The Bottom Chronicles (Entry 5)

Getting to a place of self acceptance meant I had to overcome two kinds of shame: the shame of being gay and the shame of being bottom.

I remember back in the day, when I would be chatting with a potential hookup, and he’d ask me my role. The first time ever I was asked that question online, I remember typing “Bottom”. Then I looked at the word. I cringed. Just looking at the word made me recoil. Like I’d just identified myself with something dirty.

But I couldn’t lie to the guy and say I was versatile. I may have been feeling shame, but I started resenting misrepresenting myself from when I was 16. I’d rather not give an answer than lie about anything concerning my sexuality.

So I reached out to my keyboard and deleted, deleted, deleted, until it was just “B”. There. That seemed better than typing out the entire “Bottom”.

I remember during another online chat, the guy I sent “B” to when he asked me my role was either totally clueless or deliberately petty. He asked me what “B” meant. I responded, “You know…”

“No, I don’t know,” he replied. “I asked you your role and you’re sending me B. What does B mean?”

I could explain it to him. But then how do you say, “It’s the down role or the woman‘s role…”? Jeezuz! Those are even worse than saying Bottom. I got so annoyed with a mix of my shame and frustration with the guy, that I exited the chat and gave him a silent “fuck off”.

As time passed, I began to upgrade my responses from “B” to “Bott”. Lol. Something about typing the full word just irked me so bad.

Incidentally Kito Diaries changed everything. The very first post (I think) that Absalom sent was a “Dear Tops…With Love, Bottoms” post. It was such a hilarious chastisement of Tops, and as I found myself laughing at the piece, I saw something in it as well.

Authority.

There was an authority Absalom wrote that piece with, an ownership of his sexual role that gave him the audacity to scold Tops, a “this is who I am and I owe no apology” attitude to that write-up that I realized I didn’t have.

And I envied him that. I wanted that. And so, even as I laughed at the hilarity of his submission, I began to unburden my shame. Began to learn, to overcome, to accept. The day I realized that my journey from bottom shame was complete was the day someone tried to make a mess of me on Grindr.

Apparently we’d hooked up – but either the sex wasn’t good or his personality wasn’t that great, because that day was the first and last time we met. Then he must’ve changed IDs on Grindr, and buzzed me. And because I didn’t know who this was, I responded like he was a first time potential hookup. The moment he established that I didn’t know he was the guy I’d hooked up with before, he suddenly unveiled himself and began attacking me, saying I was a slut because after our hookup, I’d just tossed him aside. That he had even run into some other guy who corroborated the claim that I was a slut who didn’t stick around after the sex.

As he ranted, I looked on, amused, and triggered him to further heights of fury when I gave just one reply: that he and his corroborator should go ahead and open a “Pinky dumped me” club.

That was when he whipped out the bottom shame card. He said, “Don’t you know you’re bottom and that hoeing around is not good for your image? You’re supposed to take things easy, not be hooking up upandan. Otherwise no one will fuck your soured pussy.”

???

My response to that came in this order: Laugh. Sarcastic retort. Block.

But what pleased me the most was the fact that I never once felt flagellated by the shame this guy intended to dump on me.

Written by Pink Panther