Going Deep: A Gay Guide to Reality

Mike Gerle
  • 4.4 (16)
  • SEXUALITY
  • UPDATED SEMIWEEKLY

A retired WeHo gay exploring the correlation between sex and meaning. mikegerle.substack.com

  1. 12/12/2025

    Do Your Holidays Hurt?

    Gay men, and anyone who doesn’t match the style guide of their bio-families, can get hit with a special kind of emotional whiplash this time of year. However you’re spending these weeks, please know you’re not alone. Not with the feelings, at least. Plenty of us have been there, and many of us still are. I’ve spent Christmas Eve barbacking a thinly attended Monday karaoke night at Revolver in West Hollywood. The flimsy pretense that it was just another casual hang evaporated as the holiday songs rolled in. Fifteen or twenty guys clinging to each other’s company because we had nowhere else to be that night. I wasn’t about to call it holy, but the air was heavy with something. I’ve spent Christmas Day alone in the West Hollywood City Hall server room, logged in as one of only five people on the entire network. The city doesn’t offer paid religious holidays; it provides three personal days to use however you want instead. Cool policy, sure. I thought working Christmas might feel like a satisfying “fuck you” to the culture and the Mormons who took away my marriage rights with Prop 8. It didn’t. It was lonely as hell. Watching porn in an empty server room, scrubbing my browser history, and telling myself I’d “earned” a day for International Mr. Leather in May wasn’t the triumph I’d imagined. It felt hollow. Then there was the Christmas I did the divorced-parents circuit: Kansas City with my dad and stepmom, Tucson with my mom. Christmas Eve in KC came with presents, Mormon niceties, and a nighttime outing with my older brother and two step-uncles. One uncle got drunk, the other stole his brother’s money, and we dumped the drunk uncle, literally, on my parents’ lawn before taking his car. My brother then taught me how to buy and smoke crack in it. That night convinced me never to touch crack again. That might’ve been the Christmas miracle. Two days later, I landed in Tucson to find out my grandparents had been sent home early because my grandfather punched my mom’s fiancé while calling him the N-word. I get it. The holidays, as Whitney Houston said about crack, can be WACK! If this is one of those wack years for you, I’m sorry. You’re not the first to go through this, and you won’t be the last. I hope that gives you a little ease. We’re all just trying to follow our hearts and go where we think the love might be. May you find some peace, and may whatever challenges you’re facing now deliver something like wisdom in the long run. And here’s the part I hate to admit: the best holidays I’ve ever had were the ones where I gave in and joined the conventional madness. Humans are just built to commune with each other. It’s medicine. We gay men do it instinctively, on dance floors, at onesie parties, camping trips, bike rides, sex parties like CumUnion. Give us a theme and a protocol, and we’ll build a small, temporary village of belonging. “I’m just happy to have everyone here, together!” I heard that line twice in my life. The first time, I was eleven, rolling my eyes at an elderly woman at Thanksgiving because three people at that table annoyed me. Poor old lady, I thought. The second time, I was twenty-six, sitting at a Thanksgiving table in my own apartment, surrounded by gay friends. This time, it was me saying the line. And suddenly, I got it. What made that Thanksgiving magic was that nothing in me needed hiding. My roommate had hosted for years, so there was a rhythm. I was in the kitchen making gravy (with emergency phoned-in guidance from my mom), and I didn’t have to worry about anyone tensing up when they asked who I was dating. When my roommate chimed in, “Does f*****g count?” I felt seen. And now, somehow, I feel that same belonging with the family that raised me. They don’t tolerate me anymore; tolerance is for elevator farts. They accept me. Fully. The whole messy, fabulous truth of me. And because they’ve grown, and I’ve grown. I can accept them as they are, too. Funny enough, that acceptance has become its own gift: more love in my life. If you’re struggling this season, hang in there. You’re not legally required to be merry. You’re not even required to be pleasant. Notice what you feel, and let it guide what you choose to do next year. New Year’s Eve is around the corner. You’ll have months before you have to do this circus again. Use that time to find where the love lives, invest in yourself, and strengthen your chosen family. There’s no one right way to do the holidays. But if you get the chance to celebrate them old-school, with people who let you be you, it might hurt a little less. I might actually be healing. Until we meet again, be good to yourself.Mike This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mikegerle.substack.com/subscribe

    10 min

  2. 11/24/2025

    Why We Think Sex is Bad

    I keep wondering how “sex-positive” became a buzzword at the exact same time everybody started having less sex. When we live in a reality where medication protocols like PrEP and DoxyPEP can prevent a person from acquiring or shedding HIV and STIs, when U=U, why are we having less sex now than when sex was literally deadly? Race Bannon, who writes the Substack Love At The Edges, shared a story in his post, From Passion to Performance, that may explain some of it. “I was attending a large gay men’s kink play weekend. One of my friends there said he had talked to a guy who my friend had noticed was not interacting sexually or erotically with anyone, running counter to the weekend’s intent. My friend said the guy told him “he was afraid to do anything because he might make a mistake.” In the United States, the sexual revolution of the ‘60s and ‘70s made it seem like we were finally abandoning our sexual hangups. Then, pandemics, socializing on screens, and educational efforts, in both academic settings and niche sexual enclaves like the one Race shared, make us all feel more like we’re taking a final exam than experiencing sexual liberation. If the idea of sex fills you with trepidation, like you might make a huge mistake engaging in it, that makes perfect sense. You have been told sex is physically, socially, and intellectually scary for decades. But, with isolation and loneliness now killing men at an alarming rate, with gay men being impacted even higher than non-gay men, it’s foolish to ignore the positive physical, mental, social & romantic, and spiritual benefits of skin-to-skin orgasm. There are many reasons why people think sex is bad, and once we admit to having that feeling, we might be able to ask why we feel that way and be able to move past it. Let’s go way back. The authors of Sex at Dawn, an anthropological study of human sexual behavior, argue that humans didn’t care about who was f*****g whom until we started owning things. Before that, when we were nomadic hunter-gatherers, the sperm donor was not all that important. Caring for the tribe’s offspring was. When we became farmers, land and property ownership became tied to paternity: Who’s your daddy?” became a critical question, and sex started getting weird. It was no longer just about fucking; it was about property and power. Kings and peasants. Law and order. In 1620, Puritans and Pilgrims settled in North America, bringing their hyper-paternal ideology with them that we still feel today: monogamous, baby-making sex is the only holy sex: end of message. American politics illustrates our country’s ongoing devotion to scandalizing sex. Here’s a lengthy list. Sexual scandal is an old political fetish that never goes out of style. The Sexual Revolution In 1960, birth control pills were invented, paving the way for straight people to experience sexual liberation. With sexual liberation in the air, gays flocked to San Francisco and other major cities where they harnessed their sexuality as a form of power. Sex was a unifying rite of passage. Alluding to and consummating dude-on-dude shenanigans was a political act of solidarity and liberation. Then, AIDS I was lucky enough to sample gay sex before AIDS, before I saw it mercilessly kill my best friend, Alvin, my boyfriend, Tony, and my mentor, Gustav, and a quarter million other gay American men over 12 years. That kind of trauma does not occur without leaving a mark on the soul of a community anchored in sexuality. It was truly traumatizing and has left a permanent mark on the psyche of gay men. Guys now in their early 40s learned sex education from the Grim Reaper himself. “BANG YOU’RE DEAD!” “No ifs, ands, or cures.” Sex will kill you. Bathhouses and sex clubs were closed, regulated out of existence, or left limping along in a legally dubious state, making them unattractive to investors. We see the rotting corpses of those establishments still languishing in Los Angeles: FLEX, Slamer, and North Hollywood Spa. The appalling facilities and our inability to make them legal again manifest our collective attitude toward gay sex, and the Google reviews illustrate what we think we deserve. “The whole place smelled of urine, and it is not maintained. It’s filthy, neglected, and has seen better days.” The fallout of AIDS is still with us. Gay sex was against the law in 13 states until 2003. Until the 2003 Supreme Court Of The United States (SCOTUS) decision, Lawrence v. Texas, butt sex was still forbidden in 13 states (including Nebraska, Wyoming, and Idaho, where I grew up). Before that, even if you were doing it in your own home, behind closed doors with another consenting adult, you were breaking the law. That kind of institutional threat is hard to shake off. Pre-Exposure Porphylaxis (PrEP) With the introduction of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medication in the summer of 2012, we finally had a tool to thwart the horrific menace of AIDS. This should have been a good thing, like something we would have thrown a parade to celebrate. Instead, in a bizarrely ironic flame-out, the President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), Michael Weinstein, hated the new treatment, calling it a “party drug” and “a public health disaster in the making.” Weinstein is one of the most significant forces behind the “sex is bad” narrative, spending tons of time and money to keep sex dangerous and scary. Many guys went on PrEP anyway, but very discreetly, because the largest AIDS care institution in the world said it was bad. Quietly, we went from seeing pages and pages of obituaries, the names and faces of dead gays in every issue of Frontiers Magazine, every two weeks, to seeing practically none. For those with access to healthcare, HIV transmission rates plummeted. “But PrEP doesn’t protect you from other sexually transmitted infections!” the naysayers pointed out. Sex is still bad! So, the gays wanting to be perceived as good people (that’s most gays) stayed quiet. Marriage Equality How could this be a bad thing? Stay with me. In 2015, the SCOTUS decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, gave same-sex couples the right to marry. Gays could now legally participate in one of the most overtly shared rituals in civilized society. Along with the dignity of equality came the lure to join heterosexuals in the social climbing games of polite society. No longer marginalized by the law, gays could join straight people in competition for social prestige, where married, monogamous, and parented citizens reign supreme. Open, shame-free sexual liberation was not (and is not) an asset for those wishing to pursue the adulation of general society. With marriage equality, gays went from being society’s archetypal holders of sexual liberation to becoming general society members afraid of being put on the sex scandal list with everyone else. #MeToo unveiled lots of bad sex. The #MeToo movement went viral in 2017, and women finally started to have their voices acknowledged regarding sexual violence. We learned horror stories outlining truly bad sex: non-consensual sex, rape, power manipulation, and coercion. #MeToo was necessary and good, but it had a chilling effect on the discussion and practice of sex. With so many horror stories in the air, it was hard to find reasons to celebrate sex. COVID-19 made human contact deadly again. COVID hit in 2020, and we learned to be afraid of everybody: death tolls and injections on every news cast. Social media algorithms pushed fear to the top of our feeds. We logged more screen time than ever in human history. We began to fear other human bodies and have less sex. Then, we had to relearn how to share the same side of the sidewalk, share the same air with other humans, and touch other human beings again. We’re still recovering from that trauma. “Safe, Sane & Consentual”, “Risk Aware Consensual Kink”, “Stranger Danger”, “Enthusiastic Consent.” Rather than frame sex as a powerful experience capable of enhancing emotional, physical, and relational growth, sex was framed as a seductive monster; sexy and alluring, but ultimately dangerous and damaging. As Race mentioned in his article, many of our efforts to make sex, especially exotic sex, accessible, focused on danger while we forget the liberating parts. Most “sex education” is focused on the horror stories of sex gone bad. It’s no wonder a young person today would rather abstain than face the beast. People’s brains are full of so many sex-related horror stories, from disease to rape; it’s just too much. Add to that a new commitment to screen-based socializing, which strips humans of the ability to interact in person, and we have a recipe for isolation, loneliness, and less sex. DoxyPEP In 2022, San Francisco issued guidelines for DoxyPEP, enabling people to avoid most sexually transmitted infections (STIs). In 2024, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) did the same. The naysayers’ last bit of science proving sex is medically bad for you has evaporated. Quietly, again, very quiet because sex without medical consequences is apparently nothing to celebrate in the press, sex is medically safer than ever before. But we’re not celebrating it. We’re role-playing 1950s America instead. We currently hide gay sex in the shadows like it’s the 1950s. Instead of looking for shoes tapping under a public bathroom stall wall, we launch our sex apps, tap a two-dimensional screen, and have hookups that often feel two-dimensional as well. Guys are f*****g in warehouses, condos, cars, bushes, gyms, cars, bathrooms, and anywhere there’s eager eyes and a bit of cover. Guys sucking c**k are getting kicked out of gyms and dance parties. Warehouse parties are being raided and shut down. Remember when gays had their clubs raided and shut down? Like, three months ago. Way back in the summer of 2025. Looking at you, Los Angeles. Sorry DenLA. WTF? We deserve better! Our di

    21 min

  3. 11/11/2025

    The Community of Men.

    My heart aches to share the community of men. Not a widespread sentiment among left-leaning queers, I know. Inclusiveness — meaning all people of all kinds should be in all spaces, every time we do anything — is the only acceptable way to socialize nowadays. I get it. But, I miss the fuck out of those all-male spaces. Even before sex became important to me, all-male spaces provided the kind of mentoring a boy can only get from men. Like that feeling I had as a 13-year-old Boy Scout, sitting under the stars around a campfire in the Rocky Mountains, singing songs led by mentors who had taught us earlier that day the skills necessary to earn merit badges in First Aid, Cooking, Camping, Citizenship, and so many others. Grown men singing heartfelt renditions of Kumbaya, verse after verse in a call and response: “someone’s laughing Lord, Kum ba ya”…someone’s singing, someone’s crying, someone’s praying. Grown men teaching young men that all of us have a variety of feelings, and somewhere, right now, you’re connected to someone who feels all the feelings, just like you. That sensation of attending early-morning Mormon Priesthood meetings before the sun came up, resenting the early hour but welcoming the skin-to-skin, firm, friendly handshakes with eye contact they taught us to give. I knew my role in the tribe and had a sense of useful responsibility. All of us suited up, unified, ready to take on the challenge of serving our community. The surge of kinship I felt with three other gays in a small car driving from Cheyenne, WY, to Denver, CO, on my first gay pride parade and bathhouse pilgrimage. I was 18. Feeling protected as the older guys (in their 30s/40s) gave me pointers on cruising. “It’s all about eye contact, look into his eyes, and think about what you’d like to do to him. Then pass him and look back, if he does the same, you’re on!” said the driver. “‘I’m just resting,’ means ‘no,’ in the bathes,” said the guy next to me in the back seat. We were all on a mission, pulling for each other to get as much dick as possible. Falling in love. Later that night, on the dancefloor of a Denver gay bar, I fell in love with a boy named Robert as Irene Cara sang, and we slow danced to the opening 45 seconds of “What a Feeling” from the Flashdance soundtrack. That very niche Denver gay bar served “3.2 beer” (regarding its low alcohol content), which the state of Colorado deemed acceptable for 18-21 year olds. My friends were at the cooler, hotter bars for older, 21+ gays, but we had plans to meet up at The Ball Park bathhouse after the bars closed. When the boy I had just fallen in love with turned out to have a jealous, dramatic boyfriend, I couldn’t wait to rendezvous with my comrades at the bathhouse. Feeling grateful for my bathhouse tutoring on the drive down, I seamlessly made it through The Ball Park’s entry process. I was soon standing at the foot of an enormous faux-stone hot tub, fed from above by a two-story indoor waterfall. The sound and scent of water crashing into the hot tub. In the misty open space above, men used the conspicuously placed shower stations lining the floors above to lather up, cruise, and be cruised. Like a chandelier of male sex, I felt their energy rain down on me. The fact that it was still a crime to have gay sex in Wyoming, the state I woke up in that morning, (and the two other states I’d lived in: Nebraska and Idaho), made the three floors of cruising, two hot tubs, a steamroom-cave-maze, a full-sized semi truck cab, a three-tiered orgy/porn room, a giant fish tank, a maze of glory hole booths, what seemed like miles of private rooms, a snack bar, and a dance floor to dance the night away, all the more opulent and liberating. The idea that this playground was designed and made for me and my kind made me feel seen and empowered, like I’d received a gift. I belonged there. I miss the protocol of Men’s Class at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School summer session, where the rituals of the ballet world focused on the specific proclivities of men. The surprisingly delightful competitiveness between us as we showed off for each other and the ballet master. Jumping, turning, and beating our legs together, proving who was best. All of us working to perfect the same art form gave us unity, while we simultaneously competed to be the best, the soloist who stands out. Ballet tights accentuated our crotch mounds and lined the deepest crevases of our well-developed glutes, providing a hormone-charged surge that didn’t occur during mixed class. “Ladies, re-rack your weights!” was a call to order routinely made over the Athletic Club’s speakers. It made me grin every time. There were no ladies. The Athletic Club was not a gay friendly gym; it was a GAY gym. Only one locker room, stacks of free gay publications by the front door, working out with our shirts off, a tanning service, a pool, a kitchen, and sections of glass brick separating the showers from the parking lot so anyone walking by could see the fractal shapes of bodies showering. The stairs up to the sun deck, the sun deck itself, the steam room, the sauna, and the tanning bed rooms all made on-site orgasms possible. The professional masseurs were excellent, gay, and accommodating. During one workout, I looked up to see lots of guys packed around the TV in the kitchen, and I worried something terrible had happened or that some sports thing I knew nothing about was droning on. But when they started laughing and singing along to a scene from the 1956 musical “The King and I,” I was both relieved that nothing bad was happening and happy to know I could chat about “the game” we were all watching at the gym. On the cork bulletin board filled with calling cards and flyers, someone posted a handwritten, anonymous note: “To the man with the Tweety Bird tattoo. I miss you. We never talked, but I always liked you, and I’m so sorry you’re no longer with us.” As much as I love the club feel of the new John Reed in West Hollywood — probably the gayest gym in LA right now, only feet from the old Athletic Club — it will never be a gay club that offers that kind of camaraderie and solace. It was more than a gym; it was a club for gay men. It was home. The book, Man’s Country, More Than A Bathouse, published in 2023, inspired this post. It was open for 44 years, from 1973 until 2017. Here are a few quotes from men who were there: “Going there made me feel safe. It felt comfortable–like we were all connected or a big family in a way.” ~MS (p. 31) “At Man’s Country, we knew each other like brothers of a clan. We trusted each other in sex and morals, and didn’t trust that our society would treat us morally.” ~Jon-Henri Damski (p. 37) “There was sex, entertainment, and food there. Since it was the 1970s, there was lots of positive sex energy. … The thing was, even though I was alone, I felt connected to a broader community at Man’s Country. It was a way to merge community and sex in a positive way.” ~Richard F. (p. 28) “I love the way the sexual mixed with the social. That didn’t exist in any other environment outside of the great bathhouses, and it hasn’t been replicated since.” ~Race Bannon (p. 30) We’ve had these places before: the benefits they provide for building community and dignity are proven. Is it possible to create these places and feel that kind of solidarity again? The only places I’ve felt that kind of gay belonging and fellowship recently have been on cruise ships and warehouse parties. But the fact that neither of them has an address where I can drop in when I need the energy and support of being with my own kind makes me sad. An ephemeral gathering spot that may or may not be shut down at any moment is not the same as a physical location built for us that many regulars eventually call home. In my next post, I’ll discuss why we think sex is bad and how that keeps us from rebuilding these spaces. Until next time, please be good to yourself, Mike This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mikegerle.substack.com/subscribe

    13 min

  4. 07/31/2025

    Yoga, Gonorrhea, and the Middle Way

    Two months ago, I wrote about embracing the yoga practice of sexual restraint, brahmacharya, which is one of the five yamas in the first limb of yoga. Yesterday, I was lying face down on an exam table in my doctor’s office, my cargo shorts pulled down, ass up, and a needle injecting antibiotics into my left ass cheek to treat gonorrhea found in my urine. So, what’s going on? Over the past two months, I’ve spent more of my time doing asana yoga (poses) at a yoga studio than attending my cruisy gym or tapping away on my Grindr app. I’ve done more creative projects: written more, listened to more music, kept up with my singing lessons, cooked more, read more, and planned a group vacation. I’ve spent a lot more time on my own, and that’s been lonely. And… I’ve still had lots of sex. Let’s be honest. Mike Gerle’s sexual restraint is a sexual conservative’s carnal bacchanal. But, relative to my previous hook-up load, I’m guessing I’ve reduced the number of individual encounters by 60%. Has anything really changed? The good little boy inside of me, despite all the deprogramming I’ve invested in, still wants to write a story of immaculate change. Something clinging to my psyche makes me want to tell you how I left a lifetime of kneeling faithfully at the altar of sensual delight to find a more enlightened path free of the demands emanating from my balls. This is at odds with another part of me that wants to tell critics of my sexual behavior to take a nice, long look at my middle finger. The reality of what’s changed is more nuanced than either of those scenarios. My sexual practice is not about pursuing and engaging in sex all day, every day. And it’s not about abstinence, monogamy, or being sex negative. I’m not trying to appease God, an institution, a school, a government, my bio-family, or my chosen-family. I’m a grown ass man now, free to make any choice I want. I even have the support of my husband to explore my sexuality any way I want, even when it makes him jealous. I have the unconditional love of my bio-family who embrace me even when I’m winning gay men’s leather contests and writing a blog called The Sensitive Slut. This is a choice I’m making for myself. I’m trying to choose well. The goal is about finding contentment, a state of being more sustainable than happiness. It’s not about fitting into moral purity defined by someone else What’s changed is being conscious of the intention behind what or who is receiving my most precious resource, which is my attention. Instead of letting an app on my phone seduce me into distraction, I’m doing my best to consciously use my phone to place my attention on something edifying, like connection. So, it is about sexual restraint, using moderation as a tool to maximize contentment with some sustained bouts of hardcore happiness along the way. It’s about making the sex I have as generative as possible. It’s about investing my attention rather than spending it. I’m using sex as one of life’s most potent spices. Like salt, it can transform a sensual experience into delight, or it can disgust the palate. It all depends on how it’s used. At least that’s the theory. Presently, I think I may have overcorrected, like I need a little more salt in my diet. I’ve felt more lonely than I need to. What I’ll continue to lean into. Repeats: I’m picking regulars over randoms Having regular f**k buddies is a new practice for me. Picking a regular over a random hookup has felt really good. I get that this is a normal practice for many guys, like my husband, but for me, it’s new. I’ve noticed that this leads to more “pillow talk” that is deeper than giving them directions out of my building. I’ve learned about their husbands and swapped relationship tips. I’ve experienced a lot more making out, body contact, and eye gazing. Having sex with interesting individuals is more edifying than fucking well-formed meat sacks. Sex venues: Love the one you’re with. At DenLA, a public orgy here in LA, I let my attention stay with the guy I’m with rather than trying to check him off my hotties to do list. There seems to be a short span of time during a sex party hook-up when it’s acknowledged by both guys that the check box has been made, both say thanks, and then on to the next. When I’ve offered to keep going, adding more empathy and sensuality, more love if you will, guys respond extremely well, giving the love back. Even in the middle of an orgy, a giving connection can happen. We’re still geared up, sliding in and out, but the quality of the encounter is vastly different. Some hotties may go unfucked… Parties with a dark room: At a private pool party with a sex space set up in a bedroom near the bathroom, I choose to keep talking to friends outside by the pool rather than stalk the sex space. This led to one very satisfying fuck with a regular and multiple connections with guys I didn’t want to fuck because I was outside by the pool instead of giving all my attention to the sex space. Random Hookups: On apps or in cruising venues like the gym, I look in their eyes (even if it’s on an app) and don’t fool myself when I see crazy in their eyes. I read body language or what they text on an app and follow through with the ones that fit my intention to connect. Work in progress As I said in my original post, this is an experiment, a work in progress. What’s changed for good is pursuing quality over quantity. This requires me to be present with my thoughts and feelings so that I can determine if my intentions are going to be satisfied with who and what I am giving my attention to. This won’t keep me from acquiring gonorrhea from a random, but sweet connections are worth the risk. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mikegerle.substack.com/subscribe

    10 min

  5. 07/23/2025

    We’re a Coalition, Not a Community

    Categorizing LGBTQ+ people as a single community, rather than a broad coalition of diverse groups, is paralyzing the advancement of services, spaces, and political outcomes most of us want. Recognizing our coalition-ness would allow for a greater diversity of thought and, more importantly, more resources for the goals we all agree on. This gay man would rather defeat MAGA authoritarianism and celebrate gay male culture than land a painful blow to any of the other letters in the rainbow alphabet coalition, but the TQ+ letters of our coalition are making that difficult. So, I’m writing this essay. Little, if anything, is being done within the LGBTQ+ Community to further the development of gay culture. Bringing that up is one of the many things that’s unpopular within the current rainbow alphabet zeitgeist.. Differences of thought are simply not allowed. The rainbow alphabet is “all in” on the needs of TQ+. The rest of you need to not only chip in and help, but you also need to accept LGB invisibility. We’re all Queer now. End of story. Only a heretic would share any comment on “gender affirming care” or "puberty blockers” outside of the approved ideological orthodoxy, which is “I agree with anything and everything the TQ+ activists say.” As an LGBTQ+ “Community,” currently dominated by the TQ+s, we are forming circular firing squads, performing purity tests, and then eliminating people, their talent, and their resources rather than building things. We Need To Talk After my last Substack post, "On Edge" (a poem about my political angst), a friend who has always been real with me texted to see if I was okay. I told him about sitting on an essay instead of publishing it because I didn’t want to add more heft to our frighteningly polarized, burn-it-all-down community conversation. But I had to say something, so I wrote the poem. He replied, “I am frustrated with the politics of our community as well. Not sure what the answers are, and it is hard to discuss.” It really is hard to discuss. My friend and I saw each other at two parties soon after that. We didn’t discuss it. The gays I tried to bring it up with quickly changed the subject or excused themselves from my presence. The meta‑message: Only one sanctioned script is safe. Say it wrong, and you’re out! Having any opinion other than “Anything the TQ+s want is what I want” is queer heresy. We Can Share There are enough resources for each letter of the rainbow alphabet coalition to focus on the needs of its own group and then bring those needs to the community conversation. A coalition allows each group (L, G, B, T, Q+, etc.) to: * Identify its own authentic specific needs without apology. * Build its own cultural confidence, spaces, and support structures. * Bring clarified priorities to a central table, like delegations to the UN, where we can collaborate on overlapping agendas. That’s the work our modern LGBT Centers (and allied institutions) need to lean into: conveners, translators, mediators. NOT enforcers of a single orthodoxy. Let’s work together on the things we agree on and let people have diverse opinions. All of us working together on the goals we honestly believe in will result in things being created rather than watching things fall apart as we entertain endless “ouch” sessions that go nowhere. Disagreement ≠ disloyalty. Debate ≠ bigotry. Silence out of fear ≠ solidarity. Need permission? Hey gay! Yeah, I’m talking to you; you have a difficult time asking for anything gay. I understand. During the short time I ran for a seat on the West Hollywood City Council, I quickly learned (in a city that is 40% gay men) that gays don’t give themselves permission to talk about or prioritize gay stuff. Don’t worry, we can do gay stuff while simultaneously working on broader, alphabet coalition stuff as well. Consider this your permission slip! You have permission to use your agency to advocate for your gay self. Let’s Do It! Let’s celebrate the freedoms our hard-won civil rights victories afford us. * Let’s build physical spaces for gay men to drop into and discuss the realities of being homos. * Let’s work towards opening European-style bathhouses. * Let’s host annual gay men’s conferences to develop strategies on everything from coming out to dying with dignity. * Let’s change the laws that make that possible. Currently, we are not working towards ANY of those goals. Just Gays and LGBs are Talking Some gay, lesbian, and bisexual people (same-sex attracted people) are already talking about it. If you look beyond polite silence, there’s a growing set of LGB‑forward or gay‑led platforms wrestling with these tensions: The Queer Majority (Substack), HumanGayMale, Just Gay Germany, and the various LGB Alliance orgs (UK, USA, Australia, Germany, Norway, Ireland). Unfortunately, a lot of their conversations focus on TQ+ issues they believe are at odds with LGB issues. I want more strategy sessions on building LGB infrastructure that celebrates and preserves LGB cultures. Many in these groups are quite angry–like I was when I wrote the piece I didn’t post. I’m doing my best to keep most of my attention on creating things for gays and less on calling out the negative impacts of TQ ideologies on LGB people. But I am writing this essay, so I obviously think there are things wrong with our current political and operational configuration. I listened to Andrew Sullivan on The Queer Majority podcast with Ben Appe and found it enlightening. It dives deep into the problems of TQ ideology. Here’s a taste: “We have little in common. LGBs love their own sex while TQs are in conflict with their own sex.” I’ll let Sullivan parse out those issues while I keep my focus on gay stuff. His interview is particularly compelling because Sullivan is speaking publicly with another gay man on these heretical issues. So far, the only gay on gay conversations I’ve had on these issues have been well hidden from public view. One was with a massage client in my studio after his massage. He works at the LGBT Center in Los Angeles and can not speak his mind at work about the dearth of gay offerings. Others have occurred with acquaintances in one-on-one conversations in the sauna at the gym or with f**k buddies in the sanctum of a bedroom. So far, here in Los Angeles, every gay-gay conversation I have had on these issues has been in the shadows. These conversations shouldn’t feel rare in 2025, but they are. Let’s change that. Most But Not All I have always supported non-discrimination in public accommodations for TQ+ people as outlined in Title II Of The Civil Rights Act. Let’s get LGBTQ+ folks included in that law! I support TQ+ people on most of their issues, but our issues are sufficiently dissimilar to require different lobbying groups. Things I will fight for alongside every letter of the rainbow alphabet: * Non‑discrimination / civil rights inclusions. * Protection from violence and harassment. * Mental health support and suicide prevention. * Youth safety and anti‑bullying measures. * Accessible evidence‑informed healthcare free from political distortion. Let’s Talk: Invest In Gay Culture We can keep policing language and reciting scripts, or we can mature into a coalition that trusts its authentically expressed parts to flourish and then collaborate. Differentiation plus solidarity is a strength formula, not a weakness. Let’s evolve from performative unanimity to productive pluralism (a fundamental liberal idea), and start building the things we still need. Let’s talk about gay stuff. I’ll host. Small groups, Zoom salons, in-person meetups, something. If you’re game, feel free to drop a comment, forward this to a friend, or reply privately. Let’s sketch out what a functioning coalition looks like in practice. Because if we don’t build it, we’ll just keep fighting over words like, community, while the spaces we’ve already built continue to fade into nothingness. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mikegerle.substack.com/subscribe

    15 min

  6. 06/26/2025

    On Edge

    You are not reading the post I had prepared for today. The hot vomit of my pain Attacking the confusion this old gay man feels in the Rainbow tribe of 2025. Written in blind fury.Staggeringly numb. On edge, teetering on the precipice of oblivionUnaware of its grip on my heart. This heart, clenched. These guts, a slithering knot. My presence in this moment; Impossible. The venomous edge stalks like a desperate lover. Full of blame, attack, defiance, rage… He’s a gaslighting lover. Insisting my existence is at risk while this body swallows freshly cooked organic food in my cozy condo… He pretends not to be here. Invisibility clever, Void of reflection, Death without renewal. Insisting I am separate from the tribe, From the tribe of humans… Better than, smarter than, Wiser, kinder, gentler… A poisonous muse. Words flew with vigor from my fingertipsCharged with venomRipping open the fear in my soul Spilling blame on those closest to me… For who else can withhold the sustenance I need? I’m on edge. But with eyes open, With heart open,I reluctantly acknowledge This reality is not mine alone. We are ALL on edge. Who in this moment has not been abandoned by their people? Rainbow lovers eating their own, A country no longer protected by law, Workers unable to breath free, Elders forgotten and discarded, Children entering a planet on fire. Today, I will not add more faggots to fuel of the pyre of fear and seperatrion, With embarrassed reluctance, I reach out. Acknowledge the shared pain. I bow to my ancestors, Placed in front of me through the prayers of chosen family. Thank you, father.Thank you, Bill Gerle. “If it’s not about love and kindness, it’s not a conversation worth having.” I just want to cry. The tears have been many,So many, Each one a blessing. Allowing me to fall apart in the fertile strength of known wisdom. Only love. Only love. Only love. Going Deep: A Gay Guide to Reality is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mikegerle.substack.com/subscribe

    6 min

  7. 06/11/2025

    Gay Party Politics: Who’s In, Who’s Out, and Why It Matters

    Thanks for the invite. Who’s coming? When we receive an invite to an all gay event, what’s the first thing we do? Sure, we look at the theme of the party, the location, the date, but those are usually secondary considerations to the big question, “who’s going?” This is really a multiprong question: Will I feel comfortable with these guys? Is there anyone there I’d like to to date or f**k? Will anyone there want to date or fuck me? Will these guys bore me to death? Basically, am I physically and intellectually attracted to the guys who are going, and will they have a hankering for what I have to offer? The current political consensus of our people demands inclusiveness. As I understand the edict, nothing should prevent us from inviting every type of human expression (body shape/size, sex, gender identity, ability, color, or socioeconomic background) to our event. That’s “inclusive,” and it’s the right thing to do. Right? Is that what you’re thinking as you scroll the invite list? I’m guessing it’s not your highest priority. Are we already breaking the rules by just inviting gay men? Of course we are. And, of course, we’ll keep doing it. Because that’s how diversity works, we can’t have cultural diversity if we don’t have a diversity of cultures. Gay male culture is defined by our same sex attraction for one another. Yes, we share many other common interests, like show tunes, but no attribute is as universal as our same sex attraction. That aspect is intrinsic to our gay get-togethers. It’s often the centerpiece, whether overtly recognized or not. This causes a conundrum for those who want to create an affinity group (exclusive space) and your friend group is a mixed crowd, many of whom will not qualify, when one of the aims of the gathering is to provide space for erotic connections. This creates an awkward challenge as I continue my experiment of finding heart-centered connection instead of churning through meaningless sexual encounters. Meaningless sex is a simple endeavor: We both decide if we want what the other guy has. We both give and take. Done. Goodbye forever. Heart-centered connections that include an erotic overlay are vastly more complicated, mainly because we genuinely want the best for guys we care about and don’t want to add any negative baggage to the often heavy psychic load many of us are already carrying. “You’re not invited,” or “Thank you, but I don’t want to dance with you,” creates tension. Before I move on, let me be clear that there are all kinds of other “gay” events (that are usually not all gay men) where this is completely a non-issue. Events like banquette fundraisers, which are a whole culture themselves, where your donation is your most attractive feature; gay sports teams, where your athletic ability is the premium feature; and political clubs, where your connections, ability to mesmerize a room, and access to cash make you politically attractive. When a gay event also includes the possibility of erotic connection, the politically correct mantra of everyone, everywhere, all the time, or else you're a scumbag bigot, wears thin. A problem with the “everyone is equally beautiful” mantra is that it is simply not true. Physical beauty is determined by millions of years of evolution, and a fat dollop of conditioning received via social media. You may want Ryan Gosling to want you back (I know I do), but giving him all your attention deprives you of the opportunities available to you with other guys–the guys who are aesthetically similar to you. Another hard reality is to be realistic about whom you have access to on a physical level. “LA is a city of 10s looking for an 11,” was a line in an old gay movie called Latter Days that still rings true. All those 10s are wasting time. Anyway, for those of you planning or attending sexually social events, here are a couple of ideas you can try out to make the gatherings more fulfilling. * Admit that private affinity groups exist and honor people’s decision to have them. This means finding it in your heart to cheer them on for taking the risk and making an effort to create such a group, even when you are not invited. There is a sex party in LA that only allows men under 40. I don’t qualify, but I remember when I was under 40, I would have LOVED such a party. So good on them. * Learn how to say “no” and hear “no” with grace. These boundary-setting techniques are something most of us were never taught. I know I had to learn them the hard way after years of having sex with guys just to be nice. Now, as my beauty recedes like the tide, I’m getting more opportunities to see and hear “no,” which I gotta say is very often done with grace. And it’s still not easy to receive. Processing rejection gracefully is work. But it’s worth it, so we can keep being friends. More about “No.” Both receiving and communicating “no” have their own challenges. Receiving “No.” Receiving “no” gracefully starts as a passive action (just don’t cause a scene), but then requires the active internal work of processing rejection. That’s big. Metabolizing that moment is essential to not ruining the rest of your night. Unless you’ve reached a permanent state of Enlightenment (Samadi), you will most likely need to process a pretty heavy feeling. For me, that feeling usually manifests in the gut, just below my rib cage. Interestingly, that is the home of our third chakra, the home of personal power, confidence, self-esteem, and willpower. Having your desirability and viability challenged is particularly challenging for men. No matter how gay you think you are, as a man, you have been conditioned from birth to confront assaults on your power, confidence, and self-esteem. So it’s likely to elicit an aggressive reaction from your ego. Love is the only way out of this. It allows you to respond from your higher self as opposed to reacting from your ego. First, love yourself: remember you are a Spark of the Divine. You deserve care and attention. If you’re not receiving it from pretty boy X, no matter what your ego tells you, let it go. Get out your love radar instead. Where is the love, gurl? Follow the ping leading you to where the love is. That is most likely a friend who, trust me, will love commiserating with you about being shot down. Second, and this is much harder, try to recognize and love the Spark of the Divine in the person who rejected you. I know it’s hard with pretty people, but try. He has his own path, and he’s exercising his agency, which, I hope, is what you would like to do as well. Communicating “No.” Communicating “no” requires you to love yourself enough to honor and implement your boundaries, while, at the same time, using as much empathy as possible to let your fellow gay down easy. Keep your distance. When you want to fuck a guy, one way to show your interest is to stand unnecessarily close. It works. And, doing the opposite —keeping your distance —works just as well. If you are in a group with him, like a naked game night or a group at the club, focus your attention on someone else. Make space between you and him. No touching. Turn your back. Go to the bathroom, the bar, or simply walk away. Have things gotten a little handsy? Nonchalantly move his hand. Like you’re moving something out of the way for him. Oh, here, let me put that where it belongs. Do it with your eyes on his and he’ll get the message. Phrases I’ve heard which allowed us both to keep our dignity are, “I’m good.” (after touching a guy on the dance floor), “I don’t like being touched.” (probably a lie, but made it his problem), and “I’m not here for that.” Is he pushy? Is he an ass? Moving his hand with a slight crushing squeeze conveys the message. And, looking him directly in the eyes and saying, “I’m not into this; please move on.” Exercise your agency, your ability to make a choice. Don’t expect him to read your mind. He may already be picking out cake toppers for your wedding cake. He may be too drunk or high. Or, he may be misreading your good nature as an invitation. When you get the vibe it’s time to move on, do it. Do not feel obligated to stay with anyone you’re not feeling it with. And. Do NOT give him your phone number or social media account. Unless, of course, you’d like to string out the long good-bye for days, weeks, or months. Going Deep: A Gay Guide to Reality is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mikegerle.substack.com/subscribe

    14 min

  8. 05/16/2024

    The Disorienting Quiet of a Post-AIDS Reality

    This post is sexually explicit and very AIDS-y. Two states older gay men know well. Those adhering to the standard narrative I wrote about in my last post will find this content disquieting.  So, with that warning, here goes.    * A few months ago, on my knees, among hundreds of bodies writhing around me, a cock in my mouth exploded with a rare load in the G-dosed molly-spiked energy of a dance party dark room. I looked up and smiled with gratitude at the guy, who nodded down at me with a satisfied grin.  No thoughts of death or disease, just the pure ecstasy of pleasure.  No awkward whispers of HIV status. No recent funerals. No belongings to sift through. No forever friends with months, weeks, or days to live. No wondering who will die next. No wondering if it will be me.  Just raw pleasure thanks to drugs that now shield us from transmission–from drama.  And as I make my way back to the main party, it hits me that this is it. This is as good as the celebration of the end of the plague is going to get: a gaping void of drama.  It makes me wonder if my nightmare memories are true.  Did a male nurse sit across from me in the San Diego County Health Office in 1986 and tell me that I had less than eighteen months to live and I most likely would not see the age of 23?  That same year, did a scumbag named Lyndon H. LaRouche get Proposition 64 on the California ballot that would have placed HIV+ people into concentration camps?  Did my best friend Alvin die the next year? Did I give my first eulogy at 22? Was I getting bloodwork done every three months, for free, at the Edelman clinic in West Hollywood, where the new library is now? In 1991, did tears steam down my face when I looked at my chart and saw that my T-cells were about to fall below 200, the point at which all the opportunistic infections that pave the way to death begin?  Was I the only one there to take care of my boyfriend Tony until he died because his parents couldn’t cope with finding out their son was gay and had AIDS all at the same time?  Did I give my second eulogy at 26 on the baseball diamond of Poinsettia Park without their permission after Tony died?  Did I hook up with a guy, use a condom to f**k him, and then a few days later see him on the street in front of the parking garage where I work when he asked casually, “You’re negative, right?”  Did that happen again with another guy, in bed, right AFTER sex?  Was there a constant debate about who should disclose first? The negative guys thought it should be the positive guys. After all, they had the deadly concealed weapon. The positive guys thought it should be the negative guys. Hey, you guys have the most to lose. I was always honest, always used a condom, and thought the person who cared the most should start the boner-killing conversation.  Did I start having sex exclusively with HIV+ guys because of all that drama and the weight of possibly infecting someone else?  Yes! The drumbeat of AIDS-driven fear was ever present.  Like, when two guys with British accents took me into one of the cock sucking booths at the Zone sex club in Los Angeles. The sexual heat between the three of us was fierce, and I loved that they took turns using my ass. I’m still perplexed by the look on one of their young faces after he came. It turns out he wasn’t wearing a condom. His load was inside me. Was that an expression of guilt, fear, shame, or something else? It certainly wasn’t ecstasy.  For those of us who were positive, the drumbeat pounded like a metronome: every three months, bloodwork, results, doctor visit, repeat – bloodwork, results, doctor visit, repeat.   The guys who were HIV-negative got tested when they thought they should. Having a negative result was a reprieve, tempting these men to stretch the time to the next test when the ax might fall.  Finding ways to get off with another guy without causing more death led to lots of jerking each other off, in-person voyeurism, and dry humping.  Eros and death were constant companions.  Finally, a rich and famous straight guy named Magic Johnson was infected and was willing to talk about it. This normalized the disease enough for non-gays to start understanding. “Oh, you have what Magic has,” is what a friend of mine reported his brother saying.  Magic is how my husband, who’s almost 17 years younger than me and was born the same year AIDS was identified, learned about HIV. Hiding in his parents' room, he watched a kid's show hosting Magic Johnson.  Going to funerals became a regular occurrence for everyone affected by the plague, HIV+, HIV-, gay, lesbian, and straight. No one was spared the losses.  “What do you think when you’re having sex with a guy you haven’t talked about HIV with?” I asked my brutally honest HIV- best friend.  “Are you Satan?” was his honest answer.  So, what do you think about me? I thought.  In places like Los Angeles, positive guys started having their own sex parties. I visited the Downey Boys party, where I met my first “bug chaser.” He was a negative guy who was so stressed about becoming HIV+ that he wanted to force his seroconversion.  Even on the International Mister Leather convention floor, arguably one of the most sex-positive spaces in the United States, bareback porn exhibitors were banned. The wails of drama surrounding that decision are legendary.  First, there was no treatment for the disease, and then AZT, Saquinavir, Viramune, Combivir, Crixivan, and others came out. Some needed to be taken every four hours, some with food, some without food. AZT made my mouth taste like metal all the time, and Crixivan made my urine thick and burn.  Finally, the “drug cocktail” came out. One pill, twice a day, that didn’t make my dick burn.  And very quietly, everyone stopped dying.  “I wonder what everyone’s going to do when we finally have a cure?” I said to my sober HIV+ friend Randy over brunch with six other gays. “Can you imagine the party we’re going to have?”  He leaned across the table and said in a whisper, “It’s already here.”  He was right, but it was still easy to get infected.  And then, PrEP (pre-exposure prophylactic) came out. An HIV- guy could take one pill a day that was more effective than a condom at stopping the transmission of HIV.  Then we found out that guys with an undetectable viral load do not shed the virus. It was dubbed U=U (undetectable equals untransmittable). Which was a bit irritating to me because I’d been undetectable for at least five years by the time that information was made available.  I had been less of a poria than I thought.  The final drama tsunami came from Michael Weinstein, who ran and still runs the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF). He called PrEP a party drug. He said it was dangerous and a lot of other nonsense. The man just hates sex, finds delight in curtailing it, and worries PrEP will both encourage sex and lower his client base.   Some gays had a religious-like attachment to condoms. It was a price we paid to show our love for our brothers, they explained. To them, having condomless sex was an insult to our community. It was impossible for them to grasp a new reality where pre-AIDS era gay sex could once again be enjoyed.  But the new reality played itself out with real-life data. The pages and pages of obituaries in Frontiers Magazine (essentially the gay press in Los Angeles) were gone from the bi-weekly publication. And once the obituaries where gone, so were the condoms.  We let Michael Weinstein and the condom worshipers talk themselves out, and about a year later, their tsunami of drama fell to a whimper.  And then… Silence.  Like having my windows open as my next-door neighbor's leaf blower groans away, I became so accustomed to the loud drama that when it was turned off, the silence was deafening.  Like AIDS deaths and all the drama that came with it, never happened.  To add a sexual cherry on top of this good news, we now have a drug protocol based on how gay men actually f**k, which is a lot, for preventing most of the other sexually transmitted infections PrEP doesn’t prevent. DoxyPEP uses an antibiotic that’s been around for ages to minimize the transmission of common STIs.  So now, the only reason for a person to hate sex for pleasure is because a person finds pleasure in hating sex.  See the Standard Narrative.  So now what?  First, we need to repair the damage done to our sex spaces. Let’s look at those laws still on the books requiring owners of sex establishments to go around with flashlights checking guys f*****g in their venue's dark rooms, steam rooms, and rooms that aren’t allowed to lock, making sure cocks going into buttholes have condoms on them.  While we are at it, let’s make these sex spaces communal gathering spaces for gay men. Let’s follow the European model of bathhouses where a gay can get off, then talk about it over drinks and dinner in the same venue. Let’s allow them to offer spa-like services like massage.  These arcane rules in our liberal cities, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, need to be changed. In my post, Feeling Sexy and Socially Homeless, I argue that these spaces not only give us orgasms, but they also give us a sense of purpose and meaning, two perceptions of reality that actually lengthen our lifespans.   But we can’t do that until we believe we deserve a place to be who and what we are.  What will it take for us to believe that?  What will it take to break the silence?  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mikegerle.substack.com/subscribe

    13 min
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A retired WeHo gay exploring the correlation between sex and meaning. mikegerle.substack.com

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