I am, and I consider it quite fortunate, free from fetishes that would otherwise dictate the parameters of much of my sex life. Which, being male, would mean most of my life. Not that there is anything wrong with fetishes. Other than that, well, they are just plain wrong. It’s not the fetish itself that causes problems, but rather the pursuit thereof. A little additional thrill added to a sexual experience that a mild fetish can bring is a good thing, it’s the cherry on top of the whipped cream on top of the chocolate sundae. When your fetish becomes the entire cake, to mix metaphors as well as desserts, it can be as disastrous to a happy sex life as those desserts can be to your waistline. So ya really gotta feel for fat sexpats who are also fetish prone.

The closest I come to a fetish is muscles. But that would be the opinion of those who don’t like muscles in the first place. My ideal man is not the muscle bound gym bunny, though I’m not so picky as to not appreciate those guys’ builds too. I like muscle, but as with most things in life, muscles in balance. Fortunately for me, Noom – my bar boy friend, BFE, and current love of my life – agrees. He has carefully built his body to the beautifully proportioned, muscled shape that it is, wisely bypassing the trend most bodybuilders lean toward which is to just keep adding more and more bulk.

Noom works specific areas of his body as the need arises. Before he allows his chest to expand too far, he moves downward, adding mass to his thighs and calves so that the resulting look appears natural. He switches supplements as he goes too, though I have a feeling that has more to do with the Thai love affair with pills than any specific gain he’s attempting to accomplish. On our first night together every trip I make he strips down – naked to ensure he has my full attention – and then waits for my appreciate comments. A raised eyebrow at glimpsing any particular part of his physique that he has ignored guarantees that part of his body will be attended to before my next visit. I never realized you could actually build your ass muscles until I made a comment once about his. I meant it as a joke, assuming his diminutive buttocks were just a fact of life. Three months later I was greeted by a set of buns of steel. I believe that’s what is called constructive criticism.

It would be easy for Noom to go the muscle bound route. That is the build that grabs his attention. But Noom being Noom lives his life to the rules he’s developed over time. Even when the result is not what he admires most. He takes being a bar boy – his bidness – seriously and has for some reason decided athletically muscled is the look that will guarantee him the most customers, that the Tawan-style of mass won’t fit the bill unless he changes bars. Which he has no intention of doing, preferring to be one of the few muscle hunks on Soi Twilight rather than one of many at Tawan. But it is those guys who turn his head.

One of Noom’s favorite pastimes when I’m in town and he has free reign of my computer is to find videos of the most recent bodybuilding championships. He can spend hours ooohing and ahhhhing over the world’s most muscular physiques. I tire of his sport quite quickly and leave him to it while I stretch out on the bed and admire his admiration. As normal, when he’s drooling over male muscle he’s wearing nothing but his undershorts, his state of dress anytime that he is not naked in our hotel room. I’ve been tempted to go over and strip him down, and then stroke him up while he’s surfing the steroid set, but know it would be a futile gesture.

Noom, like most Thais, considers the bed to be the place for sex. I know he’d give up his viewing pleasure for my viewing pleasure but then would ruin that fantasy in doing so. There’s a thin line between fantasy and fetish – both demand strict adherence to its respective confines and both can be quickly ruined by the most minor deviation. That’s a problem the sexual deviates of the world share regardless of their specific fetish. And if that fetish requires equipment . . . don’t get me started.

A lot of guys who like musclemen are into muscle worship. An oddly structured fetish in my book, the #1 rule of muscle worship is you can look but not participate. Fuck that. Maybe I manage to keep from falling into the land of fetish because I lack the self-discipline it requires. More likely, at least with muscle worship, it’s that my orgasm is always gonna come first. Even if I don’t.

But admiring an incredibly hot and fit body is a different story, and I love to admire Noom’s. As does he. It’s one of the interests we share. The difference, however, is in our approach. He will gaze lingeringly into a mirror to see how good a shirt, for example, looks on him. While I will gaze droolingly to see how good he looks in the shirt. A minor difference I grant you but it does lead to a small problem as well as to what comes closest to a fetish for me. As much as I enjoy his naked body, for viewing pleasure I like to see it shown off to its full potential. Which, oddly enough, means covering part of it up.

The erotism going from a state of partially dressed to fully nude is, I believe, universal. It is the promise of what is to come that entices, the revealing that excites. Our straight brethren spend millions of dollars every year buying their fish sexy lingerie, the ‘teddy’ being guys’ perennial favorite. No woman has ever slipped into a teddy because it makes her feel sexy. They do it because they know it will give them just that much more control over the poor sucker whom they’ve ensnared. Guys, on the other hand, only have undershorts to get frisky with. Unless it is a transvestite we are talking about and then we are back to a full on fetish. And one I’d rather not discuss, thank you.

Though I am sure there are legal reasons, as well as financial ones considering the prevalent payment of tea money in Thailand, the fact that bar boys appear in their underwear long before you get to see them in their full glory is an integral aspect of why gogo bars continue to attract so many of us. Checking each guy out on stage, guessing at what that bulge in his underwear may be hiding (other than a cell phone), and then waiting for him to reappear later to see just how good of a judge you are is part of the excitement, part of the allure. Walking into a bar when the sex acts are already underway feels like you missed out on something. It’s not like you haven’t seen cock before. The thrill comes from having just not seen it.

Like at most bars, Noom’s has a uniform, a standard pair of underwear all the boys wear. Like at many, each boy can also, at times, wear whatever he prefers. Undershorts, playing such a major role in Noom’s life, are always a top ‘must buy’ when we are out shopping at the malls. He likes Homme. Their standard cut. In white. I like to try to get him to agree to something different. That’s not so much about actually thinking I stand a chance of convincing him to take a risk so much as it is that he pays me the proper respect by carefully considering every other pair I suggest before turning them down. While the young female sales clerk stand quietly next to us giggling in embarrassment over the muscle hunk and his old farang friend debating the pros and cons of men’s undergarments. I don’t think enjoying embarrassing the demure female population of Bangkok counts as a fetish. But it is one of life’s little pleasures.

Once, I brought Noom a pair of tighty whiteys from the US, standard fly front undershorts that you never see Thai guys wearing. I spent the entire flight anticipating how good his body would look in those shorts. There’s a reason Thai guys don’t wear those. No matter how well built the guy is the U.S. version of men’s undershorts end up looking like grandma panties on Asians. Noom reluctantly tried them on and then gave me a quick scowl to forestall any sarcastic comment that might have been coming his way. Lessoned learned. At least until the next trip.

The jock strap I packed on top of the pile of goodies I’d brought for him didn’t get the same negative reception the fly fronts had, but did get a look that perfectly summed up just how strange farang are to Thais. He knew what the jock was, just not why I’d thought he needed one. Answering his question of “why?’ with “’cuz you look sexy” didn’t help. But Noom loves me no matter how weird I am and willingly slipped them on. For about thirty seconds. Shaking his head the entire time. You can wear a jock to do its job, or you can wear a jock to show off your body. When you don’t get the latter, you go with the former and to Noom an athletic supporter is a piece of sports equipment. Not a sporty way to show off his equipment. Perhaps, if I had a jock fetish the result would still have been a thrill. Instead, I was just as happy for him to switch back to his standard Homme. Bless him though, Noom does try to make sense out of the unfathomable.

Later during that visit, out to embarrass the salesgirls at Tokyu, we ran through our normal routine. Noom picked out his standard Homme shorts in white, the only question in his mind being how many pair I’d spring for. I pulled out a pair of skimpy shorts in purple and held them up for his consideration.

“Not,” he said dismissively making his usual call. “White,” he added just in case I’d forgotten.

The blue pair, a bit less on the skimpy side didn’t fare much better and earned only a quick negative nod of his head. Ditto for the white pair of Armani I thought might entice him into something a bit different. A black pair of Homme in his preferred cut almost won the day. Or at least he hesitated for a quick moment before saying no. Moving to the same brand in black but see-through got a quick roll of his eyes. Sensing the salesgirl had reached a point where she could not be embarrassed further, as usual, I gave in. “Okay. Get four pair.”

Content with his score and my excellent taste in underwear, Noom passed his new shorts to the girl to go involve the other half a dozen clerks necessary to make a simple purchase at a department store in Bangkok, and then turned to another table of underwear behind him. He picked out a pair of tan colored shorts that had more cut-outs than cloth, a G-string that almost could pass for posing trunks, and held them up for my consideration.

“Almost jock strack,” he offered, his look promising the experience he’d denied me earlier. The salesclerk, who had mistakenly not hurried off when it was safe to do so, proved that Thais can in fact blush. We spent the next fifteen minutes sorting through the stock of whorewear, Noom going for the more risque, me tending toward those that were not meant to overshadow the body they’d be worn on. We discussed the pros and cons of each; Noom would hold them up to his body picturing how good they would look on him while I considering how good he would look in each pair.

I don’t think discussing the purchase of intimate clothing in a public setting counts as a fetish, and I’m sure the expectation of finally seeing him in whatever we decided on was a large part of it, but I have to admit the experience was: intoxicating. I should Google it; I may finally have found a fetish to call my own. But Googling that kind of thing can be dangerous. Far too often it leads you to places your mind does not want to go.

I nixed the sequins, the lame, the sheer see-through and neon orange. Noom kept trying to push past the basic black, the g-string version of a little black dress that I thought he’d more likely agree to wear the most often. I won that round by holding up the same pair in answer to his suggestions several times in a row. The salesclerk took the addition to our purchase and ran off before we could start her down a path that would undoubtedly lead her to moral ruin.

Back at the hotel Noom changed into his new black underwear to give me the full experience. I’m not sure which of us was excited the most. I’d expect it was me, but that the pouch quickly became too small to contain all of Noom makes me think we just might have found a fetish to enjoy for him too.

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