Gay guys and gerbils

“Insertion of foreign bodies into the rectum,” as it’s formally known, is by no means confined to gays. Many cases are ascribed to autoeroticism on the part of straights. Leaving aside victims of assault or accident, however, practitioners do have one thing in common: they’re incredibly stupid. According to a famous urban legend, a man had been admitted to hospital after his gay partner put a gerbil in his rectum.

Far from being anecdotal, that odd sexual activity would even have a name, ‘gerbiling’, and be practised by some gay couples. The motivation behind them is often a mystery but there’s little doubt about the homophobia underlying the infamous ‘gays and gerbils’ myth. First recorded in , this is a tale of one gay man inserting a live gerbil into the rectum of another for the purpose of sexual pleasure.

“But wait!” you’re wondering. “Richard Gere isn’t gay, is he?” No, as far as anyone knows, he isn’t — he’s currently on his third marriage, all of which have been to women. But for years, there were rumors that he was gay because he gained fame early on in a Broadway production of Bent, playing a gay Holocaust victim. Contrary to widespread public belief, "gerbil-stuffing" (i.e., placing a live gerbil or other rodent up one's rectum for sexual pleasure) is unknown as an actual sexual practice, nor are we.

Do all gay men do this? Does Richard Gere? Does the animal get shoved up the anus with a toilet-paper roll only to suffocate seconds later? Is it the scratching or the act of killing an animal that gets people off? What gives? Clip and save this column, for I will never discuss gerbils again. To begin, I would like to make a controversial statement:. That would be uncalled for, because no one would suspect her of concealing a hedgehog.

Hundreds of thousands of men and women in this country, my fellow Americans, leave high school convinced that gay men put gerbils in their asses on a semiregular basis. Unlike our hypothetical dinner-party guest—the vaginal hedgehog stuffer—my denial of stuffing gerbils is necessitated by the accusation. Some background: Gerbil-stuffing is a sexual practice that straight teenage boys in general, and Howard Stern in particular, suspect gay men in general, and Richard Gere who is not gay in particular, of engaging in.

It works like this: Hold a gerbil in your left hand. With the blunt side of the pliers, knock out the teeth in its upper jaw. Pull all four of its legs off. Leave the tail. Set aside. Take a cardboard paper-towel roll, grease it up, and insert it into your rectum.

Unbelievably it’s additionally claimed that

Nudge the gerbil into the outside end of the paper-towel roll. If for no other reason than to get away from the person who knocked its teeth out, the gerbil leglessly scampers up the wet paper towel roll. The gerbil, now trapped inside your anal cavity, thrashes around, desperate for air. It is this thrashing that provides pleasurable sensations. Once the gerbil is dead, remove it by pulling on the string.

Now I feel I can write with some authority that no one has ever actually stuffed a gerbil up their butt, perhaps with more authority than I can write that God and angels do not exist. He was deeply offended when I asked if his horse was a he horse or a she horse. Both in my professional and personal life, thousands of guys have freely admitted to doing the most out-there, dangerous, risky, stupid, kinky stuff.

But not once in all these years has anyone ever told me that he, or anyone he knows, or anyone anyone he knows knows, has ever put a gerbil in his ass. Like the doomed gerbils themselves, this story has no legs. It is an urban legend. If gay men and Richard Gere stuffed gerbils in their butts, well, then the pet stores that serve the gay and Richard Gere communities would stock gerbils, right? I mean, everything else that a perverse gay man needs is available in your average gay neighborhood, from poppers to butt plugs to bullwhips to sofa sectionals.

So if we stuff gerbils up our butts, then pet stores in, say, California must do a bang-up gerbil business. But guess what?