Episode 12 - “Jon Goes A-Camping” with co-host Mikey

This episode’s Lunchtime Poll explores the single most important debate for our modern age: Is it “Yuck” or “Yum” when a partner shoves his or her tongue in your ear during sex. Leave it to Fruitbowl to ask the tough questions. What do you think? Tweet us your answer at @fruitbowlpod

Join Dave and guest co-host Mikey as they dish about sex and this week’s featured interviewee, Jon. 

Jon grew up in Idaho and knew about sex at an early age. Fearing a paternity suit from his pillow, Jon eventually moved on to experiment with real people and discovered a high school friend also wanted to explore more than just nature during a weekend camping trip. After a three year relationship with a woman failed to “cure” him, Jon decided to jump into the deep end of the D-pool.

For his “Best Move,” Jon describes his unique ability to “read” his partners and find the things that turn them on. Our co-host Mikey can personally vouch for his skills. ;)

Having survived abusive relationships, Jon has learned over the years that body positivity goes a long way in finding healthy relationships and avoiding toxic personalities who can prey on insecurities. He also has sage advice for young gays: lube, lube, lube.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

My name is Jon. I am 44 and originally I am from Hayden Lake, Idaho. 

So I was probably six years old. It was in basically what became my hometown. And even then I was into older men. So the nine-year-old up the street, I think he was aware of sex. And so I can't remember how it all came together, but I remember a lot of like rubbing and grinding with him. All with clothes on. But we broke into his mom's Kama Sutra book or something like that, it was some book on the sex. You know, furtively looking through it while she was elsewhere in the duplex, or in the evenings when I stayed the night. So that was like my grand understanding that people got naked and did stuff, even though I wasn't quite sure what all of that was.

We took turns being the girl. Like one of us would be on our back, legs open, grinding up against one another. We would take turns doing that. I mean, I remember my first erection was at three. At the time I didn't know what it was, all I know is that it felt awesome. And then it was the same thing with this guy. There were times where I kind of felt a little weird about it, like I didn't have a reference for it. But for the most part I'm like, "Yeah, sure. Rub up against me that way."

Visiting my grandparents, they had this kind of daylight basement. Not quite like what we would think of where people would, you know, have a room. It was full on basement with storage. And my sister and I would rummage through there during our summers there. At one point in time, I found the stack of Playboys or whatever it was. And so I had this immediate access to naked people. I don't remember if any of them were actually full on having intercourse. I don't know if that was allowed in the magazines at that time or in that particular publication. But that was when I stumbled across it. That was when I'm always sneaking down to the basement for no good reason. And at one point in time, I noticed that they had been relocated. So I think one of the grandparents caught on. And again, I was probably eight or nine. So it was a few years yet ahead of full-on masturbation. But it was definitely, like the feeling I got from looking at it was very enjoyable. And probably no small part of it was like, "This is naughty."

I think I was in the sixth grade? Fifth or sixth grade, like around 11 or 12. And you know, grinding on the pillow was nothing new. That had been going on for some time. But then one time I'm like, "This feels suddenly very intense." And I kind of freaked out like, "This is it. I'm dying. I'm having a heart attack because I shouldn't be doing this." And so I stopped and the palpitations settled. And then I'm like, "Well, wait a minute. I've read about this. Let's see where this goes." To the point where like my pillow, if it could talk, would be coming to me with a paternity suit. Me and the pillow. And until some point in time I'm like, "This is going to probably get kind of obvious." And then I'm like, "Well let's try my hand." And then like, "Oh, this is much easier to aim." 

It was me and my younger sister. And my parents, I mean they had tried having the "where babies come from" conversation with me when I was real little before my sister was born. And I wanted nothing to do with it. I'm like, "I just want to go to bed. I just want to go to bed now. I don't want to hear about this from you." So after that I knew enough just from picking things up at school and reading the appropriate young fiction, like Dear God It's Me Margaret. Like that type of stuff to kind of figure out that there were other things that were eventually going to happen

Growing up in north Idaho in the early eighties, there were a lot of churchy other kids. I didn't know how to articulate things, what I was feeling necessarily in the most honest of ways. But I do remember my first crush was Rick Schroder on Silver Spoons. I thought he was cute. You know, in the way that a nine or 10 year old might look at somebody who's 13, 14. I just remembered in my head thinking, "Well if I was a girl, I would totally want to date him." But you have to have the caveat of, if I were.

My first time. Which one? So legitimately, me and the kid, the street where I grew up, that was the first time. This was me exploring that two people could have some kind of physical pleasure together. It was in high school where a buddy of mine was staying the night because we were going to go camping that weekend. Or like we were going to take off first thing in the morning to this campground we know about. And he and I got talking about like, we were discussing the possibilities of bisexuality. And I had known that he and another friend of ours had gotten drunk at the end of the school year. I was at home. I couldn't go out. I had gotten in trouble, so I wasn't allowed to go out on the last night of school. But they had gone out and I had heard them touch on some subjects of, "What might've happened when two young 16 year olds are drunk by themselves?" And I just remember the worst FOMO ever. Like "Why? Why did I have to be grounded that night?" so he and I got into a discussion of that. And then that evening, while we're in my bedroom, we got into the kind of like, mutual masturbation. And we both came and we were both like, "We're just not going to talk about this. It happened, but we're going to move on." But I knew I wanted it to happen again. 

And then we got out to the campground and at some point in time we were like, "Yeah, maybe we should try something else" So we took a hike away from the campground, left another friend back at the campground. "We're going to go for a hike, bye." And we flipped a coin to give the first blow job. I lost, I didn't care. I just got on my knees and took his pants down and started giving him a blow job out in the middle of the woods.  Because I remember like, "I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this. I'm doing this." And I'm like, "Okay, this is not so bad. I kinda like this." So that was the first time really having sex. Of any type. 

I'm trying to remember. It's a little fuzzy now, the order of things. I think we did at one point during the summer, his parents had gone through a divorce. And at one point his dad had moved out and his mom was gone for some reason. So we snuck out of his house. We kind of were wandering around in the fields near his place and fooled around. And then we came back and we were going to try anal sex. I didn't know what to think of it. I'm like, "Well let's give it a try." You know? I mean, people do it for a reason. And the one thing that did not occur to us was lube. So we're both trying, we both took turns. We're like, "This isn't going anywhere." And I'm like, "Just push harder." And he's like, "Okay." And then same way it's like, "Just push harder." And I do remember one of us said, "How do gay guys do this?" The notion of lube wasn't even there. So that was sort of a failure there. 

After that I got a girlfriend, this girl I had known for years. We went to a prom together and then we basically started dating. I took her to homecoming, that's what it was. I took her to homecoming and then we started dating after that. And eventually we had sex and I thought, "Okay, cool. I'm cured. And whatever that was, it's in the past." So was not in the past. But you know, for the first time it was novel, and it was fun, and it was socially appropriate so to speak when you're talking under age sex. And contrary to what a lot of gay men say, it was better than some of the gay sex I've had. I mean, there's a fairly mechanical process to it. You know, you get off. And I've had some disappointments with men. So you know all in all it wasn't the worst thing ever. But it did not stop me from wanting to be with men. 

She and I went out for like three years. We lived together. Didn't live together. We split up. And then a year or so later I met my first boyfriend. Before we were actually boyfriends it was a first date, like the day-long date. And ended up at his place and did what I knew. I knew oral. I can do oral. But then he's like, "Want to have anal sex?" And he was totally for bottoming and I'm like, "Okay, that's good because I have no experience doing that." And he'd been out ish. He'd had a boyfriend once before so he'd had some experience. So that was the first time where I got to fuck a guy. We were together not quite a year and a couple of times I'm like, "Do you want to do that to me?" I had my hesitation. And he goes, "Yeah, it would probably just hurt you a lot. So I'm fine with this." So it was easily a couple of years before I actually tried bottoming for somebody.

It was some guy who had come up from Boise to Spokane. And he was not particularly well endowed, which was fine for that experiment. And so I was 23 when I did that. So I would say those were probably the big ones. Yeah, he was pretty patient. I had picked up a toy on a trip and so I'd had some practice with that. And he was smaller than the toy. So he was pretty patient about it. Because he knew that this was the first time where I was not going to be 100% in control of the situation. And all in all it wasn't a terrible experience, but it wasn't what I was expecting. Based on what I had seen other people experience like, "Wait a minute, this is supposed to be better. I'm supposed to, stars and explosions. This is just mostly okay."

I honestly do not think I have a best move, I just have moves. And they're best depending on who they're with. When I'm getting physical the intention is probably sex. My move is to start testing all the buttons and figure out which one the guy responds to the best. Because whatever we end up doing, I get off on them getting off. And so I've got a whole series of things. Go for the neck, go for the nipples, make out, touch, feel, look for all the spots that kind of make them tense up. And then when we're fucking it's just a matter of, check speed, check angle.

 A fuck buddy and I, he knows he can count on me slowing down and getting really shallow. And then when he's just kind of off guard, I just plow it into him. And he loves it. I think it takes him off guard and I guess it's the equivalent of getting spanked. Like there's probably a level of discomfort, but the excitement of that situation.  So I wouldn't say it's a signature move, but it's one of those ones that I tried to sit there and say, "Do they like it or not?" But ultimately it's really about finding out what the person likes who I'm with. I mean with the right guy. Some are like, "What are you doing? You have to give me a warning before that." But I have at least one friend who, guaranteed he'll yelp and he'll sit there and say, "I hate you, do it again."

Do not undervalue good lube. Seriously, good lube. And learn about cleaning your butt way earlier. Yeah, I would say that's it. Because to me sex has generally been kind of easy. I've joked that if it had been legal, I would have gladly been a sex worker when I was younger. And to this day like, "I could do this." It's all the mental and emotional stuff that goes around it that I wish I had learned earlier. 

I came out, I was baby gay in the era of Abercrombie and Fitch. And I am nothing like that. Like the six foot tall, swimmers build, blue eyes, eight inches, uncut. None of that applies to me. But it was a standard that was kind of devastating to my ego. And eventually those sort of weird expectations drove me to lower my standards for what I was willing to put up with. To the point of putting me into an abusive relationship. Like I was with somebody who was mentally, emotionally, and physically abusive. But I was utterly convinced that I couldn't do better for a long time.

So I would definitely go back and say, "Don't get an ego about this, but you're worth more. And time will show that." Just because you're 20 something and not all the boys are flocking to you, it doesn't mean anything. Personal experience is, I'd rather grow into my looks than grow out of them. Literally everybody is somebody's type. Every person out there, there's somebody out in the world who wants them more than anybody else. And you don't need to necessarily find that person, but they represent a part of a spectrum. 

The friends in my twenties were all about adjusting our bodies. Like, "You've got to dress this way. Your hair has to be right. You've got to get those abs." And for some people it's easy, for some people it's not. The friends I have who wish they had body hair, like they're never going to grow body hair. It's just not in their genetics. And to sit there and put that much pressure on themselves. If the guy only wants you for body hair, then he doesn't really want you. I did the whole body shaving type stuff. But it was a real interesting turnaround. 

I'd moved to Seattle and I'd been here for a couple of months. And I was on some, you know, it was gay.com or something like that. And chatting with some guy who told me flat out, he says, "I only want to hook up with guys who have chest hair." And I'm like, "Well, shit. I just shaved three days ago. This is not going to work." Like it grows back. He says. "Contact me when it has."