Sex and Intimacy Consultant, Court Vox, spoke to Queerty about his work with gay men, and about how easy sex has become–as opposed to asking the guy to hold us for a couple of minutes afterward.
“We want closeness,” Vox, who works with both singles and couples, explains about gay men. “That’s something that all humans desire: to be seen, to be valued, and to have closeness with other people.”
“I can have a very intimate experience with a stranger, with a client, with someone that I met online. I can allow myself to be intimate with that person in that container and then leave it there. I can also have a really intimate experience with my partner which carries outside of the bedroom, right? So I think noticing where we can be a little more intimate with each other. And also kinder, in terms of sex. Like, stay for a little aftercare.”
By aftercare Vox mean, once sex is over, it’s not time to go. “Notice how uncomfortable it is for you to stay, and if you need aftercare, right?” he says. “If you need to be touched and given affection after sex or whatever it is, to be vulnerable enough to ask that person: ‘Hey, it would feel really good for me if we could just cuddle for a minute? Will you do that with me?’ Even me saying it right now feels… and I feel like that might be the piece people need more than sex. But the sex is easier,” says Vox.
In the article, Vox also chronic the change of gay men’s perspective of sex over time. “I think we’re in a really interesting time,” he says, “AIDS and HIV really played a huge part in our non-sexual lives. That’s something I deal with a lot with men who are 40 or above, working through this cultural or collective trauma they have experienced, whether they have HIV themselves and have lived through the stigma themselves and the rejection, or have watched many of their friends die.”
“Cut to the early 2000s, when Truvada was introduced, and around the same time, when Grindr, Scruff and sex apps were introduced, so you had this sexual revolution for gay people where it was eating à la carte at the fast-food place. Sex became possible again. It became possible without the fear of death attached to it, which is a really heavy statement but it’s true.
“And now I feel like there’s something else is bubbling up: a collective conscious even beyond gay men, bringing consciousness to sexuality. I hear from a lot of men that they have hookups and they spend all this time chasing the actual sex, and then once they’re there they can’t wait to leave. Or they felt like they were just a fuck toy that was used.”