Power and Fucking

I'm in a bit of a rut. I haven't fucked in a while and, in between bouts of frantic masturbation, this dry spell is making me think about shit. Deep shit like my role during sex and how I'm such a bottom these days. Every once in a while though I surprise the hell out of myself. Once not too long ago I was fucking this guy, just doggying him hard and it was so hot seeing my new black 7incher disappearing into his round dark-chocolate ass. Every now and then he'd mutter "Yea...get it boy," and gasp as I fucked him deeper in response. When I was on top, our eyes would lock from time to time. Right before he came, his mouth dropped open and his eyelids floated close. I felt really powerful in that moment and it was dizzying. I looked at the prone figure beneath me and this wave of possessiveness washed over me. I'm thinking this mutha is mine. At the back of my mind I'm wondering where is all this coming from? It was an interesting moment, especially because honestly I'm more turned on by a dude dominating the shit out of me. I like big dudes because compared to them I'm just this little guy and there's a power element there that I find erotic as hell.

This gets me thinking about concepts like "masculinity", "dominant", "submissive", "top", "bottom" and the role they play in my sexual practices. Masculinity as I've experienced and observed it has multiple meanings depending on the context. With guys I fuck, masculinity tends to look like muscles, hairiness, big and imposing stature, bulky, taking up a lot of space. Emotionally/behaviorally, for a lot of these dudes, masculinity also means aggressiveness, pushiness, take control, protector, etc. In other word, as I've observed in the gayboy NSA scene, the cornerstone of the masculine persona is the desire to exert power or to control. This is how society constantly tells us to define and express masculinity, but is there another way to look at this construct? Is there truly a masculine persona? If so, what should it look and feel like? How does this impact sexuality and desire? And for people like me who are sexually attracted to masculine expressions, what exactly are we drawn to?

It's really interesting when class, gender expression and sexual desire intersect. Certain personality types when encased in a masculine body turn me the fuck on: protector types, alpha male types, aggressive and charismatic types. Working class guys have also always done it for me. I'm not fully sure why, perhaps it's because we end up having very similar experiences around class. I'm definitely a working class queer. I hold down multiple jobs, yet barely make enough to get by. This type of life demands a certain level of mental, emotional and even physical strength. Is it a brand of strength that society associates solely with masculinity rather than femininity? If so, does this explain why working class men, much like black men, are often characterized as hyper-masculine? (An aside - a friend and I were talking about how, historically, working-class cultures have been more supportive of, and safer for, the expression of "butchness". Though we were talking more about working-class women and "stone butches", but I wonder how this applies to other genders.) 

The term top, in my experience, can describe how a dude likes to fuck. One top I hooked up with explained "I'm a top because I hate pain. No one is sticking anything up there." To me this is solely a mechanics thing. In other situations however, it refers to power and who wields it during sex. One night, around 2 or 3am, I met up with this guy I'd been messaging on a4a for a minute. And this dude could fuck. (Expect a post on this soon.)
"I just am!" He said vehemently after I asked him to explain what being a top meant, because he most definitely was one.
"I don't get fucked. I fuck."
He said this with such authority and power and, I won't lie, that was what turned me on so much about him: the way he just oozed power. In my life as a "professional queer activist" (i.e. my day job), I call guys like this on their oppressive shit all the time. However, at night I like them to fuck the shit out of me. Go figure.

Whatever the reasons, I like being fucked. I like dudes who are aggressive and can exert control and power in bed. I like being told what to do. When I first started fucking men I was ashamed to admit these desires. I thought if I bottomed with men then somehow they wouldn't see me as a dude as they were fucking me. Other times I was afraid I'd seem powerless. There's socialization for you. Even now as I write this I'm struck by how far back in my history this fear stretches. Even pre-transition when I still lived and identified as a lesbian of color, I never wanted to be seen as a bottom. Does this fear come from my youth?

In my preteen years, people said I was a tomboy because to them I was a girl who liked to mimic boys. Thanks to the twisted and interconnected nature of sexism, homophobia & transphobia, there was already this unsaid expectation that I'd end up being with girls. That I'd be a pariah was certain; the only question was what freakishly perverse sexuality would be the cause. As I hit my teens, sex and desire came into the picture, throwing a wrench into the blissful ignorance that was my life. For some reason there were so many good looking guys around me ("trans" wasn't even part of my lexicon). At night I'd fantasize about them fucking me. This was the first indication that I had a very complicated sexuality, made even more complex by the gender stuff I was grappling with.

There were no models of trans/cis guy relationships or blogs on trans sexuality. All I had was porn and in almost every porn I watched back then, the dude always had a dick which he used to fuck, and the woman always got fucked. All she did was lay there and make fake sounds. Through my fantasies I already knew bottoming was somehow in the cards for me, but I didn't want to be this kind of bottom. I wanted to be far more engaged than that, but what was my gender? Am I a man? If I'm a man, shouldn't I want to be with woman? Shouldn't I be seeing myself as a top? These questions plagued me all through my teen years and through my lesbian years before I transitioned. Even today, after many years of "living the life", after spending innumerably hours of therapy, I'm still trying to both understand my body and resist society's expectations for it.