Kissing a Married Man in a Gay Bar

Sexy Consent, Rape Culture, and Polyamory

Affirmative consent. Yes means yes-

These are controversial ideas designed to take a bite out of toxic masculinity and rape culture. Serious thinkers suggest we need to start learning not to assume consent in sexual settings by mere lack of resistance. They suggest we must actively ask for consent and receive a clear response.

Many people have protested, suggested that asking permission for a kiss would be a mood killer, a bucket of ice water thrown on quickening romantic kindling.

I admit that I reacted skeptically to affirmative consent when I first learned about it. I don’t like change, and I don’t like feeling restricted, especially about something as fundamentally intimate and private as sexuality.

Then I remembered something. I thought about the time a powerful man asked me for a kiss, and how incredibly erotic his question felt to me. I realized that I had long found affirmative consent arousing and positive.

I’ll never forget that first time somebody asked me for a kiss.

He was neither subtle nor organic. His straight up request rocked me almost as much as his unapologetic bisexuality and polyamory.

I was a teenager — many years would pass before I ever heard the word polyamorous, but the concept became as clear for me as cloudless sky.

It all went down at the the Question Mark Bar and Grill in lovely downtown Des Moines one sultry summer night.

Picture it. Just a small, smokey, decidedly tacky tavern. The sign outside glowed hot-pink, a neon question mark. My first gay bar. My first glimpse of a fabled freedom I barely dared dream of.

My gay Shangri La —

I’d done a good bit of kissing there, anyway, that summer after I graduated high school, and more than a bit of groping and necking in dark corners.

Mostly I kissed boys my age. I ran around a little that summer with three or four other guys from the bar who were not yet 20.

OK, so we did more than just run around. That summer, my sexual education began in earnest.

But one night I found myself in the bar without my buddies. Somehow, I ended up at the table of a very snazzily dressed older man and his elegant, slinky, black-clad young wife.

I say older —

He probably wasn’t even 40 yet. To my callow eyes, however, in his tailored business suit, Rolex, and perfectly coiffed and blow-dried hair, he was impossibly older, more sophisticated, and richer than I could conceive of.

His bronze skin and trim figure radiated sexual heat. His eyes pierced me, his laughter lifted my spirits, and his smooth, easy conversation stroked me, included me, and told me I was valuable and desirable.

He danced with his wife, her pearls flying, cocktail dress aflounce as he spun her around. He bought me another sweet vodka cocktail, spun me around in my turn over that tacky, faded floor, then pulled me into the men’s room.

He pressed me against the wall, his hands roaming all over my body, his rich cologne tickling my nose as his close-shaven stubble sandpapered my cheeks.

“May I kiss you?”

His words sent electric pinpricks dancing across my body. I think I squeaked my response out. “But you’re married!”

“I didn’t ask to fuck you, kid,” he rasped, voice low with desire. “Just kiss. Can I?”

My lips responded on their own by pressing into his. His tongue pried my teeth apart in seconds. I didn’t complain.

He backed us up against the door, leaning his weight into it so nobody else could get in.

My body melted into his, my being temporarily subsumed.

We eventually rejoined his wife at the table, me blushing and embarrassed. She beamed at both of us.

Looking back, I suppose I should have expected an invitation to their hotel room, or home, or wherever, but that’s not what happened. He paid the tab after another thirty minutes, and they left.

Maybe I wasn’t a very good kisser.

I sure was confused, though.

I had no idea then how incredibly varied sexuality could be. I had no idea that a man could want sex with his attractive young wife and with a guy too. My sexual education was only beginning at that point.

I did learn how to ask for a kiss that night. I learned you can be sexy, seductive, and polite, all at the same time.

It’s a skill I’ve never forgotten.

I’ve also never forgotten another lesson. Don’t expect people to fill storybook roles. Don’t depend on tropes.

Don’t put people in boxes.

Never expect the ordinary.