threatened.

The agony and ecstasy of romantic affairs in the life of the celibate gay Christian can elicit bursts of creative energy. The excitement and ambiguity of infatuation that can never turn into something fixed and defined is a form of Unspeakable that can only turn into poetry or music or painting or anxiety. There’s something sexy about the love that cannot be named, and that sexiness can come with bursts of creative power.

But I’ve seen many of these affairs reach a breaking point, where one party can’t live on in this anxiety, and either they agree to end things or that party wants to turn the forbidden into something speakable. When the other party isn’t willing to do this, there’s often a realization that it wasn’t sexy once it wasn’t forbidden. In the eyes of the broken-hearted, the committed celibate becomes the smallest man who ever lived.

And that too becomes art. Smith has said, "The reason I do what I do is because I'm an artist who is always going to be blue about something."

I'm proud of the many things I've written when I was blue. But at some point, I decided I wanted more than tortured artistry for myself. I wanted more than turmoil for the people I loved. And not all art has to come out of turmoil. Maybe beauty wasn't limited to the angst of celibate singlehood. Maybe it was possible to create out of another kind of love. Maybe all that time finding and cultivating and maintaining good sex could also teach me things worth writing about.

But maybe Southern therapist guy has different lessons to learn. Maybe his life isn’t tortured like mine often was (and still is in some ways). In my old Christian life, I assumed that every "out and proud" gay who was having ungodly sex and ungodly marriage was secretly unhappy and self-hating. In my new gay life, I know many people who believe that every celibate gay is secretly unhappy and self-hating. In my present gay Christian life, I try to walk a different line. I try not to assume a person's happiness or unhappiness based on whether or not they're having sex. Sex is sexy, but celibacy can be sexy too. And real happiness can be so hard to see.

So when I flirt with celibate southern therapist guy at the wedding, I try not to assume my life is better than his. I like my life. I feel good enough about my present choices. I like flirting with him. We go home separately. I had a good night.