Girls making out with each other “is obviously a social phenomenon now,” says Mary (not her real name), a “mostly straight” 25-year-old who has on separate occasions invited a female friend and a gay-male acquaintance to mess around with her and her boyfriend of nearly five years. Mary’s boyfriend, Jonathan, “has less experience with dudes than I have with girls.” Even so, Mary says, “my whole hardcore sexual experience with girls is limited — like, really limited.” She acknowledges that Jonathan is among the minority of men willing to admit to messing around with another guy. “Girls are way more comfortable with it than guys,” she says.
The sexual orientation of straight-leaning males doesn’t seem to be quite as openly mutable as it is among younger women (no matter how many dudes saw Brokeback Mountain). Certainly a lot of people have witnessed super-drunk “straight” dudes sloppily kissing in the corner at parties, but those same guys don’t usually run around calling themselves “mostly straight”: they talk as though they’re loyal to one team or the other. Poke around Boston’s Craig’s List, and you’ll find plenty of men who are “st8” but “curious,” looking to meet other men discreetly. All of which increases the quiet mystery surrounding the “bro job,” a term defined in the Urban Dictionary as “oral sex between two allegedly heterosexual male friends, particular [sic] when said friends are wasted.” (Usage example conveniently provided by someone from Cambridge, using the pseudonym Freddie Cougar: “So are you, like, gay now that Ernie sucked your wang?” “No! It was totally just a bro job. I loves the ladies.”) Tales of the bro job have been whispered around these parts for months, although “straight” men willing to own up to giving or getting one have been elusive.
“Men have gotta be decisive,” theorizes one openly gay Harvard sophomore about why straight-leaning guys don’t tend to identify in more flexible terms. “I personally haven’t come in contact with it, but I’ve seen it on the Internet,” he says about straight-identifying males who’ve dabbled in same-sex oral. “But a friend of mine overheard these two guys getting close at a party, and one of them said, ‘When I’m sober, I’m straight; when I’m drunk, I’m gay.’ ” Perhaps once the Girls Gone Wild franchise discovers the trend (some might say the multi-million-dollar amateur-porn empire had a hand in spreading the popularity of the straight-girl kiss), more guys will start fessing up.
Another apparently touchy subject is chastity. In terms of keeping quiet about sexual experience (or lack thereof), virginity is the new promiscuity. Kim Airs teaches sex ed–type seminars at a handful of local colleges and estimates that she’s been quietly approached about virginity eight times in the past few months. “There’ve been times that women give me the can-you-come-over-here thing, and I’ll go off in a corner and I’ll talk to them,” says Airs, who has led tutorials at Harvard, BU, Suffolk, and Wheelock within the past six months. “What I’ve been asked — and this is something that fascinates me — I’ve had quite a few young women say, ‘I’m still a virgin and my boyfriend and I want to have sex. What do you suggest to make it less painful?’ ”
