Single & Fabulous? | ‘Can straight men be bottoms?’

The beauty of a bottomless dinner is that you’re drunk before dessert. The downside is that so are all the straight women. While I couldn’t live without my fag hags, other people’s, ironically, made me want to kill myself.

Conversation intruder Amy had toppled over to our table after the boozy meal. She was one of those girls that loved the gays so much, she basically was one; and Amy was a Power Top.

She’d interrupted a conversation on rimming and went on to confess – almost boast – about sexually dominating her boyfriend. “Last night, we got up to fifth bead!” she exclaimed, referencing their new toy.

Five beads?! Girl, you better not take your man for a colonoscopy, he’ll leave you for the doctor. (Although, as I looked down at her pointed manicure, I could see why he’d favour the fifth bead over a finger f**k). 

I smirked as the thought entered my head, and then felt pride – for not saying it out loud. I sensed we could joke about her man taking it up the chuffer, but not about him taking a replacement lover and a real dick.

That’s not to say that a man can’t enjoy anal penetration and still be straight: just recently, Men’s Health ran an article on the men who enjoy pegging; where their girlfriends wear a strap-on, and later realise the stamina needed to be a good top.

Furthermore, in 2018, Nivea found out that approximately 10% of men have shaved or groomed their backdoor. So it appears we’re entering an age when men are becoming more liberal with their buttholes, and women are more willing to explore them.

Well, some women.

“I’ll be the only one getting penetrated in my relationship, thanks” fired Lizzy, while Amy was in the toilet.

“I would rim a guy… but not pegging”, explained Emma. “That’s too much. I’d always be wondering if they were gay. He must ask her to use all them toys, surely…” she continued.

But you could tell Amy got off on it, and I could see why: it’s a power-trip to make the ‘man’ in the relationship feel vulnerable and submissive. It’s just hotter when you have to persuade him to, rather than him actively seeking it. She’s in real trouble when she asks him round to fix the pipes and finds him on the kitchen floor fucking himself with the plunger.

Louise continued: “Well, Brandon had an entire draw full of toys! Butt plugs, anal beads, couple dildos”. Well, Brandon sounds like more of an adventurous bottom than a lot of legitimate bottoms.

Amy then showed us a photo of her man, (sadly not with a string of anal beads hanging out his asshole) and he was surprisingly hot. He reminded me of the first straight guy I found myself in bed with; blue eyes, broad and dying to be ravaged.

Can you imagine the horrified face on 19 year-old me? Thought I’d found this big burly bloke that’d throw me round the room, and instead throws his tree trunk thighs over his shoulders.

My skinny-ass maneuvering this mountain of a man around like I was rearranging furniture. Manual labor is what it was.

The guy after that was one Halloween, when I slipped him, a ‘gay-virgin’, the digit. Turns out the ‘treat’ that night was chocolate fingers.

So it definitely was more common than some would think.

It makes sense though as to why straight men would want to explore their rear-ends and penetration. Being an Alpha male is tiring, so it must be freeing to swap top dog for bottom bitch.

Besides, God wouldn’t have put the G-spot up man’s bum if he didn’t want you to shove half an Anne Summers store up there.

Which begs the question, does a man have to be gay to be a bottom?

Defining a bottom, the Urban Dictionary, (it isn’t quite in the Oxford yet), writes: “A person who is more passive in a sexual situation”. While other definitions on the site are similar, they refer predominantly or solely to gay men.

While the top/bottom labels can be intricate, (men who consider themselves bottoms may still top occasionally, and vice versa), technically for a man to be considered a bottom, he’d have to be getting penetrated more often than he was doing the penetrating; and so a straight guy could be the bottom of his relationship, but perhaps the bigger question is: will we allow them to co-opt another part of gay culture? They took our bleached hair and skinny jeans, would we really give them our labels too?

Well, let’s revisit the topic when they learn how to douche. 

Anthony Gilét is a London-based writer, blogger and YouTuber – follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

To read more from the Single & Fabulous? series click here.