TELL ME, QALBI: Falling In Love With Straight Guys, Not Being Confident During Sex And All Your Juicy Questions
We all have deep, burning questions about love (and lust) we’ve been wanting to ask for ages, but have never really known how to bring it up with our friends. Whether it’s advice on some weird shit you’re into behind closed doors or dealing with the nagging feeling that it’s time to end things with your partner, fairy godmothers have been in short supply lately, so a drag queen who’s basically seen it all will have to do.
And that’s where ‘Tell Me, Qalbi’ comes into it. Anonymously answering your questions, this column dishes out life advice, saucy tips and a heavy dose of reality checks.
Vale Asks: “How do you stop yourself crying over a useless boy?”
Well Vale, you’re already started answering your own question by calling him useless. Acknowledging the dumbassery that is right in front of you is usually the hardest part of a would-be relationship, but now that we’re already at insults, the healing can begin.
The best thing you can do at this point is to make sure he doesn’t know you’re wasting body salts crying over him, cos Gatorade is expensive and he is definitely not worth it. If you need the extra catharsis, buy a sad/romantic book and power read through that so your tears won’t be wasted on a person who doesn’t care.
Finally, I’m all about calling useless people useless, but make sure they’re not useless because you set standards too high or built up your relationship to be a lot more than it is. We literally all have a tendency to do it (I believe Orlando Bloom and I got married in 2005), but if you’ve read too far into the relationship then in the immortal words of DJ Khaled, you’ve played yourself.
Schembri asks: “I really like a straight guy, and I think he flirts back. What should I do next?”
Run. You should run away, far and fast.
As a gay man I know the calling of a straight guy who’s too flirty. If it happens one drunken night in Paceville, that’s great and you can lock that memory away forever. We all know what it’s like; it makes you feel powerful to be the person to lead them “astray” for a while, and we all love dirty little secrets. What we don’t love, is when you have the phrase “really like” and then “straight guy” in the same sentence – cos all it’s gonna lead to is endless pining because surprisingly, the straight man you’ve now fallen head over heels in love with remains, wait for it, straight!
Realistically, when you break it down, a straight man who is interested in you is most likely living one of two truths. They’re either:
a) Straight and curious to see if they’re interested in guys or just what it’s like (in which case, grand for an evening, but they’re never going to be able to reciprocate your feelings long term).
b) Not straight, but unaware of the full extent of their sexuality, in which case you really need to ask yourself whether you’re willing to fall for a person who will spend the entirety of your relationship asking you to keep it a secret. It sounds hot at first, but after a while, the novelty wears thin.
And between the two of us, if you’re looking for a one-night stand, good dick is good dick, the sexuality of the wielder doesn’t really matter.
Mo asks: “I’m not confident in sex so I keep delaying it, anything I can do to change?”
You know how all those self-help books for emotional stability will convince you the answer was in you all along? Well, when it comes to sex – it literally is. As humans living in our cushy homes, we’ve moved on from so much of our ‘natural’ instincts, but sex remains one of the few things we’re designed to do that we still actually bother with in 2019.
Now look, if you want to delay sex cos you’re not feeling it; that’s great, your prerogative and you should. But if you’re holding yourself back because you’ve watched one too many porn clips online and are concerned you won’t sound like Maria Sharapova playing the final of the Grand Slam that is the definition of self-sabotage.
The first thing you need to do is identify what your issue is because that will change how you ‘treat it’.
You might find more confidence in having (SAFE!) sex with a one night stand before moving ahead with a serious relationship. Find a hottie, chat them up and use your (SAFE!) experience as a way of learning new things. Then, once you’re done, grab your shoes, your bag and leave feeling more empowered than ever before because you bagged a hottie, got your rocks off and then moved on with your life. As an aside, if this doesn’t really boost your confidence, don’t keep trying ad nauseum till it works.
On the other hand, if that whole ordeal sounds like a literal nightmare, then you may want to go slow with the person you’re seeing, and using a stronger emotional bond to build your confidence. Start by asking them what they like and then going for it. Watching the person you’re with ‘enjoy themselves’ will keep reminding you that you are, in fact, good at this.
Confidence doesn’t happen overnight, but a mental shift can. Also, as a nation, we kinda need to move on from our fear of sex. It’s dangerous and reductive (and happens literally all the time, so let’s talk about it a little more).
