Watch Me Entertain Myself!

Sacha Guitry once said, "You can pretend to be serious, but you can't pretend to be witty." Oh yes, I'm the great pretender.
(pilot episode: 20 January 2004)

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

I Wonder What A “Bottom” Vibe Is Like

Meet my friend Bottom Cruise (obviously not his baptized name). Out of the blue he just chatted me up on YM with an unexpected question. (Below is our conversation, cleaned up for easier reading.)

* * * * *

Bottom Cruise
Question: can you tell if a guy is top or bottom through gut feel?

McVie
Ako, no. I really have to ask. Wala sa looks yan, unless laging tumutuwad siya sa harap mo ahahaha! But seriously, because wala nga sa looks, hindi naman nakakahiyang magtanong eh. Besides, a lot of guys ask anyway. Usually they phrase their question this way: “Are you top, bottom or versa?” so that they don’t sound presumptuous. Kasi pag magtanong ka ng, “Are you a bottom?” baka taasan ka pa ng kilay at tarayan ka ng, “Assumerang froglette ka!”

Bottom Cruise
Well, I’ve consistently  attracted tops. Sabi nila there’s something about me daw that give off the word “bottom.”

McVie:
Oh, let them say that. A lot of gay guys assume that that the bottom guy is the more submissive one. Pa-demure ka ba when meeting someone for the first time?

Bottom Cruise
Yes, I can look very demure (prim and proper) to someone I will meet for the first time. That’s the thing that attracted my ex to me. But of course, I am anything but submissive.

McVie
Korek! The demure and proper behavior can throw people off. May mga top na demure and proper rin. Luckily for the tops who met you, you turned out to be a bottom.

Bottom Cruise
Good for them. I remember reading somewhere that there are bars in the US where guys wear hankies behind their pockets to signify if they are a top or bottom. Something like hankie on left means bottom and hankie on right means top.

McVie
Yes, pero di naman yan sinunod dito eh.

* * * * *

I remember in the early part of the first decade of the 2000s there were attempts by some Malate gay folks to try and institute that hankie code. I personally never saw any, but some of my friends and gay acquaintances swore that guys were using it. But after our short chat, I now wonder, is there still a need for codes? In the age of hook-ups via internet sites and mobile apps, our sexual roles can already be part of our profile. That’s why I suspect it’s a lot easier for people who meet face to face (say, in a bar) to ask outright. Because unless we brand “top” “bottom” or “versa” on our foreheads, there really is no gaydar good enough to pinpoint our role preference with 100% accuracy.

4 comments:

Mamon said...

ah now i get it. there was a scene in the movie, Eating Out when the straight guy placed a hankie in his pocket and the gay guys were suddenly staring at him. I didn't know that there was such a code in the US.

Mac Callister said...

mas madali na kasing itanung ngayon kapag chat chat lang hehe...are u top or bottom? Ganyan,yun na.

Hehehe

Cunelva sinverguenza said...

Well sabi nga ni Ate Vi you can never can tell, i mean seriously I have a tranny friend who is really pretty and looks like a gurl acts and talks like a gurl, but even so top ang vakla.Chicks with big dicks ang peg. My ex is really buff and everything and I'm on the chubby feminine side pero ako ang top so there's really no telling whats the preference. Might as well let it will be na lang or surprise pag nasa bedroom na LOL.

palma tayona said...

I am a big man and in my experience it's fairly easy. And there are two general ways I am able to determine if a guy who is attracted to me in a bar or social setting is bottom or not. If he is tall (but not taller than me), and with a wedding ring... bottom. All the married men I had sex with were bottoms. If he is short, about 5'6" and below, with that mischievous, boyish "i-want-a-daddy" type grin: dead-ringer for a bottom.

It's the fashionista, metrosexual, and "people-are-people" t-shirt brand and tight, low-cut jeans wearing type in their mid-twenties to early thirties who are kind of perplexing. They'd saunter towards you with an ego-swaying two step to proclaim themselves as "I want your ass big boy" swagger of a top, big-cock guy. I just dance their dance and in the end, they still end up spreading their legs up in the air.

Gay men can sometimes be stranger than strange - like accountants. And that's another story.