on body positivity, sexuality, being attracted to a straight man, and depression
I am almost entirely naked, except for a skimpy pair of underwear I bought myself sometime after a breakup. To heal a wound, I might have thought, or otherwise, to look incredibly appealing to other men. I am on my back, crisping under the sun, previously slathered in sunscreen, at least. Across, from my ledge to the other, my phone is mounted into a small tripod. The little remote is between my fingers. A model alone, I am without lighting crews, or those white umbrellas, without a photographer, and without the complete confidence I can pull this off successfully and look good doing so.
A friend came with the suggestion: you pose by the pool on your back with one hand grazing the surface of the water, as if testing for temperature. He suggested clothing-optional, nudity, but I rerouted in my head—I had a black thong sitting in the closet unworn for quite some time. More appropriate for Instagram. More appropriate for the wider audience who would see it.
I take a handful of photographs, tapping the button that synced with my phone. No timer necessary. I pose, shifting my body on the warm stone. There is no telling what my face is doing or whether it looks sexy or not. I adjust, try something different, snap more photographs. Shimmying up, I dart around the edge of the pool, only somewhat afraid of an elderly passerby catching a glance at a twenty-something gay man in only black underwear. Around the other side, I scroll through an assortment of pictures I would think about sharing. Careful, too, about the image I would be presenting. This version of myself people would be unfamiliar with.
Scantily-clad.
Almost naked.
And not behind closed doors.
It was a strange way to welcome in the new year. Grumpily awoken by my own body and its charms, it was 12:03am on the first day of the first month of 2025 and I figured I would check my notifications before I attempted to fall back asleep again. There was a sort of ulterior motive to it—I’d messaged someone I was attracted to before passing out and I wanted to see if he had responded. We continued talking, because he had, and the grogginess of being awake at midnight at the dawn of a new year sent electric bolts through my body. Do it now or else you’re starting another year without clarity, I heard in my head, the common, vapid voice that echoes out of my mouth too.
Do not start 2025 in confusion. Ask the damn boy whether he is attracted to men or not.
For context: I am not very well-adapted to developing feelings for people I know in person. Usually, I completely avoid the possibility of anything ever happening because I can be logical and assume the man is straight. On dating apps, if I develop even a quiver of feeling for someone, at least I know he’s queer too. When I started getting closer to someone I saw frequently enough in person, I couldn’t figure out whether he liked my company because he wanted to befriend me or if he just didn’t know how to flirt with me properly. Little things made trying to understand him more complicated—because I couldn’t simply know he was queer and into me based on something like a swipe on my profile.
By New Year’s Eve 2024, I had well enough assumed he was a straight man looking for a wife and not a gay lapdog. But then he was calling me sweetheart baby darling jokingly—for I know he was joking—and it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that I had no reassurances he was interested in me like that. It didn’t matter that I knew and know he could find better, regardless of my intentions. [I was not looking to date him or anything so romantic, nor did I want sex, considering my aegosexuality.]
It didn’t matter because I could hold onto the confusion, the fractured glimmers, the more-reasonable idea that a person would not want to be my friend, they would want to romance me and toss me aside afterwards instead. Self-esteem levels have never been higher, what do you mean…
On New Year’s Eve 2024, heart beating, I made a silly but hopefully smooth attempt at gleaming his sexuality once and for all. Unsurprisingly, he is a straight man looking for a wife, not a queer, idiotic, awkward puppy.
Not once did I tear myself down to have to force myself back up again. This resolution was merely that—a clear resolution to the confusion. He is straight, you have a penis, now get back to work and shout happy fucking new year because you are only alive until you are not.
This story might, at first glance, feel a tad irrelevant. Being minorly disappointed a man isn’t interested in me does not directly equal a poolside photoshoot or a decision to post tasteful nudity on an Instagram Close Friends story.
But someone asked me today why I started. Why I suddenly had the urge to share my body more often online, why I am talking to more queer people about body positivity and my cock, why I feel confident wearing only a thong in a picture that people from high school have now seen. I’d paused, cocking my head. I don’t know, I said. Maybe I really did believe in that philosophy, that life simply is too short and we must be living it more vibrantly. More shirtlessly, apparently.
The new year signifies change. Forever and always, it is a human tradition to observe the end and the beginning of this time structure we have crafted for ourselves and change. Or want to, or attempt to. January rolled around and I decided to be internet-sluttier—that is an oversimplification. The wee hours of the first of January dissipated, I had no more reason to avoid being realistic, and I needed to get over my feelings for a straight man who was never flirting with me.
I returned to my body.
A body I once hated, once tormented, once overfed and then whined about later. Stories collect in my head of times I vomited up the food I had stuffed in my mouth. Times I shied away from talk about our bodies because I thought mine was bloated and chubby. It has been a long journey for me to be comfortable in my own skin and to only jokingly call my stomach chubby.
Every so often I come to a conclusion that there are bound to be people who follow me on Instagram who would be receptive to my tasteful nudity if only they had the means in which to access it without me awkwardly trying to flirt with them or send them the pictures out of the blue. The idea came to me, and stuck: I would pose it plainly, if you like this story, you can see more of this towel-draped man. Other ideas stuck too—people would be disgusted, people would think me a nudist freak, people would lose respect for me because I was displaying my body more publicly. But no one ever uttered an impolite word (yet). They’re polite, for keeping judgement hidden, reserved. People are bound to criticise me. The naked body is still considered taboo regardless of cultural shifts, and I’m an awkward nerd who lacks the personality to really embody true confidence.
There’s a sense of freedom to posing for the camera and exposing yourself at your most vulnerable. The discomfort around hating your body strips away, because other people, other men, are telling you your body is gorgeous and attractive to them. It matters, to lift up your own body confidence and lift up other people’s. Of course, you need to find the balance—don’t get too caught out on the attention for your body. The likes, the heart-eyes, the you’re so hots. Inflate the ego but tie off the end before it pops.
This attention is a good distraction. From being attracted to someone there is no chance with, from the crazed state of the world, from my depression. Life is complicated for me and it is currently a standstill, a mess of no progression and days that blend into one. Finding a new outlet not only to express myself but for creativity is positive and exciting. When my writing was getting nowhere, I could turn to ideas like positioning myself naked in a chair with only a book to cover my genitalia. True, nothing explicitly new when it comes to tasteful nudity, but I felt a sense of creativity in setting it up that I had been lacking without fiction. Now I’m brainstorming ideas around, thinking up what to do like I believe myself to be some Content Creator. In truth, I have no skin in the game—this is all for self-expression, for appreciating my body and not looking at pictures of myself with mild disgust. Maybe I believe I need facial expression training so I look sexier when I stare down the camera. But I know and believe my body isn’t hideous.
An interesting part of my sexuality is how disconnected I am from sex. I share not for the attention it might bring in finding me sexual partners, because I would rather cuddle up to someone and give them sloppy kisses. In a certain light, then, this comfort I have for sharing my body is the stripping back of viewing it as a sexual thing, as something I would expose to someone moments before we had sex. Because I don’t see my body as something inherently to be sucked, fucked, etc., I feel a lot of neutrality around sharing it. Not so much with the assumption that I want everyone to look at it and ogle it, but with the idea that if people do, I don’t need them to tell me what they want to do with it.
It isn’t difficult to navigate away from the people who sexualise my body, and I recognise in posting this content I’m responsible in a sense for it too. When I pose in the nude with only a book covering my junk, I am inevitably inviting in the people who want to see what is hidden beneath the copy of Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train—don’t ask me why I chose that book, I do not know, maybe the undertone of homoeroticism in the novel leapt out at me. I did take a series of shots without the book, varying in erectness. I come prepared.
There is no point blaming or complaining that the majority of the rest of the queer world wants to see my completely naked body and ogle my penis or stare at my butt. We’re horned-up, hypersexual beings who want to flee from the depression of society by way of masturbation. I sound like someone’s English Lit professor uncle but the point remains: horny queer men like cock. Genetics was kind enough to bless me with a penis not to be ashamed of. The unique position of being aego, of not wanting to put out but being horny regardless, means I grapple with my ease and comfort for sharing my naked body, my erect penis, my ass, but know that inevitably the wall will come up. At some point, we take a pause for me to explain myself.
Sometimes I feel a little like a traitor.
I avoid making comments I don’t intend on keeping—I don’t say, damn, now that’s a cock I would love to suck, or, fuck me daddy, at least not seriously. In the past those comments would get me in trouble, because despite the protection of distance and a phone screen, those people would ask me when? I am comfortable in my sexuality now to avoid making mistakes, to avoid the ideas of being able to sexually please someone. I say I’m a cuddles and making-out type of guy and wait for the inevitable rejection. I know people want sex. I know it might be confusing, seeing someone who talks adamantly about being uncomfortable having sex then post himself vulnerably almost-naked.
My aegosexuality still embraces my dick-loving, masturbation-loving, men-loving self. It isn’t so complicated skirting around the comments like let me put that thing in my mouth. I used to want to be an actor. [Please note this does not mean I enjoy lying to anyone, I try not to lie, although I suppose writing fiction is kind of like lying for art, but when I am talking to other men I am not writing fiction.]
When I first started sharing more of my body to a wider audience, Taylor Swift’s song “Slut!” was stuck in my head, because I was worried about perception. People who view me a certain way are potentially going to see me differently now that I show more and more of my hairy shirtless torso. There is no point trying to control your narrative from other people’s perspective—and if they call me a slut, you know it might be worth it for once. My love for Taylor has fallen off in recent years, so I feel a certain avoidance about including references like this when I know so many people will start screaming at a mention of their favourite. But if someone wants to call me a slut, I might as well embrace it. An aegosexual slut doesn’t really make any sense and that’s a perfect descriptor of me—confusing, weird, does not make sense.
There has been a lot of talk around why I suddenly feel even more comfortable sharing my body online. The beginning of a new year, a desire to forget feelings, depression, body positivity, the inability to cum because of new antidepressant medication. [The last part is unfortunately true and is probably ~too much information~ but I am depressed that all I have been doing is edging since the beginning of January.]
‘You shouldn’t be resorting to vulnerability because you’re depressed,’ I hear echo in the hollow chamber of my brain. Maybe not, but I have a certain clarity too around knowing that my life is short, and currently riddled with pain. I truly could die any day now. A car could swerve off the road and kill me instantly. A piano could fall out of the sky and squash me like a pancake. My stomach could burst; my brain could aneurysm. Could aneurysm or could have an aneurysm? I don’t know. I could just suddenly stop breathing because the invisible blockage in my throat could solidify.
Maybe I do love the attention.
Maybe I love the compliments and the ideas and the vulnerability.
Maybe I shouldn’t have shaved off the damn moustache.
[It’ll grow back.]
Maybe someone will read this and feel even more confused, or find me less attractive, or have some sort of opinion. Maybe someone will think I am too inside my head. Maybe I shouldn’t care.
If you enjoy and appreciate looking at my body, thank you for looking. Respectfully, I appreciate you too. If you simply just don’t need to see that, I respect it and understand. I’m no shapeshifting god to be the perfect ideal body for everyone. I will appeal to who I appeal to.
If you read this far, thank you. I hope I sound coherent.
I embrace being a loony weirdo, so I acknowledge I am not to everyone’s taste, both in personality and in appearance. Being comfortable with myself, having proper self-esteem that isn’t inherently in the shitter, it is important to me.
I do not apologise for being aggressively blunt. Smiley face.
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