SEX EDge: 'Why Are We Pigs?'
Watch this clip from CagedJock's TikTok.
This is the first in a monthly column about gay sex.
One of the gay rites of passage— a rite crystallized by closeted first loves, bad breakups, and growing up in hostile small towns with even smaller minds—is the move away from home to find yourself in a big city. Some researchers have come to call it the Great Gay Migration, recognizing perhaps that gay men, like birds, are flighty and brightly colored.
Each spring, this migratory phenomenon sweeps across the country as throngs of queer twenty-somethings flock to major cities in hopes of establishing themselves as a main character. What happens instead, I've learned, is what happens to everyone who faces the real, raw, unfiltered world: an evolution.
Gay life can be much more messy and miscalculated than one anticipated. To live well requires constant negotiations. And of all life's negotiations, none are more messy or more miscalculated than sex.
Here is where we begin. As we unwrap these tales of sex and self-discovery, it's important to know that our ultimate goal in this sex column is to gain a greater understanding of people. Although our cast of characters is mainly based in New York, like most gay men, they run in very worldly social circles.
When Pigs Fly
Of all the species of gay men you will find strutting around New York City, CJ was certainly the most invasive as an OnlyFans model. But he insists he was doing it before it went mainstream. "It's very oversaturated," he lamented.
Like most New York gays, he came out and shortly after moved to the city in 2009. After a quick career in fashion design, he turned his interests to sex and began experimenting with chastity cages, documenting his escapades along the way online. "I try to be educational. It's for the subs to subscribe and to learn from me how to be a good sub and for the doms to subscribe to see how to be a good dom," he said. Thus, CagedJock was born. Now at 36, with nearly 300K social followers, he makes content full-time and chases his desires.
On a recent night, CJ was facetiming with me and getting ready to host a darkroom party at a bar in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood. He began to confess.
"I'm a pig," he said. "You have unapologetic sex. You get really nasty and raunchy, filthy, dirty. And I'm not gonna apologize for it."
It wasn't much of a confession. There was hardly anyone in New York's gay social circles who didn't know of CJ or hadn't seen at least one of his fetish videos. In one that was especially explicit, he uses a fist full of chopsticks to stretch a willing bottom bit by bit. It has more than 30K views.
"That sounds about right," he said. "It gets retweeted a lot."
When it comes to kink, "you need to be educated about it," he explained. "There has to be an arousing factor in it for you to diverge your mind. Some people didn't know what chastity was until I educated them, and now they see the arousing aspect in it."
A general rule of thumb in the LGBTQ community is the more open you are the better. Being a pig connotes a certain openness to exploring outside of life's conventions, CJ explained. Lately, amid attempts to legislate gender expression and remove sexual agency from our lives, being a pig is gaining appeal as people buck tradition.
"I've been seeing it a lot lately," CJ said. "I think more and more people are coming out."
Pigging Out
Once the pig is out, it can be difficult to put it back in the pen so to speak. The world becomes your oyster and your bedroom, and one must be careful not to succumb to constantly chasing cum.
"That's why I left Chicago," admitted a friend we call Tuna, early thirties, who works in real estate development. "I slept with everyone I could there. Then I had to leave." No matter how unconventional the relationship, he couldn't commit to an option. So he committed to having options and moved to New York.
He added, "It's impossible to sleep with everyone here."
In many respects, the privilege of sexual exploration today can be traced to the sex education and advocacy work that began during the '80s HIV/AIDS epidemic. In John-Manuel Andriote's 1999 book, "Victory Deferred: How AIDS Changed Gay Life in America" (Chicago Press), the out journalist described a "very disjointed" gay community before it was propelled by AIDS activism.
"Before AIDS was identified in 1981, most gay people were not aware of (or interested in) the political implications of their personal lives," Androite said in an interview with the University of Chicago. "In the seventies, the immediate interests of gay people were in coming out, finally feeling free to be themselves, and establishing social and sexual connections with others."
With advances in HIV meds rendering the virus undetectable and untransmittable, and the proliferation of PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), that period of "establishing social and sexual connections" has returned, tenfold. Hookup apps like Grindr, Scruff and Sniffies, have further upped the ante by enabling us to keep our fantasies at our fingertips.
"It's so easy to find sex these days," CJ agreed. "There're so many temptations. Guys are not as willing to commit." Being horny at the office is one thing. Knowing that there is a plethora of equally horny penises plus or minus 800 feet away is another. As a result, romance often takes a backseat to right now.
CJ calls it all "very healthy." More sex means more opportunities to figure out exactly what you want.
"Sex for me is not just about all submission. It's not just about the surface. It's not about the size of your muscles or how beautiful your body is. It's about how you're able to make me feel," he said. "To feel submissive and make me feel like I want to be yours."
He added, "When I was young, all I wanted was to have a partner who is beautiful. Then as I got older, I thought, 'Wait a minute, I want more than that.'"
In 2021, legendary entertainment columnist and NYC fixture Michael Musto predicted that there would be a roaring resurgence of nightlife as the city begins to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Having lived through the HIV/AIDS epidemic, "the nightlife is going to be better than ever," said Musto in an interview with the Brooklyn Magazine. "It might even surpass the '70s."
In CJ's eyes, it already has. According to him, the popularity of piggy sex among gay men is proof, and in sharing his sexual experiences he hopes to show that its OK to explore sex and have fun in the process.
"It's been a huge blessing," said CJ. "My fans have allowed me to do this. They go to OnlyFans for a sexy time, to escape reality so that they can immerse themselves in a fantasy. I got all my fantasies fulfilled in this city."
Gays in New York know how to focus on their fun, he explained.
"Whenever I go to the clinics to get tested, they would always be like, 'Why are you having sex so much?' And I really want to say back: do you see us going to shoot everybody? We don't because we focus on our fun," he said. "We are also less violent because we are able to express all of our... I wouldn't say frustration, but it's easier for us to access sex. So we are able to get it out of the system more than straight men."
Another confession, this time whispered. "You know what my biggest fear is?" CJ said, "If I am reincarnated into a straight man. I would kill myself."
Emell Derra Adolphus is a writer who lives in New York City. Follow him on Instagram at @uvegotmell.