We went out to lunch today to a popular queer-owned restaurant in Southeast Portland. I got up to use the restroom after we’d ordered and there was a guy standing outside waiting. I went back to my table for a few minutes and then, when I saw a woman walking away from the restrooms, I headed back in that direction. The same guy was still standing outside, but I could see that the women’s restroom door was slightly ajar.

“Is anyone in there?,” I asked.

He gave me a slightly puzzled look. “No…”

“Are you going to use it?”

“No,” he replied. “Go for it.”

So there he stayed as I went in and used a perfectly good bathroom. And guess what? Even though it said “Women” on the door, and even though I am a guy, it functioned for me perfectly!

I haven’t paid any attention to the silly signs on gender-discriminatory bathroom doors for years. If it’s a bathroom with multiple stalls, then of course I’m not going to go into a women’s bathroom and freak everyone out. America is still a little too uptight and puritanical for that to work at this point. But if it’s a single-occupant restroom, there’s no reason whatsoever for three people to be standing in line with one of two restrooms sitting empty. And that’s just the most practical reason. Just as important for me is the fact that America is becoming increasingly enlightened to the fact that gender is a spectrum, and not a binary condition. It’s nothing short of hostile and discriminatory to force a transgender person to endure the stress and potential embarrassment – or worse – of being confronted by some unevolved jerk for using the “wrong” bathroom.

If you own a bar, restaurant or other public establishment with single occupant restrooms, please please please make them gender non-specific. If you frequent such an establishment, please approach the staff or ownership about this. As obvious as it may seem to you and me, it’s obviously just not something that enough people are thinking about, yet.

The Egyptian Club’s Wet T-Shirt Contest features dancing, karaoke and $100 cash or a Flip Ultra Camcorder for the winner. (The leftover prize will be given away in a drawing.) Compete, judge, ogle or bid to wet them down! (9 pm. 3701 SE Division St.)

[Sorry boys, ladies only!]

Or so I’ve heard it said. And, based on my own experience and empirical research, I’m inclined to agree. Hell, even the Portland Mercury – the pinnacle of scientific research and scholarly thought – backs me up on this.

 The 2007 Portland Mercury Sex Survey drew 2,300 responses. Women made up 52% of the group and men 46%. (Yes, I know that doesn’t add up to 100%. The Mercury says it’s because “some of you didn’t fill out every single question on the survey”).  Of the women who responded, 34% said they’re straight. 37% of the men said they are straight.

 Now we get to the juicy part: 9% of the 2,300 respondents said they’re gay or lesbian while 17% said they’re bisexual! That means there were 207 homosexual respondents and 391 bisexuals. I’m not saying that this can be extrapolated across the entire population of the City of Roses because we know that only the cool people read the Mercury. But even if we take into consideration the fact that the entire pool of 2,300 survey respondents are more open minded and less boring than the population at large, there are still almost twice as many bisexuals as there are homosexuals in this study group. That’s a lot of folks who have chosen to not go through life with one hand tied behind their backs! (as James Dean put it, referring to his own bisexuality).

 So where are all the bisexuals? Are we so ubiquitous that we don’t need any special venues, events and so forth? Or is it simply that we’re still being completely marginalized, ignored and/or villified by the two monosexual communities (homo/hetero)? Perhaps a combination of both? Or are we all just taking advantage of “hetero privilege” and living under the radar, getting our same-sex nookie on the sly without all the hassle of coming out and sharing the challenges and rewards of queer pride with the LGTQ’s?

 Check out the “entire site” of the Portland Bisexual Alliance. It’s a whopping… one page. And that one page was last updated on May 31, 2002! A Google search turns up a second page that isn’t linked to from the top page – and for good reason. It’s the calendar page and it was “updated 5-29-01!“

 I’m determined to get to the bottom of this (if only because I love bottoms so much!), so watch here for more!

But I aim to change that here and now. Scarlett is clearly the more prolific writer of the two of us and she’s already told you a bit about herself. As her avowed partner in sexy crime, I’d better tell you a little bit about myself, too. My name is Jack.

I was raised in a large, church-going family in a small agricultural town in central Oregon. The environment at home was not only not sex positive, it was completely devoid of sex as far as I can remember. We were strongly discouraged from wearing shorts and didn’t dare go shirtless. There was virtually no physical affection shown to one another outside the occasional bend-at-the-waist hug. Sex wasn’t talked about.

My introduction to sex was through porn. The parents of some friends down the street had books and magazines all over the place. I remember particularly vividly a book on their headboard about a woman and her dog. Because they owned a large dog. Which made me wonder.

My brother had porn, too. Mostly books of erotic fiction—impressively sophisticated for a teenage boy who was drunk or stoned as much as sober. I don’t think I ever saw anything except straight porn and I think I was pretty much all about the women. Good old fashioned T&A. So it’s kind of ironic that my first sexual experience was with a guy. I was staying over at a friend of the family’s place. I slept in the same room as their son who was three or four years older than me. The conversation turned to women and at one point he said, “Isn’t this making you horny?” I’m not sure I even knew what that meant, but I wasn’t about to let that be known. And I’m sure I was horny since that was my default. I don’t recall what was said next, but next thing I knew we were sixty-nining each other. I had to have been nervous, but next thing I knew I was coming in his mouth. Mind blowing! He asked me to get on my hands and knees and started playing with my ass. I must have seemed tense because he said, “If you don’t want to do this we can stop.” So we stopped and went to sleep. They moved away and nothing ever happened again. Part of me has always wished we hadn’t stopped.

My first time with a girl was not good. We were both drunk and had absolutely nothing in common. I was visiting friends out of town (isn’t that when this stuff always happens?) and she was a friend of one of their girlfriends. We ended up in the back seat of the car and then in bed. It was the most awkward thing ever and I remember going through the motions out of a sense of obligation as much as anything. I don’t know if it was because I was drunk or because she was so much bigger than me, but I don’t remember feeling much of anything. Not the best intro to straight sex. But it got better. And better and better.

Somewhere along the line I learned that my ass is as much a pleasure point as my cock and nipples. You know how horny teenage boys can be. Now imagine one that not only knows the joys of jacking off, but also the joys of sticking things up his ass. And I did just that. Fairly frequently. No long, cylindrical object was safe.

[End of Part I]

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