Confronting My Ego’s Demand For Meaningless Sex

An experiment in yoga inspired sexual moderation

Soft pink rose petals slid gracefully from my hand as I crossed the Red Car Bridge, which spans the LA River near the neighborhood of Atwater, in Los Angeles, releasing, with love, the habit of pursuing disconnected sex.

For a couple of years now, I’ve been on an exploration, seeking a more satisfying vibe than the one my current dance moves as a sport-fucking gay man provides. In my piece, When The Dance Steps Get Old, I explored the practice of noticing my dissatisfaction in depth, but the essay leaves the reader with no suggested path, except maybe to pay attention to alternate possibilities.

Looking back, I see that leaning into the discomfort (feeling the emotions) while also paying attention to alternate possibilities is excellent advice. That’s probably why nearly every yoga Sage and Buddhist devotee has said something like it (feel your feels) as a mantra for thousands of years.

Feel your feelings and let them teach you.

That led me to this bridge and these lovely people.

“Thank you for the good times you gave me random sport-fucking. We’ve had some amazing times, and you have been a huge comfort to me, but it’s time to make space for other forms of beauty.” I said silently to myself.

The remarkably soft pedals slid from my fingers, were carried by the breeze to the surface of surprisingly clear water, where they touched the surface and moved away like tiny pink organic boats carrying our precious prayers.

I was sort of riding the wake of a five-year-old child’s ritual being executed by her two lovely, very woo-woo parents.

A cluster of five adults and three children was there participating in a festive ritual to support their little girl as she said goodbye to her “suckle finger.”

It was a gentle ritual, opening a door of possibility – the possibility of living life without the immediate comfort provided by sucking on a piece of human anatomy.

Goodness. That’s something I can relate to, I thought.

So, as one of the parents suggested, I chose something of my own to release with love.

This is new, and we’ll see how it goes.

This is a doodle from 1991 I recently uncovered. Even back then, it appears that I was feeling something substantial emanating from the areas of my crotch and my heart.

My new practice is to spend less time pursuing unconnected sex and using that time to create art and heart-centered connections instead.

This isn’t about punishing myself or making sex a bad thing, it’s a matter of balance – it’s about the quality of my life.

I want the kind of connection in my life I receive from sharing essays and poetry, drawing with colored pencils, learning to play the guitar, and singing – all connections to love. They bring a depth of satisfaction I just don’t get when scrolling through Grindr for 45 minutes...let’s be honest, for 2+ hours or more, sometimes daily.

The time evaporates, and I’m left with a phone screen hangover that feels like I’ve eaten a full head of cotton candy.

The idea is to be less of a sport-fucking score keeper and more of a lover who sees the divine in the men I’m sharing seed with.

“How could you do this!?” My ego is screaming in my head.

“This is who we are! What the actual fuck? You are a shameless sport-fucking genius! Look at the beauty and social status of the men you’ve had sex with. It proves you’re a stud. You are worthy of belonging. You are in the incoming call business. You are wanted. You are the king of the Gay Slutty Sluts. Are you gonna let the haters win?”

And then, just as quickly, he gets mean. My ego also says,

“Damn, I hate to point this out, but your age is showing dude. At this point, there is no amount of work you can do on your body to fix your face, the texture of the crepey skin covering your once brilliant abs, or the knowledge that beauty opens doors you most likely will never experience again.”

My ego has lots of ideas: “Beef up. Look at all the boys into muscle Daddies, just pack on the pounds. Use your money to win. Just lower your standards. Why not do the dance with guys on the B team?”

I’ll tell you why.

Because I’ve had a vision of a life lived in balance, full of love, heart-centered connection, and art. Sex that brings me closer to another man’s soul.

In a recent plant medicine ceremony (yes I’m just tossing that in and leaving it here, for now) a euphoric sense of love and contentment washed over me, and I suddenly knew, all the resources I need to cure the pain of loneliness are available to me.

Time and attention are the most precious resources I have. Giving so much of it to Grindr and the pursuit of furtive hookups is a missed opportunity to do something more thoughtful, something that gets me closer to my dreams: being a writer, a photographer, an artist.

I can double down and rebrand Mike Gerle the sport-fucker. I can sus out and amp up what sells older guys in the gay sport-fucking arena. And, don’t get me wrong, I won’t stop pulling it together and remaining as fabulous as possible.

But that’s all just rearranging furniture on the deck of a sinking ship. And spare me your knee-jerk reaction, but oooh this and oooh that, you’re so handsome. The ship of random sport-fucking (as it was for me) is slowly sinking. Fluffing the pillows on the deck chairs is not going to change the fact that all ships eventually go out of service.

The quick hook-ups are both less available and less satisfying when they happen. A sea of loneliness is swallowing the ever increasingly numb “adventures” of the sport-fucking-funship.

“But that’s who you are!” My fucking ego doesn’t stop. It’s just who he is.

So I let him talk, but don’t let him make the agenda. Go ahead. Talk. I just observe his input, his demands, and his hyperbole.

I watch it and feel it all.

Then, take a breath, or two, to create space where my real voice can be heard.

Actually, no, Mr. ego, you're NOT who I am.

Who I am, is a spark of the divine Spirit.

We all are.

The yoga sage dudes have been saying it for thousands of years.

Over the past few months, my gay loneliness led me to London, then to Naked Warrior Yoga in WeHo, and back to the principles of yoga I learned during my yoga teacher training in 2016.

Yoga still works for me.

It is a structured practice consisting of eight limbs (eight principles), all of which resonate with my soul. It is a container that speaks to the comfort I find in ritual and the delight of power exchange I find in the dance of dominance and submission.

Its eighth limb of practice is ecstasy (Samadhi), which I have had sufficient glimpses of through lived experience to deem the philosophy worthy of further contemplation, study, and embodied practice.

I did this as an exercise to reconnect with the eight limbs of yoga. Brahmacharya is the 4th concept of the Yama limb.

This time I decided not to ignore Brahmacharya translated as “passion/energy/sexual moderation.” It’s one of the five moral restraints that make up the first limb of yoga known as the Yamas.

Moderate sex! What?

I just decided to gloss over that idea when I was taking my yoga teacher training in 2016, but now that I have nearly a decade of experience wearing these principles both as a tight garment and also as nothing more than a bit of fashion flare, I’ve come to realize that the full package delivers the full promise.

Two weeks of semen retention, with the last week fully immersed in a tantra yoga retreat for gay men, was one of the times I experienced the ecstasy of Samadhi. Focused intention, breathwork, chakra awareness, and cock manipulation designed to move prana (life force) from the base of my spine up through my body and out into the Universe gave me a glimpse of how sex can actually be a tool that connects us to the infinite, and to Moksha (freedom from old cycles).

So, on the long walk to the ritual for a beautiful five year old girl who was about to give up her most cherished comforting cycle, I placed stones and said a prayer for the institutions, no longer there, who provided me so much pleasure and identity – Kings of Hearts (1984-1996), Cuffs (1981-2001), and MJ’s (1984-2014).

I placed a rock in front of each, got on my knees, and said a little prayer of gratitude. Well, until I got to the old MJ’s location, which was being used as a filming location and was swarming with movie production types. I left a rock, closed my eyes for a second, and moved on. Only one grip gave me any notice…

So much love and gratitude. Thank you.

Thank you for understanding my new beginnings and a broader road to love. Thank you, intuition, for opening space for what’s next.

This is an experiment, but so far I’m loving the renewed ritual of yoga class, the feel of the retained energy, and its explosive release this morning with my main boy and dear husband, Dennis.

That’s what’s happening.

That’s the experiment.

I’ll keep you posted.

Namaste