A / 20-something / Bi, Shy and always at my post limit

Shane has a about 15 different recipes he cycles though because he knows he likes them and he knows how to cook them. They are easy to make and prepare. Sometimes he’ll stumble across something new he wants to try and he’ll switch one out or just add one to the rotation. He has a routine he likes and follows.

Ilya does not. He has his meals prepped and such but he doesn’t have a schedule or a recipe cycle the same way he Shane does. He plans for the week rather than the month and regularly finds new recipes on social media from gym bros that look so gross he has to try them just because.

At first Shane doesn’t notice however when they move in together it doesn’t take long for Shane to realize that his husband might be slightly crazy because why is there a pan in the fridge filled with some form of orange jello stuff that upon closer inspection of the pantry has too be made from the bag of beef gelatin. He just stands there staring at the glass container in horror until Ilya walks in.

Shane, without looking away from the jello, “what the fuck is that?”

Ilya, looking confused between Shane and the container, it’s sugar free jello with like 100g of protein.. why?

Shane, horrified turning to Ilya fully, what do you mean??? You are already reaching your protein goals fine?! There’s no need for YHAT???

Ilya, concerned, Shane, baby, I just found the recipe online and got curious.. what is problem?

Shane, looking over at the container again and shivering, get it out of here please the texture of that thing is going to make me throw up.

Ilya, blinking but also very amused now, okey

That’s not to say that Ilya stops with the awful recipes he still tries them now he just has Shane looking at him either horrified, concerned or disappointed when he tries them out and when they do as expected turn out awful Shane gets to say I told you so.

Folklore student answer: “Also, almost all cultures have something like djinn, faeries, hulder, fox spirits, and other similar creatures who can appear at least human and are very, very dangerous to humans!” 

Genetics aside, various hominid species didn’t start visually looking all that different until 50,000 years ago, while under the skin changes began as early as 89,000 years ago (ie the development of the Y chromosome but I might be oversimplifying at this point) Point being, even our non-human cousins didn’t. look. that. different. from. us. Especially comparing the diversifying of humans themselves crossing trans continental as it was. And even then neandertals still had advantagious traits for living in the Eurasian hemisphere.

Also I digress, regardless of it being intentional, and with few perserved records from that chapter in our species’ history, I don’t like the implication that the uncanny valley effect stems from humans being inherently racist (for lack of a word for hatred of non-human intelligences). I know that sounds off the wall but prejudice and sense of superiority by birthright is vastly different than othering by means of the sucess of social groups and the need to compete for territory or resources. Racism is entirely a Eurpean fabrication and it’s been proven time and time again to be a cultural outlier and purposfully designed to further the agenda of corroded theocratical religious divinity (here, here, here) and the financial benifits of the exploitation of colonism that otherwise has not been replicated by other cultures to the same degree. (this is the only example off the top of my head but I’m know there’s more.)

You know what’s older than racism?

You know what’s more flesh crawling than neandertals?

fucking rabies

You know what LOOKS like a human but doesn’t ACT human ENOUGH? Do you know what might bite you and get you sick or turn you into something that also moves about in a non human way? Brain parasites that give you painful headaches and intensifies agression and confusion.

Say you’re a monkey and one member of your troop gets bitten by something. Later he starts twitching and swaying about. He keeps stumbling out of trees but barely feels anything when he hits the ground. He won’t eat sleep or drink. He makes guttural noises that keep alerting predators and he’s in obvious writhing agony. Suddenly he’s not your friend anymore. He doesn’t recognize you and he attempts to bite and claw at anything that moves.

Up until preventitive oral medications and vaccines were developed in the 1970s there was NOTHING stopping rabies and it still prevails today and kills hundreds of thousands of people in third world countries with limited medical resources a year. There’s no cure for rabies once youve got it and the only reliable diagnostic is a brain autopsy.

Rabies. TB. Leoprosy. Syphilis. Meningitis. Toxoplasmosis. Anthrax. Mercury Poisoning. Prion disease. These are all bad and in different varying degrees can cause limps, sores, agression, confusion or dazed trances, ambled pacing, convulsions or uncharacteristic behavior in humans.

Basically everything that people are terrified of when it comes to zombies. Vampires bite. Werewolves rip people apart. Demonic possesion? Easy. Changlings take the place of your loved ones.

Also I don’t think that it’s a conicidence that the things we find uncomfortable with the uncanny valley also just happen to line up with predatory behavior, smiling too wide or staring you down, blinking too slowly or moving towards you with a slow steady speed. It’s just a danger signal to keep other monkeys in a troop from getting bitten by an infected monkey. Simple as that.

After all what’s scarier? A dead body, or moving body that will MAKE you dead?

I’m not going to be a hypocrite by pointing out racism being excused as a stemmed human behavior without claiming that the deep seated primal fear of disease doesn’t make a good excuse for ableism as well. I mean we use othering to discern friend from foe, and then at some point decided that was a good enough excuse for racism. Theres legitimate proof that ancient homonids could and would be hospitible to the disabled out of compassion. The point of having these initial fears is to guage saftey measures first, but once someone or something is proven to be harmless that normally should be the end of it. I mean if an adult wild silverback gorrilla can look at a spycam and decide it’s chill after a moment of inspection then there’s really no excuse for any of us.

Healthy othering =/= newly invented racism.

healthy fear of infectious diseases =/= excuse to hate disabled people.

When Shane seems ambivalent remembering them, and Ilya immediately jumps to a protective “did they hurt you?” And Shane assures him the sex with those guys was perfectly fine and totally consensual. It wasn’t bad sex, on a technical level, it’s just that neither of those guys was Ilya.

Shane in the book doesn’t keep going back to Ilya because Ilya’s the only guy whose gaydar he ever pinged. Shane can get sex elsewhere, and be reasonably sure that the guy won’t recognize him and blackmail him or go running to TMZ. A gay nightclub in West Hollywood probably won’t have a lot of hockey fans in it. And neither will a Mexican beach resort.

Especially if Mexico Top was an employee at the resort, and therefore a Mexican guy rather than a Canadian or American tourist. Mexico Top, if Mexican, probably watches soccer. And he and Shane would be in a mutually assured destruction situation. Mexico Top won’t rat Shane out to Shane’s straight travelling companions and Shane won’t rat Mexico Top out to a homophobic hotel manager.

Anyway, I digress. The point is that a gay club in LA and a Mexican beach resort are both fairly low risk places for Shane to find sexual partners who won’t realize he’s a celebrity. He recognizes that and he does so. And he has perfectly adequate sex with these two guys. He doesn’t continue to pursue casual sex with men after that because the perfectly adequate sex he can get from these guys isn’t as good as the sex he has with Ilya.

So Shane makes the cost-benefit analysis that it’s not worth the risk for sex that’s just perfectly adequate. When he knows for sure Ilya won’t blow up his career (since Ilya would have to also blow up his own career to expose Shane, and Ilya has even more at risk than Shane does). Shane not continuing to seek out casual sex with men other than Ilya is at least partly a practical decision.

Casual sex with other men is something Shane has done in the past. And could go back to doing in the future if things with Ilya went south. He’s not with Ilya just because he’s desperate and closeted. Shane has other options that he’s explored in the past. He’s decided those options aren’t worth continuing to explore, but he knows they exist.

Also, as OP pointed out, Shane considered Mexico Top and Hollywood Blowjob Guy “bad at” sex. Why? Does Ilya just happen to be a sex god and these other guys happen to be inadequate partners? Likely not. Likely Shane simply felt more able to relax with Ilya than with his other male partners. Because of the mutually assured destruction situation where Ilya couldn’t out Shane without also outing himself.

With Mexico Top and Hollywood Blowjob Guy, it would be more difficult to focus fully on letting go and giving into sexual pleasure. In the back of his mind, Shane would still be worrying what they might do if they recognized him as a celebrity. An anxious orgasm is still an orgasm, but would be less satisfying than a relaxed orgasm where you know your partner can’t betray you.

Also, it doesn’t sound like Shane spent very much time with either of these guys prior to the sex. He didn’t really know them, and maybe another reason he could relax and fully enjoy the experience with Ilya was because he knew Ilya. Yes, things between them were casual, but not anonymous.

Shane either didn’t get Mexico Top and Hollywood Blowjob Guy’s actual names prior to having sex with them, or the experiences weren’t memorable enough for him to retain their names. Hence the utilitarian way he describes both these men. Ilya is not just a handsome stranger.

Maybe Shane can relax more when he knows his sexual partner well enough to have an idea of the guy’s personality and to joke around with him. Even if Shane would probably describe the guy’s personality as “asshole”, at least he knows him enough to have an opinion before they get their dicks wet.

Maybe Shane would have found subsequent experiences with Mexico Top and Hollywood Blowjob Guy better, if he’d gotten their contact information afterwards and hooked up with them again. Because he would’ve been more comfortable with them, since they wouldn’t be strangers then. Shane might not want an actual relationship with a partner, but still not feel able to completely relax in an anonymous encounter.