Boyslut: An Interview With Zachary Zane
Currents
"Through the lens of my bisexuality and self-described sluttiness,” Zachary Zane writes on his website, “I break down exactly how sexual shame negatively impacts our lives, and how we can unlearn the harmful, entrenched messages that society imparts to us.”
Author of Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto (2023), Zach comes across as articulate, intense, sassy, and sexy. His intelligence and self-confidence command our Zoom room.
Zach wrote Boyslut because a similar book did not exist. “I had not seen a book written by a bisexual man about how to overcome sexual shame,” he tells me. “As we’re starting to see more LGBT narratives in mainstream cultures, I really thought bi people were being left out, particularly bisexual men. I would not have written this book if someone else had shared a similar story about their male bisexuality. No one had! So it was something I had to do.”
Boyslut is largely Zach’s personal story (with lots of sex scenes) interwoven with a kind of owner’s manual for living without guilt as a non-monogamous bi person in today’s society. Did he intend from the start to write a combination memoir and manifesto?
“It started out more strictly as a memoir,” Zach explains. “Then by nature of being a sex and relationship columnist [...] it wasn’t just me wanting to share my story. I wanted to give more direct advice; give my take on larger cultural phenomena and trends, create more of a movement.”
For example, in the “So . . . You’re Actually Bisexual?” chapter, “Declaring our bisexuality is a pain in the ass, but it’s a necessary chore. I address the many infuriating questions people have asked me when I reveal I’m bisexual. Then I break them down by how I have responded and how I wish I’d responded in those situations. I want to give bi people who have also struggled [advice on] how to respond, when to respond, and when not to respond.”
His editor told him, “This isn’t just a memoir. It’s a call to arms, a manifesto.”
Zach wasn’t always the out-and-proud self-proclaimed “Boyslut” and outspoken activist for the non-monogamous bi community. His book examines the shame he felt growing up, even though his family was liberal, sex-positive, and queer-accepting. Despite this, he writes in Boyslut, “I was still overcome with sexual shame. Sex negativity is pervasive, insidious, and touches us all — and not in a fun, kinky way.”
As a boy, Zach suffered from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. He was deeply ashamed about compulsively picturing people naked, for example. At 10 years old, he confessed this to his therapist, whom, of course, he pictured naked: “his penis flanked by a big ol’ pair of saggy balls […]'Don’t think of his balls. Now I’m thinking of his balls. Balls. Shit, why am I doing this? What’s wrong with me? Balls.'” His therapist reassured him that there was nothing bad about picturing people naked, and once he stops thinking it’s bad, he’ll be able to stop dwelling on them. Zach listened, imagining him “repositioning his hairy grapefruits.”
Zach’s OCD took the form of more than embarrassing naked-body thoughts. From the age of four, he sat himself in the family’s “punishment chair” for having bad thoughts. From about age seven to 10, he compulsively wiped for 30 minutes after going to the bathroom, rubbing himself raw and bloody. In middle school, he couldn’t sleep at night because he had to check every ten minutes that his alarm clock was set.
These and other compulsive behaviors led to self-loathing. “Eventually, my powerlessness morphed into anger, and there was nowhere to direct it but inward. I would call myself stupid, insane, broken,” he writes. He was diagnosed with severe OCD at age 10. Thanks to therapy, psychiatry, medications, and a mother who prioritized his mental health, he gradually managed his disorder.
Even with parents who encouraged his sexual exploration and three queer uncles, it took Zach years and many drunken blow jobs to accept his own bisexuality. In his teens and through college, he had a lot of sex with a lot of women. When he got drunk enough — and only if he got drunk enough — he made out with men and received blow jobs. As long as he was drunk, he rationalized, he wasn’t gay. As long as it wasn’t anal, he wasn’t gay. His anal avoidance ended in his senior year, but you’ll have to read the book for that tale.
Coming out as bisexual wasn’t even a possibility at that point. He didn’t know a single out bi man. A misguided psychiatrist told him that only women were bi.
After much therapy, self-examination, and thousands of sex partners, Zach is now on a loud and proud mission to grab as much pleasure as he can as a shame-free polyamorous bisexual and to help others do the same.
“Shame makes us feel alone. It isolates us. It makes us think we’re not lovable or worthy of love, but we are. We’re humans, and most primally, we’re programmed to fuck, love, and connect.”
Zach has had wide success as a sex writer and sex advice columnist in mainstream as well as alternative publications. He writes regular columns for Men’s Health and Cosmopolitan. He’s an engaging, original writer and keen observer whose exuberant sexual encounters make for lively reading.
No stranger to Queer Majority readers, he writes QM’s “Zach and the City” column. He edited the April 2022 “Slut” issue, reaching out to his network of writers for “stories we have not read, content on slut identity — sluthood — that we haven’t seen elsewhere.”
How does writing for Queer Majority differ? “For other publications, I’m often writing ‘Intro 101’, assuming other people know nothing about my topic. I love writing for Queer Majority because I’m allowed to write 201 and 301 material. I can delve into the nitty-gritty. I respect that Queer Majority has a fucking opinion and goes against the grain in a way I really appreciate. I can write things that I can’t write elsewhere.”
“Are you able to stay in the moment to experience the sex parties, naked yoga, and all these other encounters that your readers can only fantasize about?” I ask Zach, “Or is a part of you always saying, ‘I have to remember to describe what it’s like doing downward dog naked with a hot nude guy standing behind me doggy style’?”
“People ask, do I do things for the content to write about? No, I do things because I’m a slut,” Zach says. “I enjoy the experience. The next morning, I record voice notes with details for when I write about it. I also do a lot of things I don’t write about!”
I tell Zach that I enjoyed the irreverent sexiness and authenticity of Boyslut, but some issues nag at me as a 79-year-old woman who came of age sexually in a very different and more restrictive time. For example, Zach makes a big deal of the number of sexual partners he’s had, bragging about the variety:
“I’ve had sex with roughly two thousand people. I’ve had sex with men, women, and nonbinary folks. I’ve had sex with twenty-one-year-old guys and grandmothers three times that age. I’ve dommed, subbed, switched, fisted, DP-ed, spit-roasted, tied up, and cuckolded. I’ve been pegged by a New York Times bestselling author, bred contestants from America’s Next Top Model, boned countless queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race, and fucked Emmy, Tony, and Grammy winners.”
“Help me understand why running a count of your sex partners is important,” I ask him. “What does it mean to you that you’ve slept with more than 2,000 people?”
“I have not counted,” he admits. “It could be 5,000, 3,000, 1,500, I don’t know. The reason I give a number is just to show the scope. It’s a catchy thing.” He used to count the number of partners in high school through his early 20s because “that was a point of pride.” Later he realized, “That’s kind of fucked up to take it as a point of pride and to reduce people to objects. I wasn’t having sex for the sake of having sex with them. I wanted to experience pleasure. I wanted them to experience pleasure. At that point, I stopped counting, it didn’t add anything.”
I’m relieved to hear this. I had been put off by what seemed like braggadocio and reminders of a demeaning part of my own life. During the time I was claiming my own sexual autonomy 60 years ago, young women who were sexually enthusiastic and available — okay, like me — were susceptible to smooth-talking men with “Russian hands and Roman fingers”, as we used to call them. These men finessed the art of seduction just to add women to their tally of conquests. What we thought was the beginning of a romance was just the guy’s successful hookup. We were “a notch on the bedpost” — another phrase from my era — dumped and forgotten as soon as he put his pants back on. We were so naïve that we didn’t even have a word for “ghosted.”
Zach’s brand of Boyslut behavior is not that. Yes, he made mistakes in the past. Now he is very careful not to mislead anyone. “There is a reason why everyone isn’t having incredible sex: It requires communication, vulnerability, and knowing — owning — what you like.” He is vocal about being non-monogamous, bisexual, adventuresome, and craving variety. He runs with people who share his beliefs and sexual expression. “Sure, some people use sex as a distraction and secretly wish for more intimate connections, but some people just like having sex, plain and simple. They’re not unfulfilled — in fact, they’re often quite fulfilled. Sometimes getting railed feels really damn good. That’s it.”
I challenge Zach on what I see as his cavalier attitude about condoms in Boyslut. He’d rather return to the clinic with gonorrhea for the third time than use condoms. “Is it all about your pleasure, your validation of your right to sexual pleasure, and your reliance on easy medical fixes for STIs?” I ask. “You wrote that it’s difficult for you to orgasm wearing a condom, but you say, ‘I always wear a condom if my partner wants me to, no questions asked. I never make my inability to cum with a plastic bag on my dick their problem.’ But do you discuss it first, or assume consent to condomless sex if a partner doesn’t bring it up?”
“I let people know my status, the last time I was tested, and that I’m high risk,” Zach explains. “I give them the appropriate amount of information so they can choose whether this is a risk they feel comfortable taking.” He points out gender differences: the norm is no condoms on Grindr, Sniffies, or other gay dating apps. “With women, I tend to wear a condom significantly more and actually just assume that they want me to wear a condom. It’s not that I’m waiting for a ‘no.’ I’m not flippantly not using condoms or convincing people not to use condoms, or slipping it in because they didn’t say no. I want people to be enthusiastic, having the right information. A lot of forethought and communication goes into this.”
Zach writes at length in Boyslut about how bareback sex impacts his sense of himself as a queer man and his relationship with sex. “Behind closed doors, sex is one of the few things that’s ours. It’s theoretically one of the few acts that hatred and fear can’t touch. It’s where we can be our gayest, most fabulous, and loving selves. Thanks to modern medicine, we can enjoy sex without the fear of contracting HIV […] I want to have the best sex I can. I want this one part of my life to be completely untouched by fear. When I have sex without a condom, that’s exactly how I feel. For other people, it’s not worth it, but for me, it absolutely is. It’s one of those calculated slutty risks that I’ve analyzed, and the decision that I’ve come to, while controversial, is mine […] If (or when) we start to see major outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, I’ll start wrapping it up, but until then, I’m going to keep raw-dogging it. I am advocating for everyone to remove all shame and stigma around STIs. Let’s treat them like strep throat.”
“You’re proud of your looks and your ability to attract sex partners,” I tell Zach. “Do you ever think about what will happen when you become less desirable?”
Zach blushes, visible even over Zoom: “Thank God ‘daddies’ are in, and I think I’ll be sexually desirable well into my sixties. I like to think that I’m smart and charming and have a personality, and people hang out with me for more than my looks. I think you should use everything God gave you to have fun and live life and sell your books and create partners. Right now, I use my looks to my advantage. I know that’s not sustainable and will fade over time, so I’m enjoying my good looks while I have them, knowing it won’t be forever. They say youth is wasted on the young — no one will say that about me.”
When I asked Zach if he feared anything about aging, he said: “Not really. Aging seems so far away. I think the best years of my life are still ahead of me. I eventually want one primary or nesting partner, someone I’ll share my life with. I do know at some point in my life, I’d like to get married. I do not want to have kids, so there’s absolutely no rush. I’m getting my vasectomy later this month. I know I’ll be in an open relationship, but I’d like that one person to be my rock and anchor. I think it’s important for me to end up with a man long-term. I really do not like being perceived as straight. I like going to gay clubs, and I don’t want to feel like a visitor in my own home. When you have a woman around your arm, you’re seen as one of those awful straight people co-opting that space. When I make out with a girl, I see the side-eye. I want to scream, ‘I’ve had sex with more men than anyone in here, and my girlfriend has fucked more women than any lesbian in here!’”
What does Zach consider his greatest professional accomplishment? “Writing this fucking memoir! How many people talk about writing their memoir? How many do it? How many do it with a dildo coming out from Fun Factory associated with the book? This is out in the world and will be out there after I die. I’m really proud of it.”
What is his greatest personal accomplishment? “Getting to where and who I am right now. Living life with very little sexual shame. Embracing my bisexuality. For so long, I felt alone and confused. I worked really hard through therapy, reaching out to people, and attending events to try to find a community that encouraged me to be myself and loved me for myself. I feel like I found that.”
“For the first time in centuries, I think the world is ready for the communicative, openly sexual, nontoxic Boyslut. Even if the world isn’t ready, it doesn’t matter. I’ll be so loud that everyone will have to listen.”
For more about Zachary Zane, visit his website and find him on Twitter and Instagram. Order Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto from Bookshop.org.
Joan Price is an advocate for ageless sexuality and the author of four books about senior sex.
Published Apr 29, 2023
