Bringing up Boyslut: Discovering a shameless role model as a bi boi in the Bluegrass
a review & manifesto
I remember the first time I encountered Zachary Zane‘s bawdy reporting on the internet. I was searching for something that could help me make sense of my sexual identity.
His shameless approach to writing about sex horrified me at first. One such story graced my Instagram feed during a distracted moment at work. I felt my face flush red. This was decidedly the kind of material that launched NSFW as a daring acronym, and here I was, risking it all, to read descriptions of men gathering in a dark church for a ritual of giving and receiving anonymous bareback loads.
A sacrament like this was precisely the kind of blasphemous activity that would call down hellfire and condemnation from the pulpits of my past life. I recalled my own (tightly clenched) butthole alighting the pews of a different dark church for an endless string of Sundays, begging sky daddy to forgive me for thinking about such things, and liking it! Who exactly would Jesus do? I unfollowed.
Reading this aptly titled memoir, Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto, several years later, I realized I was too quick to shut down my curiosity. I recognize that my horror was precisely because I saw my own potential in Zane’s ability to live shamelessly. My desire for my own sexual freedom lay smothered beneath a mask of inoffensive masculine acceptability that I adopted to keep me safe.
Zane describes the problem I was facing succinctly. Men, queer and straight alike, have been mostly left out of the sex positivity movement. The stakes were too high to not get this right, and we were suffering heartache, confusion, and disillusionment as a result.
He was on a parallel journey, writing about fucking in order to “unfuck” himself, in the best way possible.
Unlike me, and statistically a good many of you, Zane is keen to explain that he wasn’t fucked up by religion. In fact his family was decidedly queer positive and affirming. And yet the messages of shame that were all too familiar to my experience, had marked his story from an early age. He puts it succinctly; “I can sum up my years of writing with one insight: I am not special.”
It seems very few of us make it through childhood sufficiently unashamed of ourselves.
I was 14 when my father’s interrogation of my most shameful secret (looking at porn on the family iMac) ended with his satisfaction that “at least I know you are not gay”. What a relief that must have been for him. But I was brewing with a new set of fears – what if I was gay? Clearly to be gay was one of the worst things my father could imagine for his son.
Fear of coloring outside the wrong lines hid from me the romantic interest I had in male friends. I knew I was different. I didn’t know how to know what kind of different I was. Looking back I recognize that I was awestruck by people who didn’t meet gendered expectations. Even as a youngster I recall crushing on Bernard the elf from The Santa Claus. (This character still does it for me; he’s forever the template.)
Much like Zachary, it took a lot of years of soul searching and misguided counsel before reaching a lightbulb moment. And just like him, my first exploration of my homoromantic side was an encounter with a serial manipulator. But despite added baggage, I learned something about myself definitively as a result. I liked being desired by a man, and I was into sucking cock–was it possible I wanted something more?
Unlike the stopover theory of bisexuality suggests, I didn’t find this knowledge made me question my passion for the fairer sex (We can revisit this phrase now that we have all seen Jacob Elordi wearing wings in Saltburn, right? Men can be downright angelic creatures!).
If I can truly fall in love with a person of any gender, how would I ever choose a “side” without feeling I was denying a significant part of myself, leaving it unexplored, or forever questioned?
Zane argues that bisexual visibility is a misnomer. In untangling the messiness of the gay and straight cultural divide, he posits we adopt “bisexual audibility.” Being vocal about our experiences allows others the opportunity to find a vocabulary for their own experiences too.
The stories he shares bring home the tenderness that surrounds what one might find a more “sordid” or “bohemian” lifestyle. Zane makes a great case that radical honesty and acceptance opens up possibilities for connection in far more satisfying ways than we might think. In choosing a polyamorous lifestyle, he was able to discover a world of dynamic and supportive relationships with men, women, and non-binary hotties, each with something unique and enticing to share. For Zane, it is a natural fit for a horny bisexual to want to have it all – and perhaps it is a bit greedy, but so what? It’s not taken for granted here that this isn’t everyone’s desire, but this is Boyslut after all, and that means giving the best shot to having an open heart, as well as open holes.
This stuff is the author at his best. He has stories to share and a life well lived to pull from. The invitation and challenge is laid on the reader to push back against pervasive sex negativity with genuine joy and vulnerability.
The amount of second guessing, self doubt, and shame I have put myself through to date could easily fill out a memoir far less enlightening or entertaining as this book. The pages amount to a celebration of shameless, liberated, non-toxic masculinity. It’s a book that reads as a how-to guide, or a decently affordable starter pack for being bisexual in the way that seems best to you. And if Zachary Zane is brave enough to spark a Boyslut revolution with the strokes of his pen(is), he can at the very least count me among his following once again.
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