Episode 3 - Tom & Dave

Bathroom cruising, navigating three-ways, bathhouse adventures, fingertip sex & remembering our first porn. Tom and Dave compare war stories growing up gay in small town America.

Episode Transcripts

My name is Tom. I'm 37 years old. I've lived in Seattle, Washington for 20 years. I grew up in Alaska before that.

I kind of remember the first real dawning of sexual awareness being HBO's Real Sex. Catching that on after my parents had gone to bed and I'd turned the TV back on and watch it from midnight, hiding in the stairwell.

That was really when like sex as a concept that I was interested in really formed. I think everything before that was just kind of like, you know, titling each other behind the woodshed or fiddling around. Just understanding what's down there, but yeah. Yeah. I remember being like completely fascinated by the first episode of Real Sex when it aired on HBO.

So I remember being, I think 12 years old and going to the restroom at Fred Meyer in Anchorage and going into the first stall and there was a dude on his knees jerking off in the second stall. And you know, kind of wondering what's going on, I stick my head under to take a look and it was just like, "Whoa, okay."

I immediately ran out of the bathroom as fast as I could just mortified by the idea of what I had just seen. But then just pulsing with intense, not quite regret, but like intense desire to have known more basically. And I started exploring the bathrooms after that, basically looking for ways to see dick or ways to get dick. It had black mirrored tiles so you realize that you could be looking down and see into the next stall. So that was why that particular gentleman had been taking advantage of that. Perhaps the person before had just left, so he was still on his knees working away at it.

I found Alaska to be kind of a perfect cruising environment for a blossoming teenager. The Diamond Mall was not far from my house and I spent a lot of time there. My mom went to go to Jazzercise class there every week. So she'd ask me if I wanted to go to the mall. And for a long time the answer was no. But then I found the cruzee bathroom on the second floor hidden away in between an under construction part of the mall, an office tower part of the mall, a part that didn't really have stores. There were the Army and the Navy recruiters there. I remember because the Navy recruiter had a huge dick. It had not so much a glory hole, but a peep hole and then a large handicap stall. So eventually you would figure out if they were interested and  join them in their stall. And as a fairly hairy teenager, I looked at least passably of age even though it wasn't anywhere near it. Maybe the age of consent was 16 in Alaska, but I don't know, I wasn't paying attention. But I wasn't 16 yet. That's for sure. So I spent a number of years doing that. And then realizing that before I was 18, I could get into most of the adult bookstores around the city, they just didn't care. 

So yeah, it was fun exploring the glory holes of the adult bookstores of Anchorage, Alaska. It was a lot of chubby, married dudes in sweaters that weren't seeing it at home. Or were gay and just were out getting it, but were totally in the closet. So it was sort of paradise. It was heaven. Because it wasn't really freaky there. It wasn't a bareback romp fest like you would find at a bathhouse. Anchorage certainly didn't have a bath house. 

I've found that I really liked bathrooms where there were like, just really good ways of seeing dick too. Like my dad liked to go to the VFW hall to eat for cheap and drank for cheaper. And they had removed a handicapped handrail in one of the stalls in the bathroom. And there was, you know, perfect holes to watch right into the urinal basically. So, "Oops. Man, I get a tummy ache every time we go here, dad. I spend forever in the bathroom here, I'm sorry." But it was just perfect for staring at dad dick. Not necessarily my own, but all the other middle-aged guys they're doing the same thing. Glad I never got my ass kicked during that. Why didn't they just cover it up? Because I think either somebody would assume somebody would look or somebody would assume nobody would ever look. So it's either naivete or intentional, one of the two. 

So I turned 18 and moved to Seattle and went to the 25 cent arcade, which is now the Hard Rock Cafe. That 25 cent arcade upstairs, while actually a functioning arcade, did have glory holes and sex booths in the back. And I remember the first time I went this dude bust into my video booth, bent over and said, "Stick it in dry." As he snorted a big line of meth off of his hand. And so that scared the shit out of me. It was definitely not the way Anchorage worked. I was kind of scared out of cruising here in Seattle for a long time. There's always places where you're like, "Hmm, this bathroom seems interesting," and you're hanging out long enough and sure enough it is. But it was freaky enough to have this crazy drugged out person trying to get me to jam my dry dick up their asshole. 

So yeah, I basically stopped when I was a teenager and then I met somebody kind of right away. So that restroom, cruising, glory hole period of my life was really short but intense. And all while I was basically like right up to about 19.  I moved here at 18 like six months before my birthday. It kind of came to an end right about then. I was just barely old enough to where I should be doing that when I stopped,

I was on the internet, very young. I had dial up internet service to the world wide web in '92. So it was definitely exploring the early years of the internet. From 12 and 13 on I was searching the internet for porn already and trying to figure out what I could get my hands on. And then what I was into. It wasn't in my immediate thought that just because I liked seeing penises on Real Sex, that I was gay. It took, you know, more than one or two penises to figure that out. So I would look specifically for sex pictures because I liked seeing penises involved. And then it evolved like, "Well I like seeing older guys having sex with these girls." And I was like, "No, I just really like looking at the older guys."

And I was both having access to the internet, at least reasonably for what you could see on the internet in tiny little movie files back then. And then, you know, just whatever we could get our hands on otherwise. My friends and I loved to consume whatever illicit porn we could steal from somebody's dad or somebody's brother, whether it was Playgirls or Playboys. And one of our friends' moms did have Playgirls. Those were always the ones that I secretly enjoyed the most. But it really didn't dawn on me until later like, "Oh yeah, no I'm into this because this is all dicks. Yep. Got it." I just thought I enjoyed looking at them just as much as the others, but no it was definitely the dicks.

I would print out pictures on my Dot matrix or a really shitty black and white, 1993 printer and hide them in my desk. And I would masturbate to those and I would show the ones with girls to my friends. But of course always has this hot dude jack hammering away at the girl. I'd be like, "Look what I found on the internet." And then my mom would invariably find those and I would get in trouble. 

And then at some point on a trip down to Seattle, what was it called? Beyond the Closet Books on Pine street? Pike street maybe? Yeah, my mom would let me go to Broadway on my own for a little while. And then I would sneak over and buy them. So I had a collection in my desk back home and that definitely was not found before I moved out thankfully. 

I came out to my mom when I was 15 I think. And I was out at school too. I didn't tell my dad until later, but obviously he'd figured it out. It was real easy when I told him, cause it was sorta like, "Yeah. Uh huh. And?" But no, Anchorage was a surprisingly easy place to be out and we dated and things like that. There were boys that were similar age going to other schools or they found their way out of the school system, of reasonable dating material.

 I do remember one instance where just before I left Anchorage, there were a group of us out to eat. One of the things you do in Anchorage, you just go to like 24 hour diners. Because that's like all there is to do in Anchorage. And this guy walks in and like six of us hid behind our menus at the table. And we all looked around at each other and we're like, "We've all fucked him? Got it. All right. Small dating pool. Figured that one out. All right. Time to go." He was terrible, he had a  waterbed too. Jesus. Oh God. I had to watch The Horse Whisperer in order to have sex with him. Oh, it was awful. He thought I wasn't interested. So then once he figured out that I was, then he flipped it over to porn. It was like, "Oh, got it. Okay. This could have happened a lot sooner. Fuck." 

The first time I would really consider having sex I was, oh God, I don't want to say. I was an early teenager, mid teenager. And I met a dude off of the internet. Internet relay chat was a thing and ages weren't really discussed. He was definitely an older gentleman and we had shared pictures. He was probably early fifties, kinda your average silver fox daddy. And I remember he smoked a lot, so he had kind of the super growly voice. So I rode my bike to my local coffee shop, where he picked me up under the pretense that I was going to fix a sound card on his computer. Because you know, obviously the young buck must come and fix the old man's computer, sort of thing.

So there I was fixing his sound card, which didn't take much. He just needed his drive updated or something stupid like that. And all of a sudden he was rubbing my shoulders. And then he's face down, ass up in bed telling me to stick it in. Which, you know, it was definitely my first time doing that. But it kind of comes natural, I guess. Or at least I'd seen enough porn. I'd probably watched a lot of porn by that point. He was at least fairly seasoned in that department. He did not offer much resistance as far as sticking it in, wince. I didn't take too long I guess, but I was able to completely fuck him and come in him and yeah.

And then he dropped me back off on my bike. So that was  definitely like, "All right. Ride my bike home, like that just happened?" He was some sort of pilot that flew like two weeks in, two weeks out sort of thing. And yeah never ran across him again on the internet or if I did, it was just curiosity sort of chatting.

Yeah, that was definitely one of those like, "That happened and probably isn't gonna happen again and probably wouldn't happen again. That's okay. Like, I'm not sad I just fucked you, but I know I can step my game up a little bit."

I mean, there's been bad sex that I've ended in the middle of and left. But I think the most embarrassing thing is that twice I've barfed on dicks during oral sex. Something about eating too much spaghetti before you go down on someone. And both times it was spaghetti. So I've learned, I've learned. Like fool me once, haha. Fool me twice, I'm not going to barf on your dick again. But it was first with my ex-husband and now with my current husband also they have both gotten barfed on the dick. It's not cute. It's not cute. It's not cute. But they were both very forgiving. I mean, that was probably one of the nicest things my ex-husband ever did was not be horrible when I barfed on his dick. I'm pretty sure they both just said the same thing when it happened, which is "Get the towel." That could just be the way that memory blurs. But it's definitely the most embarrassing thing because there's zero recovery from that. There is all sorts of things that can happen in sex that you can recover from. But that, no. Nope, everyone's done at that point.

I sort of feel like one of those Jack of all trades. I make a decent top. I suck a decent dick. I'm good at receiving head. But there's nothing that like I'm outstanding at, I guess. But I've had a lot of threesomes. So successfully navigating a threesome is probably like my greatest skill in the bedroom. Because that's often the most awkward sort of sex is threesomes. But typically they're all smooth sailing when I'm around.

I think experience definitely helps because you kind of get to understand where the body language rhythms come in, where the habits that people have come in, and like understanding the ebb and flow of how sex works. When you've got two people feeding off of each other's energy directly, it's one experience. But when you've got multiple people feeding off of each other's energy, it doesn't always completely flow in one direction sort of thing. So you kind of got to watch and see what's being neglected? When does somebody need to like, watch more than participate? When is something going on for too long? How often do you have to change positions? When everybody is ready to finish? Because then you've got one more person balancing because nobody wants to come like immediately in the threesome. And then you're just sort of there while the other two are going at it. There's definitely a skill involved but it's hard to exactly pinpoint what that is.

I definitely was having sex before I was out. And as a result, I think we're used to a level of cloak and dagger secrecy to even initiating sex. And then we shed that as you know, we go to San Francisco at 21 and watch people cruise on the street and fuck in a Starbucks bathroom. And you're like, "Wow, I want to try that." And then it's great. And you have a good time. And then you're like, "Cool, I'm going to go try the blow buddies or I'm going to go to the bath house for the first time." And then you're like, "Oh, my friends are having a play party. I'm going to try and get invited." And then you have a really good time with that.

You can start to expand your sexual boundaries in a healthy way. At least maybe this is the way it's worked for me. But as far as just the way you kind of pick it up? It sort of continues. Like you find people that will want to have sex only in the dark, light off, door shut. And you find people that only want to have sex when they're at the bath house and they don't ever have sex outside of that, whether they've got relationships outside that prevents it or whatnot. We are good at compartmentalizing sex, I think. Because we have compartmentalized ourselves first and then sub compartmentalized our sex from that.

So I would definitely tell my younger self to have like, just so much more sex. Really there is no reason to not have it. If you're reasonably safe then and with prep coming to you in the future, sex can be a really, really healthy expression. And for a long time you're probably convinced that it's not a healthy expression. That it's something done in the dark, in the back, in the hole, away from the light. And definitely unlearn that sooner than later. Despite having a lot of sex early, I've managed to still attach a lot of shame to sex over the years. Whether that's because my partner at the time had an opinion about sex or the structure of my relationship forced sex into a particular pattern or any number of things. Even just sort of the kind of gay shame that we pick up along the way and don't always set down so easily.

My name is David, I'm 45 and I'm originally from Kansas. 

The first time I ever heard about sex was from a babysitter's boyfriend who convinced me that you could have sex through your fingertips. And he showed me his fingers and for some reason the tips of his fingers were callused. And so I believed him. I thought that that's what happened when you had sex, was that you got calluses on your fingertips. And I believed that for a few years after that until my dad finally, didn't necessarily have the talk with me, but he gave me a pamphlet about sex from the Christian perspective. And they went into more of the  mechanics, which helped clarify things. It also went on to describe masturbation, which I actually had not known about until I read about it in the pamphlet. And I remember putting the pamphlet down and proceeding to masturbate and being completely fascinated that something other than urine could come out of my penis. So I started doing that quite a bit after that. Yeah. I became kind of a habitual masturbator. But I don't know if I was any more habitual about it than any other young horny guy, straight or gay.

When I was in grade school I had some obsessions with rock bands. One of them being Duran Duran. I loved Duran Duran. I thought that they were amazing. Looking back, I clearly thought that they were beautiful, like really good looking. So what I would do is I would go to Music Land at the Town East Mall in Wichita, and I would buy my sister posters of rock bands, one of them being Duran Duran. And then I would give them to her so that she could hang them in her bedroom so that I could look at them. Because I think I knew even at that young age that it was wrong, that I would have a poster of a male band in my bedroom. I knew that that was somehow outside the bounds of acceptability in terms of what a young man would have on his walls in his bedroom. Which is kind of crazy because my mom actually let me wallpaper my bedroom in rainbows, because I was obsessed with rainbows and Teddy bears and unicorns.

So I would give my sister band posters to put on her wall. The funniest thing that happened was when I decided that the whole band poster thing wasn't enough. So I actually bought her, this is so embarrassing. I bought her a poster of the SoloFlex guy. SoloFlex was this at home exercise system that you could get and their advertising campaign was famous for having this sexy picture of this guy who is like lifting a shirt up off of his bare chest. And of course he had the most perfect physique and it was kind of an iconic image of the eighties. So much so that they had posters of it at the mall. So I bought my sister that poster for her to hang in her bedroom because I wanted to look at it. And years later, when I came out to my sister, she gave me the poster back.

My parents owned a cabin in Colorado and we would go there in the summertime. And there wasn't much to do, I had a good friend who lived down the street. We didn't have TV. Well we did, but it didn't really work very well. So we had to really occupy ourselves by just sort of exploring the area around my parents' cabin. And my friend Aaron and I found a Penthouse magazine that was hidden under a rock. It had weathered pages and the rain had sort of stuck different pages together, but we could kind of tear them apart enough that we could read the articles and look at the pictures. And one of the articles was of course, the Penthouse forum, which I was completely fascinated by, people writing in to confess different scenarios of what they had done with their partners or with strangers.

So that was definitely like the beginning of my education into kink and understanding what that meant. It was only one issue that we could look at. So we read it over and over and over again. And we hid it in the same place too, so that each of us would come back and read it separately. I definitely remember masturbating out in the woods at least once from having read the articles and stuff. But I think one of the letters mentioned that this woman had had sex with an entire firehouse of guys, like a whole fire station full of firefighters. Which I thought was totally hot at the time. 

I think around my freshman year of high school I started to admit to myself that I was gay. I used to love dancing in my bedroom. It was the one thing I did that I felt completely free and not judged by anybody. And I'll never forget, there was a time at which I was doing that and I stopped dancing and I looked at myself in the mirror and I said, "You're gay. You are a gay man." And I think that that was when I started to kind of shift my perspective from being somebody who was in the closet, who was in complete shame, to somebody who I could see maybe a future where I could kind of accept myself. 

Later on in high school, I subscribed to GQ magazine. And I think everyone who subscribed to GQ also got an automatic subscription to International Male. Because it just started arriving without any sort of subscription on my part. So we did start to get that. And that was around the time that I started to admit to myself that I was gay. I started to look forward to the International Male catalog more than GQ, the main reason being the underwear models that were in the back of the magazine. It was divided kind of evenly between somewhat normal clothing and underwear. And eventually they spun it off and had an entire separate catalog for the underwear, which for me was amazing because I couldn't have asked for better spank material in high school given that I was in Kansas and I wasn't really near any kind of gay porn outlet. So what I would do eventually, because I knew that keeping the magazines would have been too obvious. If I had kept them stored someplace, it would have been too obvious. So what I did was I started to cut out my favorite pictures of the different underwear models and save them in a manila envelope and hid it underneath my dresser in my bedroom.

And so I had this collection of different little cutout clippings of the different guys and mesh underwear. It was really cheesy underwear. So yeah, I think years later, I remember coming back from college and finding the Manila envelope and thinking that most certainly my mom must have found it at some point and looked inside of it. So I was really embarrassed that it was still there after all those years.

Having worked on this, you think I would have prepared for this more. But I think it's also just hard to talk about it and I'm realizing it now how hard it is. And I'm kind of like amazed that people have even agreed to do this for me. 

I learned about gay sex, mostly through cruising bathrooms in the mall near my hometown in Wichita, Kansas. That's why it's hard for me to articulate when the first time is because you could argue that my first time was when I was sitting in the stall in the public bathroom of townie, small in Wichita, Kansas, that I realized that the guy sitting in the stall next to me was masturbating. And I didn't just get up and leave. I knew that I liked that and that I was completely fascinated by the fact that somebody would do that in public and also kind of flattered that he was doing it near me. So I think it was around that time that I started to realize that I was gay because I didn't just get up and leave. And in anger I was kind of flattered by it. And also completely turned on in the sense that it was kind of dangerous and it was in a place that was totally public and not at all in a remote location.

So that was sort of the beginning of my investigation into public sex. What eventually ended up happening was that it wasn't enough to just jerk off next to somebody in a public stall. There was one stall where there had been somebody who had written their phone number on the wall, and I wrote it down and called the guy. And we had a very brief conversation. And as it turns out, I was actually about to leave to go to my parents' cabin in Colorado days after I had called him and we had chatted. 

So he asked me to write him a letter and explain to him where it was I was going in Colorado. Which to me right now, it just sounds completely ludicrous that I would have agreed to do this. So I described to him where I was and also what the phone number was to my parents' cabin there and what times he could call me. And basically we arranged for him to drive nine hours from Wichita to meet me near my parents' cabin in Colorado so that we could have sex. Which just seems completely psycho, somebody I'd never met before agreed to do this.

So he did, he got there. We met through a completely preposterous set of plans. I mean, pre iPhone, pre smartphone, pre anything. Pre internet. The fact that we arranged to do this at a specific time and date to me is still pretty mind blowing. And I had never, ever seen him. Until I got to this Trailhead where we had agreed to meet. And by the time he got there, I was so worked up and so excited about it that I couldn't contain myself. And the sad part is that when I finally saw him I wasn't at all attracted to him. Back then I had certain physical expectations for my first time. Clearly I was like completely seduced by the whole Marky Mark, SoloFlex, perfect physique kind of guy. And that's sort of at the time what I idealized. Now I have a completely different set of priorities. I actually don't really have a type, but at the time I had completely fantasized about this perfect male physique and he didn't have it. There was no way that he could really fulfill any of my idealized versions of what I wanted. 

So we walked a little bit on the trail together and made small talk. I just wanted to run away, but I also didn't want to be a complete dick. So then we finally found a remote spot off of the trail and he started to go to his knees to blow me and I just ended up running away, just ran. And I had actually walked to the trailhead. So I just kept running and I don't ever think that he caught up with me. I think that maybe he knew that he just needed to let me leave. But looking back, it was so cruel and awkward and a little bit painful thinking about it. And that's probably why I don't like really talking about it. I mean, I was a freaked out kid.

Looking back, it does sound like kind of a dickish move to just run away. But at the time I think looking back, I am more forgiving of my behavior just because of the complete newness of it and the awkward nature of not knowing what it meant to be intimate with another person, even a male or a female. I hadn't even been with a woman by that time. So yeah, I was just scared

In the parks in Wichita, there was a huge cruising culture that I eventually discovered. And that was kind of the next step past public restroom cruising. And in Wichita, the sort of next logical step from there was public parks. And I think it was there that I eventually started to experiment with other guys. And that was a little less frightening because I had a car, I could drive, I had a safe space. I could leave whenever I wanted to drive away. There must've been at some point, somebody in a bathroom who I had oral sex with. It's kinda sad though that I don't remember who that person is or what they look like. I think so much of that culture there was about anonymity and not wanting people to know who you were or what you were doing specifically. So I think I kind of internalized that. So yeah, I would cruise the parks in Wichita and for a while it was fun just because it was sort of illicit. But eventually that sort of started to wear off and I wasn't so interested in the fear factor. And I really did want to meet somebody. 

So one day I was driving through the park. Maybe I had started to not do it as often, but I just decided to go through one day. And there was a kid who was there with a girl who was clearly my age and he was dancing. And I thought, "Okay, I'm going to get out of my car and I'm going to go talk to this person because I'm sick of not ever connecting with anybody." I remember specifically telling myself and daring myself to do it. So I did, and it ended up being pretty cool. He was my age. He was in high school. I think we were in the same class. Not the same school, but the same year. And his girlfriend was a great kind of facilitator and a mediator between us and made it less uncomfortable and less creepy cruisy, just because they looked like they were just hanging out in the park with each other. And it wasn't so much about cruising for sex as it was just about hanging out. So I just went up to them and started talking and I think we agreed to meet to go on a date. 

My first date with him was to go see Truth or Dare at The Dollar Theater in Wichita, which was sort of like the second run theater. And the cool thing was that fortunately, nobody else was in the theater. So my first date with a guy ever was going to see Truth or Dare in Wichita, Kansas in an empty theater. And so like we could hold hands and I could put my arm around him. And I actually felt like I could see what my potential future was and it wasn't as terrible as I thought it was going to be. So I started to have a lot more optimism after that. This was just before I graduated, so I had sort of endured a pretty traumatic coming out process in high school. So it was just the right timing in terms of making me understand that maybe the future wasn't going to be a complete shit show. So, yeah, that was good. It is curious though because I remember going to the movie with him, but I don't actually remember having sex with him.

I had a good girlfriend in college who wanted me to meet her gay friend that she had grown up with. And he came into town with his boyfriend at the time. And I'd never experienced love at first sight, but when I met this guy I instantly fell in love with him. I have no idea why. He wasn't even really my type and he wasn't like traditionally attractive. There was just something about him that had a really good energy. And I proceeded to get shit faced drunk. So drunk that I couldn't even function later that night. It was actually kind of a little bit scary. And I'll never forget him and my friend taking me back to my apartment and putting me in bed. And right before he left, I just threw up all over the bed. And it was like the most humiliating thing ever. But the funniest part was that after that he actually dumped his boyfriend and we dated for the last half of my senior year. So I guess there was something about me vomiting all over my bed that he found attractive. So that was pretty embarrassing.

There's lots I like to do in bed. I don't consider myself a top or bottom. And you know, I do think it depends on your partner, what they like. And one of the things I've discovered I like to do most is fuck a guy while he's on his back. And usually it's when I'm standing on the side of the bed and he's laying on his back. So I like to start that way. I'm supporting his legs as I fuck him. And so we sort of do that for a while. I feel like sometimes things get a little bit boring. So what I like to do is throw one of his legs to the side so that he's actually laying on his side and I'm still fucking him. And so I think that that shift in position, I get the idea that a lot of bottoms like that. So I do that for a while and then I'll flip him so that he's on his stomach. So the whole time my dick is still inside of him and he's basically being spun around. I didn't really think that it would work until the first time I tried it and then it did. And it seemed to be that I got a pretty good response. So that's probably my, my best move.

Go and explore as much as you can. Do it in a way that you feel comfortable, but don't feel inhibited at all by what other people think or what society tells you you should or shouldn't do. You should just go out and explore your sexuality and in the most complete way that you can, and it shouldn't matter what other people think is right or wrong. You should just kind of explore and feel free to do that because that's how you start to realize what you like and what you don't like. Go out and fuck as much as you want. Do it in a way that you feel safe, but don't feel scared to try new things. 

Kink is something that should be embraced and not judged. I think I wasted a lot of time judging people and what they did. I mean, I let go of that a long time ago. I think living in New York really helped that. I started to see different cultures in different parts of the gay community. And I realized how much diversity there was and how awesome that was. And I think that that's something that the gay community should really embrace is how different gay sex is to different people. And instead of it just being the missionary position all the time. I honestly feel like gay sex is the best kind of sex. That sounds funny saying that because clearly sex has a procreative purpose, but I actually think that gay sex is the most fun because you're with somebody who has the same equipment as you do, and you know what feels good and what doesn't. So I kind of feel like that's to our advantage.

I think when I was young, because I did have so many encounters with people anonymously, I assumed that that made me a slut. I judged myself a lot as a kid. And I think that as an adult, I can see how experimenting with different people is actually a good thing and it's not a bad thing. Like now I don't necessarily think that people who have sex with a lot of different people are sluts. I think that that makes them actually liberated and it makes them brave because they just do what they want to do and they don't have any judgment of themselves and they really don't care what other people think. And to me, that is the most radical thing that any of us can do is to just embrace our sexuality and express it however we want to. I mean, that's why I think people who are pups or who are into leather or any of that kink are amazing because they know that they have the right to do that and they don't really care what other people think. I think that's amazing. 

But as far as my own personal kink, I like leather. That seems so vanilla, living in Seattle. I do love Seattle because so many people here embrace their kink and they express it openly. I used to live in LA and that town is very much about presenting yourself in a very acceptable, sort of boring way. So I really like living in Seattle and knowing that people here just really don't give a shit. I don't think I could have made this documentary in LA. I was thinking about that the other day. I think people in LA would not have been as honest with me. They would have been too worried that other people that they knew would see it and judge them. People here don't care as much, and I love that. I am excited by that. That's why I'm making the documentary is because there's so many people here who are open and honest about their sexuality and they don't apologize for it. And that's awesome.