SPEAKING OF GERBILS

This rumour has been around for at least 20 years, yet not one iota of evidence that anyone, even a South Park cartoon character, has ever actually stuffed a rodent inside him.

But the gerbil story took on a life of its own, and just refuses to curl up and die. Why's that? How come it seems to have a currency unmatched since the urban legend of albino alligators in Manhattan's sewers?

For one thing, whenever this story's appeared, it's involved a man rumoured to be gay - George W. Bush or Julia Roberts never get accused of dating rodents. Despite the queer community's own penchant for spreading outrageous dish, the gerbil tale seems to serve the needs of homophobia: "See? That's how sick those gay guys are. They even kill small, furry animals in their pursuit of pleasure." Indeed, when homophobes want to score cheap points, they just say "gerbil."

The fact of the matter is that many of us do believe that queer men are, on average, kinkier than our straight brethren. Whether through nature or nurture, we tend to be erotic explorers. We're already sexual outlaws, we don't privilege reproductive sex, and the kinky stuff straight men pay hookers for is often available for free somewhere in the gay world. So why the hell not try - well, you fill in the blank.

Straight folks uncomfortable about queer male sex often center their squeamishness on anal play. Despite the burgeoning use of strap-ons by het couples, many straight men hang on to their toilet-training prejudices, repelled by the notion that their hole could be a pleasure zone. Straight guys do like to get their cocks sucked, so how bad could that be? But getting one's ass eaten? Icky! (By the way, plenty of gay guys feel the same way, and that's fine.) So you end up with born-again morons throwing around absurd stories of how most gay men are into scat play. And it may not be an accident that the gerbil myth arose during the first wave of the AIDS epidemic, when homophobes were all too happy to conflate gay sex with murder.

Then too, there's the closet aspect of things. Public figures remaining closeted reinforces the notion that being gay is a Terrible Secret, and since queer equals bad, who knows the depths of depravity to which those guys might sink?

And voila! The tale of a plucky little rodent being shoved through a paper towel tube to provide anal pleasure for some rich pervert. Just the outrageousness of it all insulates homophobes from the notion that they, too, might like having their assholes played with.

There are, no doubt, gay celebrities into water sports, fisting - all sorts of things that make the prudish tremble. (And there are probably quite a few straight stars into all that, as well.) But the slightly comic viciousness of gerbilling - its "That can't be true...can it?" nature - has catapulted it into the world of folk myth, where it's likely to fester for quite a while. Until, anyway, some famous right-wing, married, born-again Christian is discovered with a rodent up his butt.

Simon Sheppard

Now here's your chance to meet the man behind this column. OutUK has an interview with Simon Sheppard or you can take a look at some of his books that are currently available:

       

Looking for something very sexy and just as smart? Man on Man collects the best and hottest gay sex writing by Simon, who is also co-editor of Rough Stuff: Tales of Gay Men, Sex, and Power as well as a collection of gay erotica called Hotter Than Hell.

In KINKORAMA : Dispatches from the Front Lines of Perversion he takes readers behind the unmarked doors and black vinyl curtains that lead to the sometimes shocking, often hilarious, relentlessly arousing scenarios of extreme sex. There are also stories of bears in Tales from the Bear Cult: Beat Bear Stories from the Best Magazines.