Fridae

God forbid that both (or indeed, all) partners could be versatile.

Oh no. The concept of 50-50, or even 30-70, is anathema to most guys on the scene, with fucking as the only item on the agenda. And if you think you're different, ask yourself when exactly was the last time you caught sight of some fit guy on the dancefloor and thought, "Ooh, I'd really like to mutually masturbate with that!" It just doesn't happen.

For some, the whole top or bottom thing is really just shorthand for the kind of guy we want to have sex with at that particular point, and allows us to stereotype ourselves and other gay men in ways that we would never accept from the straight world. Thus, you're checking out the crowd in a smoky club and in the first sweep the part of your brain that kicks in when you're cruising splits the crowd into two camps. There is a third camp, of course, which consists of guys you would never sleep with, but your gaydar doesn't register those losers. This is where our heads and pants are ruled by images of males perpetuated by the gay media, mainstream gay porno movies and a million workman jerk-off fantasies.

Wherever we ourselves might fall in the great rainbow scale, a slim and slightly effeminate man is seen, on the first sweep, as a queeny bottom and a stocky straight-acting type is regarded as a potential top. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in Asia, and nowhere are these stereotypes more often inappropriate.

It's incredible that first appearances still hold so much sway when our experience most usually tells us different. But we see what we want to see, and while everyone knows that skinny drag queens have the biggest cocks and butch looking men are pussies who will take it like a bitch, we still want our classic stereotypes to be true. And while it helps us gauge our self-image, it also perpetuates anti-CC (sissy) homophobia in our own community. But hey, a sad fact of gay life as we continue to stagger into the third millennium on broken heels is that there just aren't enough decent tops to go round, and it's every queen for herself.

For all our supposed compassion, we tend to have distinct ideas about who we will let top us. The sad irony being that while we might want to have a butch strong dominant top to strenuously take us, we need him to have taken it himself a few times so he knows what he's doing, and this often just does not fit with our fantasies. And when the situation reverses itself - a friend recently got fucked to within an inch of his life by a Thai bar owner known rather cruelly by some as the Bottom Bike of Bangkok - hands fly to mouths in horror and we exclaim "Ugh! How could you? That's like being fucked by your (biological) sister with a strap-on!" A butch queen is still a queen. The dichotomies are endless, and we're all hypocrites.

In Japan where the scene is pretty much segregated into distinct bodily types, the discrimination can be useful or inhibiting, depending on your point of view, but at least the tops know their job.

Before a visit last year, I'd contacted a few guys on-line and one visited me in my Tokyo hotel, apologized that he'd been up all the night before fucking a Swede and produced a selection of sex toys from his sports bag. A top score, so to speak.

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The flip side of Tokyo is that no-one clattering around Shinjuku in wooden clogs and a kimono is doing me, thank you very much. But who knows what my own prejudices caused me to miss out on? I shudder to imagine.

When a big strong Asian guy walks into a bar in Taiwan, white guys have been known to push their fellow expats down flights of stairs in the frenzy to get to him first. But it's all usually in vain, as in Taiwan we are cursed with a quite ridiculous phenomenon - the EAT - Exclusive Asian Top. Now you might think that this would be exactly what we want, but it is in fact a frustrating paradox, mirrored all over the globe but laughingly prevalent in Taiwan. Because when a straight-acting Taiwanese guy tells you he's a top, what he actually means is that he took it up the butt ten years ago, didn't like it because "it hurt" and has therefore been a top ever since.

Now as far as I am concerned, the alarm bells are already ringing. You want this guy to fuck you because he's big and strong and masculine, but taking a cock up his butt "hurts"? Go cry on some other sucker's shoulder, baby, you're not a man. And if you're not already snapping your fingers for the next one, remember that for these exclusive Taiwanese tops, the exclusive actually refers to your cock, because you'll be lucky to get a quick rub before they want to clumsily shove themselves up you. "Look! What's this? Yes I've got one too!" is the despairing refrain all too often heard resounding through the thin walls of Taipei's saunas.

I must add here that I do know many white guys who are the same, but at least they have the decency to look ashamed when the question comes up and us versatile girls mock them mercilessly; Taiwan guys really do seem to think that not taking it up the butt makes them more of a man.

There is a third problem with EATs that is not restricted to Taiwan. If you've never enjoyed taking it, what makes you think you're any good at giving it? I've been lucky with the odd married man in the sauna, but I'm still a firm believer that if you don't know what it feels like to get fucked you can't be as good a lover as someone who does. And if their only experience is "Oh it hurts!" what do they think they're doing to you? These men have to be the most selfish lovers in the world, and yet it's these Asian hunks that continue to top (pun intended) our fantasy list. Why is that?

As a versatile Caucasian in Bangkok in a bottom mood (you know how it just takes you sometimes?), I was greeted with a scepticism that often verged on pure hatred by quite a few ladyboys, as if the fact that I was looking for a (stereotypical) top that night was somehow a personal slight. If you're six-foot, white and workout, try explaining to a Bangkok ladyboy that you're a "sister". But when you add money to the equation in the already heartless world of cruising, everyone at some point is going to be stereotyped. I was a gay white guy in Asia; I must be looking for a bottom.

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I suppose it served me right for not thinking a ladyboy could fuck me. But the same take on the whole white-Asian, top-bottom dynamic reared its head in Bali, where myself and a Taiwanese companion just had to be amused that all the locals assumed he was my "houseboy". The fact that when I'm drunk I'm an even bigger screaming queen than usual seemed to pass them by. Different strokes, same prejudices.

Of course, I'll never learn either. A victim of my own stereotyping in Chiang Mai, I ignored all the pretty go-go boys and dragged our meaty driver for the day up to my hotel room, only to rediscover that muscles and a big cock does not a man make. What is it with Thailand? Even the elephant we rode through the jungle was a queen, refusing to cross the river because it was just too cold. When we finally made it to Phuket I'd given up on the idea of finding a Thai top, but was pleasantly surprised by an ex-Buddhist monk who obviously had a lot of pent-up frustration to release. My surprise was compounded when he told me that because I'd been fucked I was evil, condemned and would go to hell. Not him, of course, being a top. When Buddha said all life is an illusion, I really don't think that was what he meant.

Of course, another Asian phenomenon is BMTs, or Bottoms Masquerading as Tops, and while Taiwan is a close runner-up, the tiara for this particular honor has to go to the Philippines. The amount of bragging we were witness to in Manila would put a Japanese pro-wrestler to shame, but when I got the swaggering guys back to the hotel, they just couldn't cut the mustard. My white travelling companion had rather a different experience, exclaiming that the Manila men were the most masculine tops he'd come across in Asia, but this is the same friend who let the Bottom Bike of Bangkok do him, so no cigar there I'm afraid.

On the beautiful island of Boracay, a couple of trannies took pity on our predicament - like looking for an Asian top is somehow akin to looking for a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow - and paraded an endless line of churlish boy-babes (their younger brothers) in front of us, getting quite annoyed that their (uninvited) help was being turned down. Eventually a somewhat older, more promising candidate introduced himself with the trademark Philippine swagger, but even he had to be flipped over after 20 minutes of ineffectual fumbling around. I'd been hopelessly BMT'd. As I said to my friend over breakfast, if only he could have just stayed in for more than three strokes. Sigh.

So really, in the end, I'm a victim of my own prejudice just as much as everyone else is of theirs. We may all worship the concept of a strong masculine Asian top, but it's as fraught with embarrassing pitfalls and as unreal as the more obvious Asian stereotype, the cute young bottom. Misconceptions about tops and bottoms are generally all harmless fun. That is, until they go hand-in-hand with other popular Asian fallacies - like tops don't need to worry about wearing condoms and that you can only contract HIV from a white guy.

The bottom line is that a hard man is hard to find anywhere, but it's something many of us have devoted our lives to. I for one intend to continue enjoying the hunt, and will have no hesitation in pushing other white trash down flights of stairs to get to the top. Bottoms up!