Good Vibrations Magazine

The holidays are a hell of a time to go to the hospital (although in San Francisco we do have a special attraction: the award-winning SF Gay Men’s Chorus singing carols), but last week I checked in my partner Robert. A routine exam had gone wrong, showing a stricture at a previous surgical site, and his doc wanted to prep him for surgery right away. Surgeons: always in the mood for surgery! Robert put him off for a few days to see whether non-surgical resolution was possible, then conceded he’d rather have the problem fixed. But in the meantime, while the hospital staff (and I) watchfully waited to see if he’d get better on his own, Robert was in fairly good health and very good spirits, and busily entertained visitors and got to know the staff. His philosophy is “be nice to the staff and charm everyone you can while you’re conscious, and they’ll take even better care of you when you’re knocked out after surgery.”

The last time Robert was laid up like this, he and his guests vastly entertained the staff. The interns came by in a pack to ask whether the woman who’d visited the day before had recently been in Playboy (she had); they wondered how Robert met someone like that (and by extension, I suppose, how they could). They acted like he was a nut when he tried to explain that when you see everyone as beautiful, beauty gravitates to you. (Good luck, guys, finding your Playmates some other way.)

This time Robert’s doctor is perfectly comfortable discussing sex with him, which the last doctor certainly was not. Though, as my co-star in Bend Over Boyfriend, Robert was last seen cavorting on the end of my strap-on, he hasn’t been able to do that for the past two years because his health issues (while not caused by his anal predilections) affected his ability to play anally. His former surgeon intoned upon discharge that he was never to put anything in his ass again. The new doctor, on hearing that, had a look that said, “Ah, another intensely homophobic and ass-phobic colleague.” He’s heard it all before, and assured Robert that this surgery would allow him to go back to the kind of play he loves, something worth a week or two in a hospital bed, for sure.

We’re just grateful to have finally found what we should have been able to take for granted in the first place — a doctor who won’t get judgmental (and perhaps give substandard care) just because Robert’s erotic life differs from the norm. Medical students often don’t get more than 12 hours of sex education, much of that about sperm and egg. It’s too common to find health professionals who don’t know about sexual variation and aren’t in any hurry to learn. (Working with Robert is worth a Ph.D., but his former doc wasn’t about to avail himself of the opportunity to learn something new.)

This is not the only sexual twist in an otherwise not-very-sexy situation. (Actually, I shouldn’t talk — one of the proctoscope experiences was the best time Robert’s had since we made Bend Over Boyfriend, though he was careful not to let the doctor know he was enjoying himself.) One of his nurses is especially chatty and friendly, and one quiet evening a few days ago she visited us in his room and asked what we did for a living. After we told her we were sexologists, she asked what most people do: “What’s that, exactly?” We told her it involved the academic study of sexuality — sex education with a doctorate, essentially. She asked more, and we wound up talking about sex ed in Asia (she’s Filipina, while we’ve lectured in Beijing, so we swapped stories about her mother’s dismay at sex education in the school and the ways Chinese reticence about sexual topics is similar to and different from that of her family).

“I know what you are! You’re sex missionaries!” she finally declared.

Well, I guess we are, though goodness knows a person from the Philippines might know a little bit more about missionaries — that is, the other kind — than I do. Certainly both Robert and I possess missionary zeal about our work and the reasons we think it’s important: It doesn’t take too much scrutiny, once you begin to look at the culture with an eye to how much sex information people need, to see possible new missions all the time. We are in the process of founding a nonprofit organization, The Center for Sex and Culture (more about that in a future column). It’s certainly a product of our dedication to the mission of sexual enlightenment.

Meanwhile, back at the nurse’s station, our new friend proceeded to look up the Good Vibrations web site. She was new to San Francisco and had never heard of us. Half an hour later another staffer popped in. “They’re all discussing their G-spots,” she said. “Do they all have them? Do their husbands know where they are?”

Another successful mission accomplished!