Being Trans at Naked Night Taught Me About Belonging
I went to the naked party to see people’s dicks, not hear people’s stories. But sometimes things don’t turn out the way you’d expect.
A note on today’s essay—the question at the center of this essay series is “What does it mean to be a gay man who loves having a uterus?” and although my pregnancy has been on my mind lately, and will likely continue to be a frequent essay subject, it isn’t the only star in this particular constellation. Today’s essay has no pregnancy content and instead explores themes of gay community, stories, and belonging through the lens of my experience attending naked parties at a gay bar.
Image: “Twelve Men” by Arthur P. Davies. Public domain, accessed through National Gallery of Art.
I went to the naked party to see people’s dicks, not hear people’s stories. But sometimes things don’t turn out the way you’d expect.
I can’t say what I was expecting when I saw that a gay bar I’d been to a few times was holding a naked party. “Mandatory clothes check,” the listing read. Maybe I went because I was tired of worrying about how to tell cis men at regular gay bars that I was trans, or maybe I just wanted to be the type of person who would go to a naked party.
I wasn’t sure if I’d talk to anyone, let alone flirt. I wasn’t sure if I’d feel comfortable, and I certainly wasn’t sure if I’d have a good time. The only thing I was entirely sure of was that I’d see more naked men’s bodies than I’d ever seen before in my life, and that few, if any, would look like my own naked body.
I arrived and was given a garbage bag for my clothes, which would then be checked at the bar. Cell phones weren’t allowed. Men of various ages clustered throughout the room, sipping drinks, chatting, laughing. Did I even want to be here?
The truth is, being in gay men’s spaces was something I’d wanted since long before I could understand why I would want that. I remember as a teenager watching a documentary about Harry Hay and the Radical Faeries and desperately wanting to frolic with a bunch of half-dressed gay men in the woods of California. It felt impossible. Those aren’t for you, I told myself. Maybe you can go to a women’s music festival instead. This ached for reasons I couldn’t understand at the time.
I looked at my garbage bag and considered my options. Pants first, or shirt? I could start by taking off my shirt, seeing if anyone noticed that I sort of have breasts, which would then move around a bit when I bent to take off my shoes and pants. Or I could take off my pants then wonder if people were staring at me when I slid my shirt over my head.
It seemed to me that having a vagina would be a bit of a liability in a space like this. But we live in an entire culture where having a vagina is made to be a liability. In some ways, the reasons a vagina might be a liability in this particular space are more clear cut, less violent, less personal, less frightening.
I took off my shirt, then my pants. I put my cell phone in a bag and slipped some cash in my sock to buy drinks. I was ready.
The thing about being the only trans man at a gay men’s naked night is that your mere presence suggests a story. A life story involving a transition, but also a story of why and how you decided to come to this event in the first place. What stories do we tell ourselves about our own bodies and their meaning? What stories, simultaneously, are others telling themselves about us?
Perhaps my body made me seem approachable. Men introduced themselves, asked how I was doing, how I’d heard about the party. I soon realized I could also just go and talk to other people. I never would start a conversation in a normal clothed bar, but here, my naked trans body gave me confidence. My body’s naked presence suggested the fresh story that I didn’t much care what others thought of me, and I gladly slipped that persona on for the night. By becoming the type of person who’d attend a naked event, I’d somehow also become the type of person who talked to strangers.
Men poured out their life stories to me at this party. I didn’t have to dig much. “When did you move to the city?” I might ask. Or, “What an interesting tattoo, when did you get it?” Or, “Did it hurt when you got your dick pierced?”
Whole stories would tumble out, often of the moment someone’s life changed. When I came out. When I moved to the city. When I was diagnosed. When my partner left me.
I heard stories of leaving a small town for New York City, and, depending on the year and the person, finding it a bacchanalia of gay clubs and bathhouses, the deepest trenches of the AIDS crisis, or just plain lonely.
I heard about moving cross-country for love, getting fired for being gay, and finding the perfect apartment.
I heard about deciding to retire, and about finally getting a Prince Albert piercing after wanting one for a decade. I heard about moving away from the city and coming back once a year, an annual pilgrimage.
(Later, I asked some cis friends whether they had the same experience at these parties, whether it was the nudity that led people to share their whole story with a complete stranger. No, they all told me, though some said they didn’t spend much time meeting people and mostly spoke only to their friends.)
I wondered if it was my trans body that opened the door for these stories, whether simply by existing, it said, “I have a story too.”
When I was younger, I didn’t just inexplicably dream of frolicking with the gay men in the woods. I wanted to weave myself into their stories, their mythologies, their histories. I wanted to belong, and it felt impossible. Even when I transitioned, I thought that my gay maleness, such as it was, would always approach but never touch. That I would never be real.
These days, I read many gay books from the 1980s and 1990s; many of these authors have died from AIDS. I read Paul Monette’s 1995 collection of essays, Last Watch of the Night, his last book, where he expresses over and over his love of the gay community. But even he has a slightly dismissive comment about bi and trans inclusion at the 1993 March on Washington. I read his work as a gay man, but if he had lived, would he have seen me as one? I want to lay my story alongside his, I want it to be a gay man’s story, I want the stories to align, I want a family resemblance. I want to belong.
I don’t want to seem like I want to belong, whether it’s at the naked night or anywhere else. But belonging is a human thing to want, and denying the truth of what I desire has never been good for me. I want to belong with the gay men, I want my story to line up, to rhyme even if it doesn’t match.
Maybe that’s why I liked best of all to ask them about their tattoos. How did you decide on it? When did you get it? Did it hurt?
I realized it was because it opened up the same questions they often asked of me: When did you change your body? Why? How did it feel then? How does it feel now? What do you want to see when you look at your body? What do you want others to see?
The men often used the word “journey” when speaking of my life story. Sometimes they said I was “brave.” I could choose those words for their stories as well.
It was at the naked party that I heard enough gay men’s stories that I began to feel I could lay my own alongside. Different in the particulars, but resonant.
I began to feel that my story belonged, that it rhymed if it didn’t match. I learned I didn’t need to hide my transness, that some people cared and some people didn’t and no one is attractive or interesting to every single other person anyway. I learned to flirt with gay men without fear of that moment when I’d have to tell them. At this party, for the first time, I felt like I was truly among gay men.
I came for the dicks, but I stayed for the stories.
❤️💕 Love this one! Love you.
I love this one especially, Finn. Perhaps it’s because I could never in my life imagine myself at any naked party in the universe!! But also I love your writing, your courage and your curiosity.