(Contains explicit language)

When I'm asked: "Top or bottom?" Folk look at me like I'm crazy when I say "neither."

Sometimes I get: "Oh, so you versatile?"

And at this point they're just about through when I say "no."

Anal penetration is the law, I know. Everybody knows it, and most folk are devoutly adherent. It's understood: Without penetration, what’s the point? It's the law of what gay-rights activist Bill Weintraub calls "the Butt-Fuck Dictatorship." The prevailing attitude that mandates butt-fucking as the definitive same-gender-loving sexual act, synonymous with true male SGL sexuality.
www.heroichomosex.org/crw/fro...tor.html

My encounters had become formulaic. We hook up. We vibe. We feelin’ each other. More often than not, he either drops to his knees -- or expects me to. I pull him to his feet, and he usually goes along with the program for about a minute. Then when he realizes I’m not gonna drop, most times the encounter’s over, his call or mine. Wham! Bam! No, thank you, Yo.

Or, we hook up, vibe, it's all good -- until he wants to be topped. Or expects me to bottom. Either way we usually end it when I say "no."

I started defying the law more and more, much to the chagrin of my sometimes pissed-off partners. I don't do pain. Have little tolerance for it. I decided very early that the receiving end of the penetration thing was no place for me. I find nothing sexually fulfilling about pain. "Hurts good" has got to be the original oxymoron.

As a top, the penetration thing stopped working for me because some of my hookups, frankly, had hygiene issues. Your basic mood killer/deal-breaker.

Admittedly, my own quirks got in the way.

I'm very rarely turned on by seeing a man from behind bent over (please don’t spread the cheeks). Don't get it twisted, I'm a fiend for ass -- love lookin' at it, touchin' it, feelin' it, kissin' it -- but that view don’t really do it for me.

Right up there with the bender: On his back with ass and feet in the air is a position of vulnerability that does nothing for me. A position of submission, humiliation that is anything but gratifying for me to see.

Two things happened with my emerging practice. On the downside, the number of potential hookups was drastically reduced, lessening the opportunity for a gratifying connection. On the upside, the number of potential hookups was drastically reduced, weeding out the "analists" (Bill gave us this term) and the single-minded dick hounds.

Finally, I just stopped enjoying it. Couldn’t enjoy it, in fact. Like I said, I don’t do pain. That includes a finger. More than one, and we're way too close to fisting for my taste.

Inflicting pain isn't gratifying, either. The sound of a man wincing from being wrenched does not turn me on. Even though lotsa folk convince themselves that it’s a good thing, I can’t be sold. Not anymore.

Not since I learned I’m not alone as a member of a brotherhood that neither practices nor promotes anal penetration. Ours is an often disparaged community because we opt against having our rectums contorted and ripped. You see, we know how to have a good time without it. We know how to have a pain-free, risk-free, non-life-threatening good time.

I was introduced to the frottage movement quite by accident. When I learned there were like-minded folk, wired the same as me -- not into even the universally accepted "low-level" pain sometimes so casually inflicted during anal -- it was like coming home. I came into my "frot awareness" in November 2003.

Frottage (fro-' tazh), I quickly learned, is simply the good old-fashioned "grind." But don't confuse it with uninvited contact in public like on a crowded, standing-room-only commuter train.

Some folk also refer to it as "frot" (sounds like "hot"; another Weintraubism). Still others (not me) might call it cock rub, sword fighting, penis fencing, bumping dicks.

It's a little more to it than that. A lotta Brothas seem to be into it when I say I like body contact. Marathon sessions. Face-to-face. Full-body contact. But folk who can't appreciate it seem to be the law-abiding minute-man type. Lookin' for that quick hit-and-run. They tend to dismiss frot as little more than extended foreplay. Well, it is foreplay, "play" being the operative word. And the play's the thing.

These days my thing is mutual gratification. No role-playing. No domination, no submission. It's about me and another masculine, hygienically correct Brotha (or Papi) who's not afraid of intimacy. I'm an intimacy junkie.

I don't do quickies. None of that feverish, frenzied impatience. We take our time making each other feel good and making the feeling last as long as possible. He's got the serious lip-lock skills: good aim; doesn't try to ram a tongue down my throat right out the box; doesn't make me feel I need to wash my face; knows how to control his saliva. Got plenty of endurance, too, 'cause an hour really ain't a whole lotta time. We wanna go wherever the feeling safely takes us. And we get there together.

I'm a frot Brotha largely because it finally sank in that I have a say. I can say "no." I dont' get fucked, and I don't wanna fuck. My time's become too precious to waste it doing things that make me uncomfortable or that I simply don't wanna do.

The frot community seems to be the perfect place to express masculine intimacy.

Bill Weintraub, who also founded the Man2ManAlliance and HeroicHomosex on-line communities, says frot "is not simply a matter of sexual taste. ... It’s a rejection of the overly and unhealthily feminized self-image of gay men."

"Anal sex dominates gay-male lives," he says. "It dominates pornography, which remains the principal way sex is modeled for gay men. Dominates gay literature, theater, legitimate cinema, art and the gay press. Dominates discussions of gay-male relationships, in which the question is invariably asked, 'Who’s the top?' Dominates cyberspace and the chat rooms and, of course, dominates our sex lives."

That domination can come at a heavy price. When it comes to transmitting HIV/AIDS, the riskiest, most life-threatening sexual practice is anal penetration.

The rectum isn’t a vagina. It has one purpose and one purpose only. It wasn't designed for any kind of invasion. The mucous membrane lining of the rectum isn't as durable as the lining of the vagina, so it can easily tear. It doesn't heal as quickly as the vagina, either. And any tear is vulnerable to infection.

Condoms do reduce risk, but condoms can break. And leak.

We won't even get into that barebacking business.

The only safe sex, of course, is abstinence.

And abstinence is the only thing safer than frot.

Right about here, I'd like to be able to wrap up with some happily-ever-after.

The movement was a saving grace, a liberating discovery. But the community, though consistently reaffirming, remains virtually virtual. The bulk of my interaction with the like-minded has remained largely confined to the Net.

It's my own damn fault. I'm a person who doesn't do clubs and bars. I've sworn off any establishment with a real or de-facto velvet rope. I stopped puttin' myself out there like that a long time ago.

That I don't date men doesn't help. If anything, we hang out. Semantics? OK. Fine. It works for me.

I sometimes have resorted to the "parties," not the best or worst option.

Too many guys in those situations are too quick to drop to the knees. Or too willing to offer up ass. And it's not the most intimate setting if you prefer to deal one-on-one, face-to-face; if you like your warmup to begin above the neck.

But a sexual Brotha's got needs. And when I fulfill mine, I like to make human contact.

You know what's really sad? If I had no problem with stickin' it to another dude, none of this would be an issue. If I didn't say "no" so much, chances are better than good that I literally might never hafta want for a piece of ass.

But penetration just ain't my thing. That's my choice.

When I do make that right connection, the sex is more than worth the wait.

And when it's really right, the lovemaking is -- DAYUM!
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LINKS:

Fighting the Conformity That Kills -- by Chuck Tarver:
www.udel.edu/nero/papers/c...mity_kills.pdf


Black And Interracial Frottage
groups.yahoo.com/group/bla...alfrottage

Black Dicks Rub Together
groups.yahoo.com/group/bla...btogether/

Black Men No Penetration
groups.yahoo.com/group/bla...netration/

BlackMOB: Male Outercourse Brotherhood
groups.yahoo.com/group/BlackMOB

Cockrub Warriors
www.man2manalliance.org/crw/sg.html

DL_frotting
groups.yahoo.com/group/DL_frotting/

frotbroblog
frotbroblog.blogspot.com/

Frot symbols
www.flickr.com/photos/774...4052294139/

Frottage Men's Club
www.usnation.net/frottage.html

g0yz
groups.yahoo.com/group/goyz/

Heroic Homosex
www.HeroicHomosex.com/

The Man2ManAlliance
www.Man2ManAlliance.org/

Tribe.net
frotdelight.tribe.net/