i've just come back from a dinner party. we had the most fantastic conversation on precisely this topic. walt, had i read your post before i left, i would have had a MAJOR, KICK-ASS new concept to share with my friends: fluid sexuality.
sexuality, the nature of desire, the formation AND the realization AND the actualization of a sexual identity have been THE central issues in my personal anthropological research for the last ten years or so. i've dated all 57 heinz varieties yet i know nothing. this evening we were five at the table: a married couple, parents of four children; a woman of forty who vowed chastity twenty years ago in order to consecrate herself to a mutually consented platonic partnership with a roman catholic priest; a gay man who had, between partnerships with males, a 5-year relationship with a woman; and i, a gay man with no significant romantic or sexual liaisons with women in my past. i wish you had been there. the diversity of backgrounds, the wealth of perspectives, and the candor of the narratives: what a memorable evening. i have no answers. some people seem to be ''sexually fluid'', some people seem to be confused or simply cowardly, and yet some people seem to undergo a process of actualization of a potential sexuality. from what i heard tonight, from what i've been hearing in the last decade, people are potentially ANYthing. in some cases events seem to trigger the actualization of some potential aspect or other. in other cases, we know from minute one who and what and where we are. a man may marry and have five children and then meet another man and move in with him. he'll put on leather gear and a dog collar. he may or may not take it off when his grandchildren come to visit. this hypothetical man, who was married for 10, 20, 30 years, had an erection every single time he wanted to have sex with his wife. his wife's skin is a woman's skin. she has a vagina. she has a woman's smell. this very same man loves to give head: he is turned on by the feel, the sight of another man's beard/legs/butt/cock. how can he be turned on by such diverse stimuli? are these stimuli mutually exclusive? can a man synchronously and genuinely be turned on by ''womanliness'' and ''manliness''? and i haven't even begun to discuss women yet! so many questions, so much pleasure in one's quest for answers. wally
