There’s a feeling that arises when you see an extremely attractive guy - one who’s more than just an average double-taker; I’m talking about a specimen of a man, someone you figure is probably inaccessible to the majority of those who ogle at him.
Like most forms of want, that feeling isn’t neither entirely agonizing nor entirely pleasurable. But there is a frustration there, which comes in the form of a duality; when he so captures your attention, is it that you’d rather have him, or be him?
Lust and envy are a pair of haunting Siamese twins. It’s a conflict left exclusively to those in the realm of same-sex attractions, since an average heterosexual man wouldn’t sight a gorgeous woman thinking if only I had a rack* like that. He might look at another man and envy his calves or biceps, then see a woman and want to touch her, but he would never direct both thoughts toward the same person. Gay or bisexual men can experience the impulse to size up a rival, simultaneous with sexual desire for him.
It comes down to the fact that though there may be some nuances to our personalities or sexual desires, we’re still basically men and see ourselves as such. There’s still that competitive instinct to measure up to those of the same sex, and to mimic their positive attributes or hope we come out on top, which I imagine women too feel towards other women. The mammal brain that lurks inside us - superseding rational thought and acculturation - drives us not only toward sex but to assert ourselves in the pecking order, to better ourselves and to impress others inspiring their envy or aspirations.
It’s one of the reasons we still work out or take care of ourselves when we’re already seeing someone. It’s why we appreciate compliments and attention even from those we don’t have sexual interest in. And it adds an extra dimension to potential sexual encounters, igniting as much disdain and disinterest toward those we consider “out of our league” as we have sexual disinterest for those we are not attracted to - because it sucks to be reminded of our limitations.
I remember being tragically skinny at age 18 and 19, a time when I’d avoid dating muscular guys because I didn’t like the idea of how I looked alongside them. I didn’t feel unattractive - I was perfectly content in my world where skinny was both the norm and the ideal. I preferred other skinny guys. But then when I gained some weight in the gym, my paradigm shifted - I began comparing myself to athletic men, trying to gage their biceps or shoulders from a distance, wondering how long it would take me to get to that size myself. The type of guy who turned me on evolved too, and thin guys lost some of their appeal. Yet I’m still not attracted to men who are significantly more bulky than me, at sizes I’m not interested in reaching.
My evolution in taste of the past 3 years seems to mimic an evolution in gay culture of the past 30, where the thinner, rougher, more naturally-built ideal male in the 1970s blew up into a polished, hyper-muscular gym-bunny Adonis with a perfect balance between wax and stubble, who tells us we are nothing without a 6-pack. Naturally, a lot of us started working out to keep up with him. We’re drawn to the guy who seems just a tiny bit bigger, stronger, or more forceful than we are - the one we’re striving to become.
Or is it, rather, that we’re most attracted to him first and only then strive to become him?
It’s a chicken-or-egg paradox that brings us back to the prompt: is the uneasy infatuation with physical perfection in men - something that clearly pervades gay culture - first and foremost a quality we want to have, or be? Since there is no male vs. female binary in homosexual relationships it’s likely we’ll seek someone more like us than not, more similar than complimentary, increasing the presence of comparisons and competition in the encounter.
While this article has some interesting ideas, I really disagree.
There are lots of “tops” - myself included - who are attracted to guys who are smaller, smoother and who exhibit qualities that more youthful and *not* intensly masculine. I like muscles on me, not so much on the guy I’m with.
I think opposites attracted even in Gayville.
Ok That’s totally Cody Cummings in the first pic huh??
Is it bad I knew?
Michaelangelo wrote ‘ He who gazes on beauty in high relief will surely find great distress there’. Thus proving that longing and desire can be a destructive force and that Micky baby was a big arty poof!
You mean rack, not wrack.
I believe you mean “rack”, not “wrack”
But otherwise, I totally agree with a lot of what you’re saying. Nice article.
you look good
Nice article. I’ve thought about this before. I’m a heterosexual female, and not at all tomboyish. But I have long wished I could BE Mick Jagger rather than fuck him.
I agree with the first comment as well as your basic thesis. I just think that there is a drive for emulation that walks hand-in-hand with sexual desire, but for many people, and at different times, they are quite separate. I for one have no desire to look like the people I’m attracted to. I don’t have anywhere near a gym body, and I want very much to look better, but the men I find myself attracted to are of such a variety that I can’t imagine seeing any of them as a template for my own progress. I know what I want to look like and that is all.
I also disagree with the idea that hetero men don’t feel it to. I think the sexual component is merely sublimated as a desire to emulate because it’s too distressing to deal with it directly. Anyone who’s watched a pair of straight friends where one is clearly the alpha will know what I mean.
Matt P.,
Thank you for writing what you have. (Minor typo in 2nd ‘graph’s 1st line: “isn’t” should be “is.”) The image of “lust and envy” as “a pair of haunting Siamese twins,” is fantastic. Excellent.
The Siamese Twins can be reduced to a key fob to stuff into your pocket instead of a giant daemonic diptych hung around your neck. They can haunt you, but haunting things can be exorcised by the light of reason. The haunting will come back from time to time, but probably not as strong. Yes, to some extent, those Siamese Twins do represent the reality of life as an urban, out, gay man in our times. But, the Twins are only a part of that reality, sometimes a surprisingly small part, unless you chose to make yourself their passive slave.
I could take your metaphor of a “haunting” in a different direction: to be haunted is to be largely bound, by fear, to something that is–by definition–spectral, i.e., not real, not solid. Those Siamese twins dominated my life since puberty, even before I realized I was gay, during the years when I mis-read the Lust twin as all Envy. (”I don’t WANT him, I just want to be LIKE him,” I told myself.) I finally came out in my mid-20s. At about the age of 33 I was, as I am now a handful of years later, thin, 5′9″, above-average in fitness, but merely average in overall appearance. I was and am losing my hair, have a round face that’s not the least bit classically handsome, and am prematurely gray. Life was The Party I’m Not Invited To when I was 33: watching the hot, hunky guys, usually here in Chelsea in NYC, have all the fun–in general and with each other.
Then Andrew happened.
Why I dared to reply to his Gay.com profile, I’ve no idea: 6′3″, 200 lbs., half Native American, half WASP, an accomplished amateur rugby player, lean–ripped, handsome with chiseled features, dark eyes, a full head of hair, an amazing ass, and large masculine hands that could mesmerize me. He was an example of someone I’d want and would want to be, at least physically. I was surprised when he seemed interested in meeting. We took a walk in the park on an August Sunday afternoon. I wasn’t sure it was a date. I assumed it wasn’t. When we sat on the grass and he took his shirt off, I was crushed by jealousy: I interpreted his action as contest, challenge, even one-upmanship. I don’t have a body that I was willing to take my shirt off, too, not in the park. We parted after chatting a few minutes more. The possibility that Andrew showing me his muscled torso was compliment, call, and a beckoning never crossed my mind. He was way out of my league. Period. (Er—full stop.) Months later, I heard of a UK rugby match being shown on Setanta (sp?) in an upscale bar downtown. (Recall that in the US both the sport and a bar with a Setanta subscription are rarities!) I shot an e-mail to Andrew saying I was going. He said he might join me.
When he came through the door of the bar, he strode up to me, and instead of shaking my extended hand, kissed me full on the lips. Mind you, this was not a gay bar. We ordered some food and watched the match, during which he placed his hand on my knee under the table. I was undone. The night after the match marked the first of several during a fling that I won’t soon forget, and the pleasant surprises only increased. (The member proved to match the fame, which I thought a bit unfair at first–”And he’s HUNG, too?! Jeez!”) I just couldn’t imagine what he possibly saw in me as attractive.
After Andrew, I had to deal with the REALITY that if I had looked “better” than I do, if I had in fact looked more like Andrew, I probably would not have had the wonderful sex and intimacy (the “after bit” was usually just as grand–being held by him) with Andrew that I did. It was upsetting, because just as none of us like having our faults pointed out to us, we also don’t like being reminded of missed opportunities and misperceptions….including the misperception that a fault we think we possess is possibly not real or is less important than we thought or is relative. If Andrew thought I was good-looking, had others that I thought were as hot as he also thought I was good-looking? I realized that, yes, probably so. And I had probably assumed that they were “out of my league.”
Another way to put it: the Siamese twins needn’t to have been along for the ride for so many years! They were partially something I emboldened by not challenging a mental framework that involved “leagues” that everybody was placed in (by me, but also by many others) according primarily to physical appearance.
[An aside: vis-à-vis Atom511’s comments….
A gay therapist I saw as a client the same year when I met Andrew told me that by his non-scientific estimate, slightly less than half of the muscular &/or athletic “Chelsea guys” who make up the majority of his clients prefer guys smaller than them. Some seemed to not care either way. Probably only half, at most, seemed to want another “big, ‘hot,’ guy.”
And…. As Atom511 pointed out ways in which his own tastes as a top may somewhat challenge the paradigm you implied of “leagues” and all of us sharing the same standards of desire and envy, I can provide a related variation. In my case, Andrew and I were the same age, I looked my age (not boyish or younger), I was (and am) not smooth, and in terms of the sex act itself, Andrew was entirely the bottom–100% the anal-receptive partner–even though I think I might have preferred it the other way, and even though he was admittedly more the “character-top” than I was: he was more ruggedly masculine, bigger in every way physically, arguably the more forceful personality, etc.
Beware the simple paradigm when it comes to social structures and communities, including LGBT ones. Such paradigms might cause you pain that can be avoided if you simply shift perspective.
I agree with the comment on men i like to be with…i am a muscle lean top, and i have been with men that are much more muscular than i as well as bigger in size…race to varies for me, from the white boi california surfer dude to the dark sexy urban man…very hot…but i also like the twink lean bottom boi that is much smaller than me …remember that even though we are gay we have also all sorts of types we are attracted to…just like are str8 breathen…we need to fight the stereotypes, even when we are the ones that are imposing them on our selves…
I think it’s a matter of taste. The features I tend to find attractive are nothing like mine, and I wouldn’t want to look like what I’m attracted to either. Still, it’s a strange dichotomy you’ve got there.
I totally understand the premise of this article. In fact, I remember clearly that the first thoughts I had about other men were more about comparison than about obvious lust. When I was in my early teens, I understood my fascination with attractive males to be a matter of deciding what I thought looked good, and maybe what I would have liked to look like. Now, at 27, and a naturally smooth muscular 5′7″, I’ve been partnered for seven years with a 6′6″ guy who has a hairy and “average” (but very hot) build. I can understand the previous posts by “tops” who prefer smaller, more youthful guys, but in my relationship, that doesn’t quite apply. I think it’s so insanely hot to be fucking a guy who is so much bigger and hairier than me. I know he thinks it’s just as hot to be able to be able to pin me down with his larger frame and fuck me hard. I’ve been with guys who were more comparable to my build, and to be honest, that bit of self-comparison from my youth came back. maybe I just like being able to let that go, knowing that me and my guy are so different that it’s easier to just enjoy the differences.
Wow, what a terrific article. I’ve been thinking this for many years, nice to see someone else has too. While there are lots of guys I’m attracted to that I don’t care to be, the ones I am most attracted to, those special few that truly make me swoon, are also the ones I wish I could be.
It is a funny feeling. I think it’s why when I’m at my most lustful, those very rare times I am with someone who really does it for me, I want to somehow get inside of him, to know what it’s like to actually be him. It’s a weird feeling and most sexual acts don’t give me the feeling I’m seeking. It can get kind of frustrating, this desire that somehow can never be met.
When I’m feeling this, the most I can do is to kiss deeper, look more longingly into his eyes, try to hold him tighter to me. I’m trying desperately to merge into him, but it doesn’t work. I get filled up with emotion, love, lust, frustration, it’s all there. Then I think if I can touch his inner being somehow, maybe then I’ll get the satisfaction I’m seeking? I stick my finger way up inside him, perhaps now I’m getting in? I watch him ejaculate, maybe I can see his inner being when he loses the mask he usually carries on his face? When he’s coming, he forgets to put on that mask.
No, nothing I do is working. I try to hold on tighter, I try to look at every part of him. Maybe, no, ah, crap. But it’s the best I can do.
Luckily this is very rare. I see many guys I feel this way towards, but few feel the same to me. I probably couldn’t stand it much anyway. But when it happens, I could no more not try than not eat.
Wow. There it is. That is exactly how I have felt at times.
I too went through the phase where I thought I was just appreciative of the good looking, athletic, popular male classmates, and hadn’t accepted that I wanted something from them.
As for the urge to merge, I have even felt it just looking at people, in life or on the web, who were so “it” for me that it hurt somehow to look at them, but I didn’t dare look away. It’s those strong feelings of lust and envy, as you wrote, wrestling with each other (a pleasant image ;-).
And even in my fantasies, I still can’t get close enough.
Heinlein’s concept of “grok” seems to be along the same lines (Stranger In A Strange Land).
This also reminds me of another sci-fi book, The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee. The main character is kind of a fag hag, and gays are called “Mirror-Biased”. Kind of makes sense, in a way.
I remember in my early teens (in the 1950’s) AGONIZING over whether my “fascination” with the ancient Greek statues of naked men in my family’s enclopedia was a matter of LUST or (merely) ENVY; they were both sinful, mind you, but envy was less so. After reading this great article, I am happy to report that the distinction is unimportant! Not that such a conclusion eliminates the spiritual challenge of dealing with these two respective emotions, for not only in the Judeo-Christian tradition but in Buddhism as well (for rather different reasons) giving into desire is a diminishment of freedom from suffering. But at least worrying about the right ‘label’ is a waste of time and energy, as I now see it.