masculine bottom

Masculine Bottom

He wore his jeans baggy and low on his waist, brown timberland boots, a Wizards basketball jersey and a red baseball cap cocked to the side. He was six feet tall, slim built, deep voice, very masculine and a bottom. I met him at a gay bookstore, he was standing outside a booth, we briefly cruised each other, and I was wearing my jeans baggy, a tight fitted wife beater, and a baseball cap pulled down on my eyes. I signaled for him to follow me in a booth, and once inside, he was the first to grab for the dick. I remember my freshman year in college; I read in this book about gays in late 1800s and early 1900s that the first person to grab for the dick was usually the bitch. I knew immediately we were looking for the same thing and read each other wrong. We were both disappointed. We both thought we saw something that wasn’t there. I saw a masculine black man who was tall and good looking, who grabbed at his crotched, no sign of being effeminate and inside my head I already started the naughty fantasy before I even approached; maybe he saw the same thing with me. After disappointment and because the bookstore was empty, we started a conversation. He told me he was a bottom, and because the way he acted and dressed, he always got hit on by other “bottoms,” and “tops” usually ignored him thinking that he was one of them. I felt sorry for him and could understand the confusion. I, myself, constantly was hit on by other bottoms and white men searching for the big black dick --the problem, so was I...

In the life, we were called masculine bottoms. We were “straight-acting” black gay men who liked to take dick. We lived in a world of no “fems and no fats.” It was most likely because we grew up in the ghetto and learned to cling to our masculinity that caused a lot of confusion in our sexual lives. Yet, in a sense we were a contradiction. We knew how deepened the bass in our voice and flex our muscles when we walked. We knew the dress code: the baggy pants, wife beater, baseball cap, and timberlands. We knew how to hang with the boys, play basketball, shoot craps, play spades, smoke the weed, and talk about cars and sports. Yet, we liked penetration, allowing a hard dick to enter our masculine universes, a lifestyle my father would have considered effiminate.

The first argument: Masculinity and what is it based on?

Masculinity and femininity are essentially heterosexual words, how men and women from birth are characterized-- like boys must wear blue, play with toy soldiers and sports; and girls must wear pink, wear their hair in pigtails and play with dolls. Masculinity and femininity are how heterosexuals sexualize their gender identity -- based on the idea that men are hunters and women are gatherers; that men start wars and women wait for the wounded to come home; that men go out and kill the pig for bacon and women cook it. Masculinity is heterosexually based, how men have historically defined each other; socialize each other, drawing the line in the sand what makes them different from women, the opposite, inferior or conquered sex. When I came into this world and the nurse checked between my legs and wrote on my birth certificate that I was boy, that meant not only would have to get acquainted and like the color blue but I would be socialized into this world by my father, uncles, male cousins, and male friends who would try to teach me how to be a man. The socialization was as old as cave times, how men took their sons on their first hunting adventures, letting them know they would have to learn to hide their emotions, hardened up for the family, and be a leader. I grew up in a house full of boys and men, who liked to watch sports, fix cars, kill shit, and talk about tities and ass. I grew up playing ball in the streets or the local recreational center, play fighting, real fighting, with men who instinctly ganged together for survival and domination. Men like to filter out the weak like high school girls deciding someone isn’t pretty enough to be part of the group. I grew up with the constant test to see if I was hard enough, worth acceptance, and because I wanted to be my father’s son, I learned to not cry when I scraped my knee, or got hit too hard in football practice. I learned to keep my emotions inside, how to not show fear in a fight, become a soldier. Destiny’s child say they want a soldier, but they are women, they just want a sexual play thing, not how men become soldiers.

Masculinity is a sociological term, and part of the reason why I was so afraid to come out or why so many black gay men stay on the down low is the betrayal of the masculine socialization which means betraying our father, uncles, male cousins and male friends who took us in and thought we were one of them because the equipment was the same, but they didn’t know the heart was different. As a gay growing up "straight," I knew the Heterosexual machine would have a difficult time processig my soul and desires. I knew the heterosexual machine that discipline masculinity would consider me effeminate, that is different because I was a man, and I didn’t want to be different because that would mean I was weaker, part of the weaker sex, which meant I needed protection from the more aggressive sex. Men form gangs for survival and domination, and I thouight if I was found out, I would be thrown out the gang and become vulnerable.

Black gay men conveniently ignore the socialization of masculinity and pay more attention to the sexualized masculinity. It’s masculinity as illusion, the clothes, the way they’ve been taught a man should talk, walk, and act. It’s not masculinity as a man who takes care of his family, work his 9-5 to keep the roof over his family head and food in their mouth. It the sexual masculinity, such as sports, aggression, hardness, and insecurity. It’s not masculinity as purpose but masculinity as attraction. It’s the illusion, the drag; how we all learn the act. My masculnity was beated into me: “I’m going to make you a man, beat that sugar out your work, if it kills you.”


The second argument: What makes a bottom? I guess part of me always felt less than a man. I grew up in a house full of boys, but I always knew I was different, identified more with my female cousins. I didn’t want to play with dolls but I did like double dutch and playing hopscotch or jacks (the game with the red balls and silver star things). I remember very early that I wasn’t good at basketball or football, but I kicked ass at baseball and soccer. I loved sports, the ones I excelled. I guess I always felt less than a man, because I was somewhat naturally effeminate growing up, my voice didn’t deepen until my senior year in high school. I studied masculinity in high school because I thought I wanted girls to like me and didn’t want to appear abnormal, gay.

I think of my own masculinity, that I grew up fighting boy cousins, knew how to keep a job at thirteen years old cutting neighbor yards, but I never identified with other boys. I crave other boys touch and I probably internalized that as effeminate. Maybe that’s why I identified with other girls, because I knew sexually, we liked the same things. Maybe growing up knowing that I liked boys, I thought I would have to be more girl-like, submissive, because girls learn to be submissive early in life, learn how to lose to a boy so that the boy would like them, so they can be penetrated, lose their virginity, and want to have babies. I probably internalized because I never felt masculine, that on the inside I was effeminate, so I thought I would have to be submissive to get what I wanted sexually, that was attention from another boy. I made that submissiveness my fantasy, wanted to be the girl in the porno that we boys stole from out older male relatives, because that was only how I could see myself in a heterosexual world since the masculine man did the penetrating. I had no idea how men had sex with each other, so because I was raised in a heterosexual world, I could only see myself as the girl, on the inside. And when I started having sex with men, I thought because I didn’t know any better, that was the role I was going to have to play, the girl’s role.

The first time I hated the girl’s role. It hurt like a motherfucker. I vowed to never do it again. I was unaccustomed to pain. I couldn’t understand why anyone would put themselves through so much torture. It didn’t feel good. The first time was a nightmare.


I quickly became a top and I’m sure if women had the option, a lot of them would probably do the same. I was young, eighteen years old and only slept with two men for the next four years. It wasn’t until I graduated college and start sleeping around that I became insecure about my dick. I probably first noticed a difference when I started watching gay pornography. I thought it was a camera trick how they made the men's dick looked so big. And then I was black and gay, so I started feeling the pressure of the Mandingo myth. I wasn’t porno star big, just average and I started feeling insecure. I felt like I couldn’t compete. I would hear my friends talk about the guys they slept with and if the guy was small, they would say mean things like they could’ve had a V8. And then that song came out, “Don’t want no short dick man.” It only added to my insecurity. I didn’t want to be a joke. I was average but for a black gay man, that meant small. If my dick didn’t hang to the floor, I was insignificant. I re-considered being a bottom. I also didn’t like that I was afraid of it. I was told by a friend that it took at least five times to get use to it. I learned to be a bottom, that is acquired the experience of or ability to push passed the initial pain of insertion and ride the friction, because I didn’t have a big dick. I guess before, my dick’s erection was a sign of my aggression, masculinity, like so many men I attached my ego and sense of power to it. Yes, it was just flesh, but sexual flesh, the keyword sex --how we all began. My dick couldn’t run a fortune five hundred company, cure cancer or rescue drowning kittens but yet its size matter. How chauvinistic.

I never understood the term masculine bottom. A person could look the part, but to allow another man to enter their masculinity, they would have to be in touch with their effeminate side. There’s nothing worse than a bottom that can’t relax, learn to take the dick. A bottom can’t truly enjoy the dick unless they allow themselves to give over, become completely submissive, and learn to ride the friction. With men, especially gay men, sex is so much about control and power. We have titles like “top and bottom” so that somebody can be in control. Gay men not only control what is done in the bedroom but how it looks outside the bedroom. Men are visual, so masculinity needs to be visual. We are attracted to men. It’s about control, and the hardest thing about being a bottom, is the feeling of giving up power. After all in prison, how does a bottom rape a man? If a straight man rapes a man, he is doing the fucking, which means he gets to keep his masculinity. The act of being penetrating in any heterosexual would be considered ultra-effeminate.

It took me a long time to admit that I was a bottom. When I was approach at clubs by obvious bottoms, I wouldn’t admit it. I kept it to myself like it was a dirty secret because I didn’t look the part, wore my jeans baggy, wife beater and the timberlands. I spoke with bass in my voice, and willing to fight at a drop of a cocktail. I grew up in a house full of boys, my masculinity was beaten into me, shamed into me, and so I learn to play a role. If that’s makes me a masculine bottom, so be it.

It took me a long time to admit that I was a bottom because I felt it contradicting my masculinity, now I know the fact I’m gay, contradicts socialized masculinity. On so many levels, I’m still coming out. On so many levels, I’m still afraid of being gay. I guess that’s why the effeminate boys are so flamboyant because they can’t be nothing but different. They are the masculine ones. They are the real men, which is part of one of the most important lesson I learned growing up how to be a “real” man, that is to never let another man take away my power to be who or what I wanted to be. Men start wars because they feel like another man is trying to take away their power. It’s about respect.

In conclusion and what I know for sure. Being a gay top doesn’t make a man more masculine than being a bottom. The fact that we are gay to the heterosexual machine makes us different. As gay men, we are attracted to the sexualized masculinity. It’s biological. I don’t see myself as masculine or effeminate, heterosexual constraints, I see myself as a human-being trying to figure himself out in this cruel world.