Labels “bore” him, but if he had to choose just one, it would probably be this one: heteroflexible. Interview with a thirty-something who enjoys theorizing about his sexuality.
David*, whom we met recently in a small neighborhood café, also advocates a certain form of “fluidity” in his relationships. “I like possibilities,” our intriguing interlocutor explains straight away. “That’s what interests me!”
You’re not following anymore? Fortunately, David, a rather handsome boy, doesn’t need to be asked twice to tell his story. And to explain himself. It clearly does him good. He also begins his story quite naturally, by recounting his “doctor” games as a child. “I thought it was beautiful!” He remembers, when he was older, having fun with a friend afterwards. “It was a discovery. Very healthy, huh!” he says, punctuating his memories with as many reflections.
If he explores very young with obvious ease, on the love side, it turns out to be more complicated. “I’m a nice boy,” David explains here. And like many, I had this belief that if I was nice, girls would understand. But… obviously no, it doesn’t work like that!”, he laughs today, speaking of his “dripping romanticism” of then.
So he has a few girlfriends as a teenager, but nothing lasts. “You’re too nice,” he is told, repeatedly.
Still. He still remembers his first sexual encounter, around the age of 16. “Wonderful!” he beams. The same goes for his first blowjob: “It made me cry, wow! Incredible!”
Note that his kindness is transposed to bed at the time.
I was more influenced by the anti-porn discourse than by porn.
David, mid-thirties
What do you mean? “I really don’t want it to be too much, otherwise people will think I’ve watched too much porn,” he fears. In addition to thinking that “insults in bed are not respectful.” “And then, I understood that some people can appreciate it!” he adds, looking knowing.
David actually ends up understanding several things through reading and online research. His sexual curiosity also leads him to look into different practices, including libertinism and non-exclusivity. All this in a very intellectual way, it must be said.
Until, in his mid-twenties, he finally moved from theory to practice and signed up to a libertine site. There, he had a few adventures, including with a man. “It’s been 10 years since I did anything with a man, I’m going to try again,” he explains. “And it went very well.”
But no, if you’re wondering, he doesn’t consider himself “bi” for all that. “I don’t claim to be bi, but rather heteroflexible,” he qualifies. And few people are aware of this. “I don’t necessarily want to claim it, because it’s very contextual!”
In short, “I have no problem sleeping with a man in a libertine context. It’s fun if, in addition, it can excite women,” he says. “But I don’t fall in love!”
This “context” will also emerge more regularly during what David calls his sexual “golden age.” Between the ages of 25 and 30, to be exact, he starts having more adventures. He is more at ease and, suddenly, his encounters are also more fruitful. “I think I have adopted a behavior more expected of a man,” he intellectualizes here. In a word: less nice. Probably more enterprising. “Once the anxiety of the encounter has passed, I discover things, different positions, ways of doing things, tender, or more intense,” he illustrates. “I like to see how people express themselves in intimacy.”
David also continues here on the libertinage side, first with four (with a “frequenter” of the moment and another couple), then with ten. What does he remember from it? “A lot of laughter!”, he answers, without the slightest hesitation.
Sleeping with friends, I find it more relieving than being in a relationship. There is something serious and heavy in being in a relationship…
David, mid-thirties
To theorize (since it’s his hobby): “as much as I’m interested in flexibility, I’m also interested in friendships,” he says. And then, he doesn’t really appreciate this stereotypical “dichotomy” between the “couple” on one side and the “one-night stands” on the other. “Is a one-night stand really just for sex?”
But don’t go labeling him a libertine, even if he happily conjugates the word (“I am a libertine”, “we are libertines”). As we have said, David does not appreciate being put in a box. “I don’t call myself a libertine even if I really like libertinism. People will think that I have an animal or consumerist sexuality, but that is not the case at all.”
Let’s say instead that he “flirts around” and has fun here and there, from “frequentation” to “frequentation”, until he makes a “girlfriend”, a young woman with whom he falls in love, in her late twenties. “And I integrated the not very ethical non-exclusivity”, he slips. In other words: he cheated on her? “Well, yes, he concedes. If we start from the principle that exclusivity is the norm…”
Without transition, he continues with a new adventure, with a new young woman, who this time turns out to be “toxic”. As if no, libertines are not immune to episodes of jealousy, we guess. And we guess right. “She was very possessive,” he confirms. “And I completely denied myself…”
The story ends up (badly) ending, in the middle of a pandemic, to boot. Since then? “It’s complicated,” David replies, as the established formula goes. Now in his thirties, he has noticed that dating is increasingly difficult. Either he comes across women who are coming out of a long relationship and who absolutely do not want to commit, “or on the contrary they want children and a condo!” Gone is the coveted “relationship flexibility,” he laments.
“But I want to share my non-exclusivity with someone!” he says.
Is this where you hang up? You’re not alone. A friend once told David, “It must be exhausting being you!” We kindly agree.
“I wish I could put a label on it,” he muses. “Cis, white, polyamorous, libertine, I’m all that, and so much more!” […] I don’t make it the central element of my identity!” What is the “central” element, then? The “fluidity of possibilities,” he recalls with a smile. Why, exactly? “You can experience so much with the right people!”
* Fictitious name, to protect his anonymity.