Beyond Sport F*cking

Moments after the door to my condo closed behind us, the stranger I’d cruised on the subway locked his mouth on mine. I eagerly accepted. The tension of 30+ minutes of eyeing each other in the train car, up the escalators, down Sunset Blvd., to this moment, piqued our primal need to engage. 

He pulled at the bottom of his shirt.  

I leaned away from kissing his scruffy face and said, “Hold on, can I get that for you?” and I slowly pulled his shirt up, revealing his bare skin, happy trail, belly button, chest, nipples, and finally, his masculine shoulders. The inside-out collar of thin cotton material moved up his throat while the bulk of the shirt acted as a temporary blindfold. As the shirt released from his head, I looked into his eager eyes – the t-shirt hanging relaxed in my hand. 

“Your turn,” I said. “Take your time.” 

Rather than ignoring all this erotic energy and racing towards orgasm with the intensity of an Olympic sprinter, I’ve learned to lean into erotic tension and savor its rare pleasures. 

This is a departure from the avid Sport Fucker practice I once thought was the height of sexual pleasure and liberation. 

Sport Fucking is about having sex for its own sake. Keeping a score sheet (even if it’s just in one’s head) of the numbers, variety, and status of sex partners is what it’s all about. Commitment and emotional depth are not part of the practice. An ass up, no talking, jackhammer fuck n’ go is its hallmark protocol. 

It allows us to protest against the heteronormative standard narrative: All sex outside of a monogamous relationship is bad. 

It also satisfies our need to seed, and be seeded by, as many individuals as possible. Sperm competition, as outlined in the book Sex At Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, provides evidence that our genes are programmed to both give and receive as much sperm as possible. The one who gives or receives the most wins the genetic prize. 

Sport Fucking is still in my sexual repertoire, but it is only one musical genre with which to play the music. Sometimes, I want a nasty two-minute country tune by Dixon Dallas: “No strings attached, I’ll arch my back and let you do what you want.” At other times, I want an hour-long Deep House Anjunadeep Edition 434 with Marsh DJ session: “Reach inside me. Gonna take my love in,” that transports us on a multilayered sensory/emotional/spiritual journey. 

Each encounter is usually a variation that mixes a bit from each style, depending on my partner’s proclivities and how our energies mix.

If I’d taken this guy to a stairwell to seal the deal, a long, drawn-out connection wouldn’t have been practical. But we were in my place, and I had more than two minutes. 

Until the moment his shirt came off, and I felt the heat radiating from his torso, my attraction to this guy was almost entirely visual. It was tied to what he was wearing, especially his grey sweatpants and the shape of the underwear seams framing his butt cheeks as he shifted his weight, side to side, only one escalator step ahead of me on the long ride up and out of the deep Sunset-Vermont subway station, my heart pounding all the way. 

I was returning home from my workout, where I’d seen lots of Hollywood hotties dressed in their best gym gear hugg