Ask Beastly: I’m 19 and I Think I’m Broken

Kinks aren’t the enemy. Shame is.

Hi, man. Look, I'm a 19-year-old guy, and I guess I'm gay. I don't like the word; it just doesn't fit my personality. I'm shy and really anxious, so I always overthink things, not to the level that I can't talk to someone, but a bit neurotic. I know I've liked men for as long as I can remember. The first time I felt arousal I was 2 years old, watching TV I just saw cute guys and my penis would stand up, I didn't know what it was, just that I liked it. Once I asked my mom what it was, and she just laughed at me, and I just ignored the fact.

I would talk to God every day, looking up at the ceiling for him to take away my likes, and for some strange reason, I thought he would listen to me. Then I stopped believing in him because he never did what I asked him to do. And I would just talk to myself like I did to God, and that helped me not to feel that my likes were not wrong because he talks and talks back to me, and those answers helped me process my feelings.

I discovered gay sex on Facebook, then on porn sites and I masturbated 5 times a day, that started when I was 12, I did weird things like smelling my own dirty clothes, imagining that my classmates were using me sexually, I masturbated on the school express without anyone around me knowing and I got turned on when some boys at my school teased me. At first, I felt guilty, but then I felt indifferent. I just liked it, if they saw me they wouldn't imagine how depraved my thoughts were because on the outside, I was quiet and introverted.

Up to that point, I felt fine; I had accepted my preferences at 14 and told myself I was gay. But then I discovered new styles of hardcore pornography, fetish blogs, trans man porn, and FinDom Twitter accounts, among others and it just disgusted me. My guilt multiplied, and my anxiety mixed with school drove me crazy. I watched everything, searched everything, and just felt exhausted, I don't even know how I managed to be one of the best students in my school, maybe everyone else was too dumb.

Anyway, my addiction made me feel so insecure about relationships because of all this content. I mean I'm not sure if it was normal that at 15, I found domination porn, urine, spit, violent sex, fisting, rape, chastity cages, sissies, straight porn that confused me, incest, whatever, I went from indifference to distaste. I felt they turned their traumas into something disgusting and horrifying. But a lot of that stuff I liked, like feet, muscles, stereotypically straight men, pleasing a man, some humiliation, insults in English and Spanish, plus degradation. I know the origins of each one, my family that yells all the time, my first interactions with boys at school, my fear of public speaking, that when I was 8 and 9 years old I peed in the classroom, only 4 times and the boys didn't actually bother me for that, more for being introverted but studious.

I'm actually surprised I'm not more disturbed. I still have several traumatic experiences. I feel that by not empathizing with those fetishistic and nasty people, I am bad, but I know I am like them, plus I still get turned on by a lot of the pornography I already mentioned. And I feel lonely because I have never had sex, and I think I need to learn to bond with others, process all my traumatic experiences, and find my way in life. But I feel like these people are bad, and the gay community in addition to all its nuances is repulsive.

I am from Latin America, so I don't know if this is well written, and if you as a blogger feel disturbed by my writing. I know this writing is very long, but I wanted to vent to someone. I still don't tell anyone about my tastes, just random people on the internet. Anyway, we have the same birthday, March 7, 2003, that's why I wrote to you I thought it was a good coincidence, sorry for bothering you with my writing. Bye.

Hey birthday brother,

I hope in a few years you look back at this message and see all the shame, hurt, self-hatred, and trauma in it. It breaks my heart a bit. You are shaming and judging yourself so much. Why?

If you read nothing more of my reply, read this: You don’t have to judge yourself so much. You can like what you like and enjoy how you are. You have wild tastes. So what? I do too. Lots of people do.

We all experience trauma, and sometimes trauma does result in bad, unhealthy behaviors, but none of the behaviors you describe (watching porn, masturbation, being kinky) are bad. They are, in fact, pretty common. Lots of sane, happy, well-adjusted people like all that hardcore stuff.

The real effect of trauma is all this self-shaming and self-judgment. Shame is the problem here. That’s where trauma lives. Shame is not helping you solve the riddle of yourself. It is not helping you grow.

You are very young. You are still figuring out your sexuality and your desires, and you are absorbing all the shame and judgment the world has put on you—the same shame and judgment it puts on everyone like you, the same shame and judgment it put on me. I experienced judgment growing up, and it took me a long time to unlearn it and stop directing it back at myself. At some point, I asked myself the same question: Why am I treating myself this way? Do I really think these parts of me, these impulses I have, are terrible?

No! I love them. Sex with men has been the most beautiful journey of my life. My kinks, my wild tastes, have made me interesting and powerful and given me so much fun, so much good, and such great friends. The best minds of my generation are kinky motherfuckers. So why hate myself? Why do I have to feel bad about what I like, what porn I watch, and what I want? What rulebook says I am “depraved”?

That self-hatred you’re feeling is coming from a conservative, religious upbringing and homophobic people. Nothing more. Dude, they're just people. And trust me, everyone is similarly fucked up: life is messy. I promise that even the most devout members of your childhood church have occasional, passing, “sinful” thoughts they wrestle with—and respond to them with the same self-hatred and judgment you feel.

My self-hatred came from my family, from the little town and ugly religion I grew up in. Nothing to fear. Just people. I got out and found a better life. All that self-judgment came from the church and the social norms I was taught from a very young age. When I got older, I found people who were healthy, nice, and just like me — people who watched the same porn I did, and who did all that wild, hardcore stuff in real life and did not hate themselves for it. I needed to connect to those people to heal myself, and that's what you must do.

I am now one of those healthy, nice adults who like "domination porn, urine, spit, violent sex, fisting, rape, chastity cages, sissies" and so on. (Well, not really urine.) You are right: you need to “bond with others, process all your traumatic experiences, and find your way in life.” That is a good description of growing up. We grow up with others’ help, and for people with wild tastes—like us—finding others can be a bit harder and takes a little more time. But you have to do it.

You have not had sex yet, so my advice is to pause all this self-judgment long enough to get some real sexual experience behind you. You’re making some big assumptions about your sex life that you literally cannot know yet, because you’ve done nothing yet. You’ve watched porn. Babe, that’s not sex—it doesn’t even come close.

Sex is a journey of a lifetime, and on that journey, you will make mistakes, especially in the beginning. Some sexual experiences will not be great. No one is great at sex in the beginning. On the other hand, some sexual experiences will be so much better than you expect them to be. In time, you will see how beautiful and life-changing sex is, and how dull and mediocre it can be. It is both—it's just sex. It's nothing to fear or judge. It's just something fun that adults do.

Sex is not the best thing in life or the worst thing. It’s complicated, weird, exciting, and ever-changing. I know you see it now as this big, confusing, scary thing that has "warped" you, something you're "addicted" to, something that makes you bad, but babe, it’s something you have never actually done. You are making very sure-sounding statements about which you know nothing. As you get more experience and sex loses its newness, you will be able to judge it more fairly and clearly.

As you get older, you will see that sex is just one thing we get to enjoy while we live. It is not the most profound pleasure in life, but it's pretty good. If anything, the really profound pleasures—idleness, love—grow more mysterious while sex gets pretty easy. Profound things get deeper and richer. You start seeing miracles everywhere. Sex becomes just a good way to spend a Saturday night.

You're judging yourself based on outdated beliefs that “gay” is repulsive and that having adventurous sex is wrong. I promise that someday your feelings and turn-ons will make more sense—after you've lived with them for a bit and gotten some experience. Having sex with real people (not watching porn) requires you to communicate with others. Watching porn is a solo thing, something done with yourself. Equating porn to real sex is like watching videos of people skydiving and thinking you know what it's like to jump out of a plane.

Many people like the porn you like (that’s why it exists—you are not the only one watching it). None of the things you want are shocking to me. I have watched all that, plus much more. But I have a lot more experience than you in the realm of actual sex, and from that experience, I learned that sex—even wild, adventurous, hardcore sex—is beautiful, healthy, and quite normal.

I still love getting my butthole wrecked, but I have progressed to the stage where sometimes I just want to dance with someone. I have gone almost as far as one can go with my kinks, and living on this side of them almost feels like I'm back at the beginning—back to those years when a little touch, a little intimacy, felt like Heaven. I now know how powerful it is to just sleep next to someone. What a trip!

In time, you will probably find a word that describes your sexuality. You don't have to decide on that word now. In the long run, such a word will help your sex and dating life happen more smoothly. That word may end up being “gay” or “queer” or something else. That word does not have to be permanent—you can choose a different label, a better one, later. Many people do.

Take a breath. Be nice to yourself. Speak kind words to the only person you have to live with: you.

Love, Beastly