Ask Beastly: Gang Bangs Aren’t What You Think

Porn sells fantasy. Real sex is more complicated—and more fun.

I have recently come to terms with being Bi. I am married to my wife, but that appears to be ending shortly. I have a huge fantasy about getting gang-banged. How do I do this as safely as possible? I live in the NYC area.

Hey there,

I’m glad to hear you’re coming to terms with your identity, and I’m sorry to hear your marriage feels like it’s ending soon.

I don’t assume gender (I kindly ask people to state their gender identity in their question, if it is relevant), but using context clues and what I know about my site’s readership, I’m guessing you’re a man who is looking to be “gang banged” by men.

By “safe,” I think you mean “without getting an infection,” right? You want to avoid sexually-transmitted infections like gonorrhoea, chlamydia, syphilis, and the like.

All sex involves some risk of catching an STI (sexually transmitted infection), but a gang bang is one of the highest-risk sex activities you can do, especially if you want it condomless (bareback). In a gang bang, STI risk is hard—impossible, even—to fully control or even mitigate. But, hey, that’s a gang bang. 

For some, the risk of it—the perceived “wrongness” and “recklessness”—is precisely what makes the idea of a gang bang so hot.

I imagine that, for many people, gang bangs live in that category of sex stuff in the mind as untouchable fantasy—things they like to watch in porn and imagine themselves doing, but struggle with the idea of actually doing it. And that’s okay. Like many fantasies, I think imagined gang bangs are often better than the real thing.

I’ve done several, and yes, they can be fun. They can also be stressful, irritating, and downright weird. Unless you’re paying for a premium setup involving sex workers who all agree to meet at the same time, real-life group sex typically requires sharing: lots of people fucking each other rather than everyone singularly focused on fucking one person, you. The very idea of a gang bang (multiple tops taking turns fucking one bottom who is showered with attention, shared by the whole group) is a porn invention, something hot to film, but that rarely happens in real life.

A gang bang is meant to be a fantasy. In real-life sex, it’s a big ask (and, honestly, a bit bold and presumptuous) to demand that everyone take turns fucking you, and this setup is just not realistic unless you’re paying everyone to be there. Put a bunch of horny (unpaid) people who are down to fuck in one room, and it rarely becomes a gang bang—instead, it evolves into a good, old-fashioned sex party where everyone is freely fucking in a group. In such a setting, you might get fucked by one or several people at a time, but the others won’t be waiting around for their turn—they’ll be having sex with other people beside you.

I want to stress that a sex party is much more fun than a porn-style gang bang. For starters, it’s real—it happens in real life, and quite beautifully. And the experience is typically more rewarding than just being the center of attention. You might find that you don’t want to always be the center of attention in such a space: that’s a lot of pressure, and once your energy dips, you might appreciate a pause. What happens when you want a break? Do you expect everyone to stand around awkwardly while you use the bathroom? I’ve been on porn sets where gang bangs were being filmed, and when the bottom needed a break, the performers just had to stop and everyone looked a little bored. Because that’s what it was: a performance. (And—sorry to break anyone’s fantasy—if you’re paying for a group of sex workers to gang bang you, that’s what it is, too: a performance, a show.)

Some say that the “anonymous bottom ass-up in a hotel room” setup counts as a gang bang. I disagree. A gang bang is hot in porn because many guys are present, watching, sharing, egging each other on, all mutually participating; as the viewer, you know each one of them is going to fuck the helpless bottom getting plowed in the middle—this is the most classic, traditional gang bang setup. The anon bottom thing—where someone rents a room (in a cheap motel or bathhouse) or hosts at home, posts their location somewhere, and invites random guys to walk in, breed them, and leave over the course of an evening—is a “cumdump” situation, which I count as something quite different. A cumdump thing is bareback (condomless) by default, implicitly anonymous, and works best when gentleman callers do not overlap too much: one guy leaves, another arrives, and when he’s done, the next one comes, and so on. When too many men arrive at once and it becomes a group, you lose the guys who are in the closet and only looking to breed and leave—other men present is too risky for them.

In contrast, a classic group sex party is just that: you get a bunch of people together and let ‘em have at it—with you, with each other, whatever. When you need a minute to stretch, rest, and pause, you can—it’s perfectly fine. You can watch. You can grab a snack and drink some water. You can—and should—make light conversation. A good sex party is a social thing, a chance to be kind and take care of your fellow men; try to leave each one feeling a little blessed, a little better. After years of casual sex groups and hot gatherings, I can say I am grateful most for all the little moments of warmth and care and tenderness—deep conversations, confessions, personal stories—that happened between rounds of hardcore sex, often with men I’ll never see again. Those moments make all-male sex parties beautiful things—lights of my life.

I think the classic gang bang setup is most appealing to people who haven’t done them in real life, who have never been to a sex party before, and whose erotic lives are lived mostly in the mind. I’ve done porn-style gang bangs and classic, orgiastic sex parties, and I assure you the latter are more fun. They simply work better.

If you are very worried about STIs and want to avoid them totally, do not have a gang bang—bareback or otherwise. Part of the fun of having a gangbang is the risk. Many people enjoy the thrill of STI risk. It’s like Russian Roulette, but with syphilis. If you want to do it and are willing to live with some risk of catching an STI, get a full STI screening at a sexual health clinic at least once beforehand out of respect for the men you’ll be playing with (it’s basic human decency to get tested before group sex) and at least twice after, with some weeks between visits. If you are HIV-negative, take PrEP. If you are positive, you know the drill: take your meds, etc. And that’s it!

All sex involves mitigating (and living with) risk while doing what we love. Group sex is fun, and I like group sex more when it’s raw. Yes, I get STIs at these events, and I treat them as they come. If I ever reach a point where I can’t live with that, I should stop. The rewards—the sex, the friendship, the company of men like me—are worth it.

Love, Beastly