Naked Hugging
By John Thursday • Aug 15th, 2007 • Category: Be Our Guest, Erotic Philosophy by John ThursdayHave you ever seen two naked straight men try to hug? I have.
It happened a few weeks ago at a camp out. Summer is camp out season here in the Bay Area, a time when alternative communities pack their cars and head north to the woods. Though leaving the big city, contemplating the serenity of nature is not in the offing. Trucks are filled with massive amounts of sound equipment and people spend the drive up imagining whom they might hook-up with.
For camp outs are a chance for alternative communities to spend an entire weekend doing what they normally only get to do for a few hours, namely sex, drugs and dancing.
You hear a great many strange things at these camp outs. I heard one person extol the virtues of an orgasm on whippets. Someone walking by chimed in, “No, an orgasm on whippets while on 2CB. Your orgasm off-button comes unstuck.”
You see a great many things at these camp outs too; the stars, for one; sunrise; cracked-out ravers in a hot tub at sunrise eating bacon, massive amounts of bacon.
One thing I did not see was a gas station canopy. I ran the top of the rented 24’ truck right into it putting a hole in the corner cap. This, I was assured, was par for the course when ravers rent large trucks and small time in comparison to Rave Fred. Rave Fred apparently sheared the entire roof off of his rented truck. Go Rave Fred, Go.
But what I did see was two naked straight men try to hug. It happened in the pond at the Friends and Family camp out. A guy, lets call him Fernando, waved hello to a guy he hadn’t seen in a year, not since the last camp out. Let’s call the second guy Guy, pronounced like the French with a short g, Gee.
Fernando and Guy scoot towards each other in the water. They’re squatting down in the shallow part of the pond. The water is murky.
“I heard you had a baby,” Fernando says. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Guy says and nods his head in a contented and satisfied way. “Anything new with you?”
Fernando holds up his ring finger and smiles. “I got married.”
Guy bows his head to the water then looks back up grinning from ear to ear. It is a look that says, that’s right, way to go man; another guy sees how great it is. Guy gets his chest up out of the water and puts his arms out for a hug. Moved by the moment Fernando scooches towards him: his arms in position, his chest out in the air.
Then, suddenly, their pace slows. Guy seems to shift his body to the side. Fernando’s smile seems to freeze in place. Something is dawning on them. Something, as my friend Hugh might say, awkward. Here they are, liberal friends belonging to an alternative community, but they’re straight, they’re naked, and they’re about to hug.
They lean in, shoulders forward, waists held back. The tops of their arms touch. Hands give quick pats. And like that Guy and Fernando part. They squat back down in the water up to their necks. They smile and nod at one another yet again; then they both become fascinated by other things somewhere else.
Yes, it was awkward. Kind of like when you walk in on your mother complaining to her friend that her vibrator doesn’t work properly. In that situation, not that it ever happened to me, being uncomfortable doesn’t make you a prude. Rather, it is something for which you are wholly unprepared. There’s no manual for it, certainly no paradigm. Simply put, awkward: an unrehearsed situation in which someone is suddenly vulnerable.
The beauty of awkward moments is that there is great truth in them. People suddenly cease going through the motions and hitting their marks. Their facades fall. For a moment everyone is completely real, if ill at ease.
It’s one of the reasons I love to come upon people crying at Burning Man. The whole festival is full of people putting on characters, dressing in costumes, assuming personas. It’s all great fun, the American Carnival. Then you come upon somebody losing it in the middle of all that gaiety and dust. Perhaps they’re cross-legged on the ground or burying their head in a trusted chest. They’re usually still in costume but now the costume looks like what it is and through all those pretty layers, as though sitting in the middle of an open flower, you can see this real person. That’s when I take the picture.
Now don’t get on me for being intrusive. I use a zoom lens. But if I were to walk right up to someone I didn’t know who was crying on the Playa it would definitely be an awkward moment. Us not knowing each other would make the situation unrehearsed. And needless to say their crying would make them vulnerable. But there’s so much truth there. If I went over and comforted them we’d end up bonding. Great loves and great friendships are often made in the handling of awkward situations.
When people acknowledge the awkwardness with kindness the situation is no longer awkward and a whole new realm is open to possibility. Which brings me back to Fernando and Guy.
They let their awkward-naked-almost-hug pass and wandered off hoping to find more regular situations. But what if, after just touching the tops of their arms together, Fernando had said, “Well, that was interesting.” And Guy replied, “Yeah, I’ve never hugged a naked guy before. I’m glad you were my first.” Now Fernando and Guy can move on. And having survived this unmapped territory they have a bond. That’s another beautiful thing about the awkward moment. Alas, Fernando and Guy missed their opportunity.
I try and take advantage of all my awkward situations. Like the time I walked in on my mother complaining to her friend that my father didn’t satisfy her in bed. Actually, nothing good came of that.
But there was the time a friend told me she’d see me on Saturday night. I asked her what was happening then. She said it was the party my girlfriend was throwing. I hadn’t heard about it. My girlfriend had broken up with me to her friends before breaking the news to me. I can’t seem to remember what good came of that one either.
But there was the time I was in bed with a girl when she told me she believed blowjobs were immoral because they diverted seed from it’s original purpose. She then tried to put me inside her without a condom. A wrestling match ensued. I won. I came on her foot. It was awkward.
You know what, on further reflection I may be wrong about all this. Awkward moments may just suck. Perhaps Fernando and Guy were right; two naked straight guys hugging, best to forget the whole thing. It’s the American way.
John Thursday >> John Thursday was born and raised at Harbin Hot Springs, unaware there was such a thing as clothing until he was 15. He has since renounced all things Hippie. He earned a doctorate in Erotic Philosophy by defending Kant's lesser known The Critique of Pure Fellatio as a seminal work. he was hit on by Allen Ginsburg twice but not even once by Sami Beinstein, a non-hippie jewess. He currently beds a shiksa named Misty.
All posts by John Thursday
Someone showed this to me thinking I had written it. I heart bacon indulgence at camp outs. Were you at Camp and Sons?
Judah raises a good point here. Why is naked male contact so taboo? There is hardly a person alive, male or female, who cannot appreciate naked female forms, so why not some lovin’ for the boyz?
I’ve heard all the tired arguments that women’s’ bodies are more artful and aesthetically pleasing than men’s, but I don’t buy it. As a bi girl, I get turned on seeing a naked man, or men for that matter. Certainly straight girls must feel that too, no?
The sight of a stiff dick on a toned male frame never fails to get my juices flowing. Hell, the one time I was fortunate enough to date a bi guy, I never got hotter than when I was able to see him going down on a man. All this is not to say I don’t get a similar reaction from seeing a woman’s long hair falling on to the soft curves of her breasts and hips, or during the lesbian scenes in videos. They truly are lovely and sexy, but they don’t lessen my appreciation for the angular, strong lines of a muscled guy.
Taking this one step further, there is no shortage of girl/girl porn aimed at attracting viewers of both sexes. (And thank God, because I think it’s hot.) There is also no lack of boy/boy flicks, but they are almost universally aimed at men. (I find that to be a shame because if one naked guy is good, two is certainly better.) So while I’ll watch gay porn, I don’t love it because I’m not the intended viewer.
Since I seem to be in the minority as a woman who enjoys gay porn, and there is no gay porn aimed at women, I am left wondering why there is such a dearth of good bi porn. All the bi movies I’ve seen are bad. The actors and actresses are not so attractive; the production values are lame; the films just lack luster. Is there just not a market for it and, therefore, not enough money to entice some hot porn guys to enjoy giving some fellatio? Does no one else like to see a woman giving head to a guy who is riding another guy?
I feel like I’ve gotten off point, if I ever had a point at all. If there is a message, it’s this: I wish guys weren’t so skittish about getting naked together. I find it so sexy, and I often wonder if other women–straight or otherwise–do as well.
More naked men please.