I feel I should begin this post by explaining why I’m posting about a gay sex app on my improv blog. It might seem salacious, or completely irrelevant, but I’ve actually learned quite a lot about myself as a person and as an artist by using this app. I’ve also learned a lot about communities by joining a new one this year. As improvisers (and artists generally) it’s important to strive for personal growth and self-understanding. As people whose artistic practice is intrinsically community-based, it’s important to be aware of what that means and what it feels like to be the new person in one.
I feel I should also mention that I never have casual sex with other improvisers. I have this rule for myself because I’m often in a position of care over others, and it’s just too easy to be ‘that guy’. I’m aware that my being very open about my trans status and sex life generally is enough to change perceptions, but there’s a huge emotional difference between the statements, ‘Stephen is easy’, and ‘Stephen has slept with 3 cast members’. There’s no amount of emotional or professional boundaries that would make the second option not feel weird to at least some people, so I make sure it’s never a thing. Besides, I don’t need to sleep with improvisers; there’s an app for that.
My new year’s resolution for 2019 was to download Grindr and meet some men for casual sex. It sounds easy (and a bit dirty), but for me, this was a legitimate personal goal because it represented overcoming a fear. As a trans man, I’d always had an assumption that the broad majority of gay men wouldn’t be ‘into’ me, and that large swathes of gay culture were therefore inaccessible to me. There’s also a strong societal narrative about trans people being unloveable; niche fetishes or tragic cases. This is gradually changing (though not fast enough), but for a long time trans characters in the media were broadly one or the other; nobody got a happy ending. For me, like a lot of trans people, this led to a huge fear about being romantically acceptable to people as I was. In fact, when I transitioned this was the scariest thought.
I had a false start with this resolution in the summer of 2018. I was in Chicago and had a bit of time on my hands, so I downloaded Grindr and made a basic profile. Within a day two different men had messaged me telling me I shouldn’t be on Grindr because it was only for (real) men. I was open about my trans status, because it’s directly relevant to anybody I might actually meet, and it just seemed efficient. I’m still open about it today, for the same reason. Although it was only two men out of thousands of profiles on the app, because they were the first messages I received I allowed them to confirm all of my worst fears and didn’t open the app again for months.
When I started in 2019 I opened the app again, updated my pictures and stats (I still have a pet peeve about people who use old pictures or inaccurate measurements; what do they think is going to happen when they show up!?), and waited. Each time I opened the app I had friendly messages from interested men. Some of them were even quite cute. There was a little voice in my head, though, saying that they were probably too good to be true. Probably cute guy 1 was a pretend profile for some horrible troll, cute guy 2 was a trans fetishist who couldn’t care less who I was, and cute guy 3 was just messaging me to be funny, he’d never actually be interested in me. These all turned out to be nonsense, of course, but we’ll tell ourselves all kinds of things when we’re scared.
I do also think that having been raised female I, like a lot of women, had a lingering fear of men. Because some men are bad we’re often taught to fear them all for our own safety, but the vast majority of people I’ve met this year have turned out to be lovely. Dropping the last vestiges of that and knowing on a deep level that we’re really all just people has been cathartic in a way I hadn’t predicted.
Of course, I did eventually work up the courage to start meeting people (or this would be a short series). I was scared, of nothing in particular if I’m honest. The first person I met seemed nice (he was nice, though just alright in bed), he was interested in me, he was fine with playing safe. We met and had a lovely time, involving very little small talk (always a boon) and both of us getting exactly what we’d said we liked. Being naked is a particular kind of vulnerable, and one which I’ve always liked for its intrinsic honesty. To find easy and uncomplicated acceptance of myself in that form was more validating than I’d realised it would be.
We’re told sometimes not to seek external validation, that the only important opinion of us is our own. I do understand the motivation to not be dependant on others for self-worth, but we’re social creatures at the end of the day. I think many of us in the acting world have a pretty strong need to be validated, and there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that. I’m a person who is happier when they’re connected to and accepted by other people, and knowing I’m liked and wanted is important to me. I strongly suspect this applies to many other people too. Of course, I’m also confident in myself, but the things that are easiest to be confident about (intelligence, drive, productivity) are all very isolated qualities. If we validate ourselves we validate the things we can do well independently; if we seek external validation we validate social qualities. These are important to us as humans and artists, and admitting that need can be powerful.
As I’ve met more and more people (I’ll spare you all the numbers), I’ve become more confident, more settled into my own skin, and more emotionally available. There’s a power in the vulnerability of (good) casual sex. Meeting someone you have chemistry with and allowing yourself to enjoy the moment without the safety net of a relationship is really enriching on an emotional level. It’s a reminder that we’re all connected, and that we are strong enough to surrender to that.
Some people I meet are visibly nervous, some are invisibly nervous under a guise of confidence, some are genuine and open and lovely. Putting yourself in the genuine, open, and lovely category requires a sense of ease in yourself and with others. Being with somebody in this category allows for a kind of mutual surrendering to a moment that feels exactly like a really beautiful improv scene. You’re grounded in your body and in the moment, you’re making good eye contact, you’re paying an intense amount of attention and allowing yourself to react naturally.
The fact that this is relatively easy to find with strangers sexually does bring up lots of questions for me about improv jams, namely why are they so rarely good? All of the really satisfying improv I’ve seen in my life has come from established and tightly bonded groups; this has led me to believe that that bond was necessary to the improv. Perhaps, though, it’s the vulnerability that that bond engenders that brings the joy.
The improv equivalent here is to allow yourself to be emotionally naked on stage, and with peers. To be vulnerable, to do things that scare you, to not know what’s going to happen. The longer we improvise for the harder this can be because we develop the muscle of making a good scene happen. There’s a huge power to be found in surrendering to the moment, to play a scene or character or relationship that you’ve not seen before, that might be bad, that might be difficult. This is how we grow as artists and people.
Vulnerability is the opposite of fear. When we’re fearful we make bad choices, we favour our ego and our perceived safety over our own growth or experience, or that of others. When we’re vulnerable, it allows other people to be vulnerable too. They perceive that they’re in an environment where it’s safe and okay to put their fear aside and really engage. When I meet someone (onstage or for sex) who is open, I immediately relax and open more myself, whether or not I’ve asked for their name or about their hobbies beforehand. Many of us find this in groups we’ve been with for ages and bonded with; I think it’s possible with strangers too. We should strive first to create spaces and groups where this vulnerability is possible, but also to create in ourselves the kind of openness that allows us to be emotionally naked with more and more people, in more and more situations.
We ask beginners to do something pretty terrifying every time they walk on stage, and they get a huge improv high because of it. They choose to be vulnerable just by signing up for the class, and those among them who embrace that feeling often fall in love with it. It’s easy to fall out of love with improv as you get better, because we lose that sense of vulnerability; we sacrifice it to the cause of trying to be good at improv. I invite you to shift your focus on stage, towards allowing yourself to be vulnerable with your scene partner and your audience. Get a little bit more naked, see what happens. That is the improv I want to do and see; real intimacy and vulnerability, nothing more.