Gone are the handkerchief codes of the seventies, where a hankie in the left pocket indicated a guy was a top, and the right indicated a bottom. The issue is made more complex by that fact that looks are no indication of proclivity. “The best tops are also bottoms because they know what it feels like.” “It’s very American to have to decide, like ‘McDonald’s or Burger King?’ Why should you limit yourself that way?” Versatility benefits everyone, he says. “He said, ‘Are you top or bottom?’ I said, ‘Both,’ and he said, ‘Yay!’ I would never date someone who said he was one or the other.”īill, a 36-year-old journalist, spent time in Amsterdam, where he found that most gay men were versatile, then moved to New York, where everyone was obsessed with top/bottom. Stan fell for his boyfriend when the subject of position came up on their first date.
Some gay men are reluctant to define themselves as top or bottom. We’ll try switching, and it’s not satisfying, then fast-forward a month and we’re talking about the other guys we’re dating.” “It’s made it hard to get in a relationship because it seems like every time someone seems right for me on other levels, he turns out to be a top. The bottom gets the good end of the deal.”ĭennis has been thinking a lot about position lately because he keeps getting bait-and-switched: He meets a guy he’s certain is a bottom only to take him home and find that he’s a top. We feel like we’re in the service industry. “My best friend and I are both active tops,” says Dennis, 26, a stylist, “and we’re always talking about how unsophisticated and tacky and eighties we feel, like we’re missing out on all this pleasure. With so many proud bottoms in this town, it’s enough to make even the most committed tops question themselves. I said to him, ‘That’s one per decade!’ ” I know a guy like that who’s only topped four guys in his life. “A power bottom,” says Stan, 38, a literary agent, “is somebody who can take it pretty easily and likes it a lot. Some bottoms call themselves “power bottoms,” which means they take pride in bottoming and are extraordinarily picky about the anatomical endowments of their partners. Contrary to what many straight people assume, bottoms are not necessarily submissive or masochistic any man who’s done some exploring knows the pleasures of the prostate. And the responsibility is on the top because he has to have an erection in order for sex to happen.” Other men say it’s only natural to want to be a bottom when it’s the bottom who has the most fun. “At night, I don’t want to have all the responsibility on me. Some surmise that the Big Apple’s bottom surplus is a reaction to the daily grind of making it in the city. There’s not as much riding on the erection factor, and I can just enjoy the sex.” “That way, there’s not as much potential for it to fall through if I’m not totally into it. “One of the reasons I don’t top as much is because I don’t have to do as much work-not that I’m a lazy bottom who just lays there.” When he finds himself being asked to top by a guy he likes, he takes Viagra. Jason will top on occasion, when he loses the game known as “Race to the Bottom,” but he doesn’t enjoy it as much. I’m a bottom, and my profile says versatile.”
It means he will top but doesn’t like to. “When you’re on and the profile says ‘versatile,’ you know that guy’s a bottom. Though many men despise being labeled, offering up their versatility as a selling point, like a six-figure income or well-defined lats, others say a versatile’s just a bottom in denial. “I’ll be online,” says Jason, 33, a financial consultant, “chatting with some guy, we’ll be getting along really well, and then I’ll say I’m a bottom and he’ll say, ‘Me too. The wrong position in the right guy can be an automatic deal breaker, making an already complex dating world even more difficult to navigate.
(For those not in the know, the bottom is, sexually speaking, the one on the receiving, or “catching,” end of things.) In a city where it’s hard enough to figure out how to get sex, gay men must also figure out how to have it.
The surge in Internet dating has enabled straight singles to delineate their romantic requirements in no uncertain terms-religion, income, smoking policy-but in gay men’s personals, there’s another category in the mix: top or bottom.