NOT GAY SEXUAL CULTURES General Editors: José Esteban Muñoz and Ann Pellegrini Titles in the series include Times Square Red, Times Square Blue Another Country: Queer Anti-Urbanism Samuel R. Delany Scott Herring Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, Afterlife of Colonialism and Sexuality in the African American Edited by Arnaldo Cruz Malavé and Literary Imagination Martin F. Manalansan IV Darieck Scott Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries Discursive Spaces Karen Tongson Juana María Rodríguez Beyond the Nation: Diasporic Filipino Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Literature and Queer Reading Limits of Religious Tolerance Martin Joseph Ponce Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latini- Michael Cobb zation of American Culture Brown Boys and Rice Queens: Spellbinding Frances Négron-Muntaner Performance in the Asias Manning the Race: Reforming Black Men in Eng-Beng Lim the Jim Crow Era Transforming Citizenships: Transgender Marlon Ross Articulations of the Law In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Isaac West Bodies, Subcultural Lives The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption Judith Halberstam and Homoeroticism within US Slave Culture Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch: Essays Vincent Woodard, Edited by Justin A. on Race and Sexuality in the U.S. Joyce and Dwight A. McBride Dwight A. McBride Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures and Other God Hates Fags: The Rhetorics of Religious Latina Longings Violence Juana María Rodríguez Michael Cobb Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, and the Masochism Black American Intellectual Amber Jamilla Musser Robert Reid-Pharr The Exquisite Corpse of Asian America: The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in Biopolitics, Biosociality, and Posthuman American Literary and Cultural Memory Ecologies Lázaro Lima Rachel C. Lee Arranging Grief: Sacred Time and the Body Not Gay: Sex between Straight White Men in Nineteenth-Century America Jane Ward Dana Luciano For a complete list of books in the series, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of see www.nyupress.org. Queer Futurity José Esteban Muñoz NOT SEX BETWEEN STRAIGHT WHITE MEN G A Y Jane Ward NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London www.nyupress.org © 2015 by New York University All rights reserved References to Internet websites (URLs) were accu- rate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manu- script was prepared. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ward, Elizabeth Jane. Not gay : sex between straight white men / Jane Ward. pages cm. — (Sexual cultures) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4798-2517-2 (pb : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4798-6068-5 (cl : alk. paper) 1. Men—Sexual behavior. 2. Gay men. 3. Hetero- sexual men. 4. Homosexuality. I. Title. HQ28.W37 2015 306.70811—dc23 2015004665 New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and mate- rials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books. Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Also available as an ebook For Kat This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix 1 Nowhere without It: The Homosexual Ingredient in the Making of Straight White Men 1 2 Bars, Bikers, and Bathrooms: A Century of Not-Gay Sex 51 3 Here’s How You Know You’re Not Gay: The Popular Science of Heterosexual Fluidity 83 4 Average Dudes, Casual Encounters: White Homosociality and Heterosexual Authenticity 119 5 Haze Him! White Masculinity, Anal Resilience, and the Erotic Spectacle of Repulsion 153 6 Against Gay Love: This One Goes Out to the Queers 191 Notes 213 Index 229 About the Author 239 vii This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS S EVERAL years ago I took myself on a writing retreat to a little cabin in Joshua Tree National Park, with the goal of starting this book. On the second day in the cabin, as I was typing away, I slowly started to cry—a rarity at this stage in my life. It took me by surprise that I was crying, but I also knew why it was happening: I was really happy. In contrast with my first book, a revision of a dissertation that never fully felt like my own project, this book unfolded with ease, urgency, and clarity. Some sections made me worried I would lose my job or meet some other unfortunate fate if I dared to publish them; others made me laugh out loud. Writing a book about sex practices—a sub- ject generally devalued in academia despite its high political and ethical stakes—was not only intellectually energizing, but a vital counterbalance to my sleep-deprived existence as a new parent. I am grateful for the pleasure this book has brought to my life, and for my new awareness of what the writing process can be. This project has been shaped by many friends, colleagues, re- viewers, and conference interlocutors to whom I am indebted: Karl Bryant, Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, Mark Broomfield, Jack Halber- stam, Amin Ghaziani, Carol Tushabe, David Halperin, Stephen Valocchi, Rachel Luft, Lisa Jean Moore, Margaux Cowden, Peter Hennen, Kate Frank, Jennifer Doyle, Ann Cvetkovich, Melissa Dase, Beth Schneider, Steven Zeeland, Tristan Taormino, Chrys ix