Gay Dating: What Versatile Should Be

Top? Bottom? Versatile? You Sure?

With a self-proclaimed Top or Bottom, you’re pretty much getting what you ordered. The wildcard is always the guy who claims to be “Versatile”. But what has Versatile come to mean, and what should it mean? Here’s what I think:

Versatile As We Know It
Guys who don’t mind whether they top or bottom generally refer to themselves as “Versatile”. They’re happy to go either way. But that doesn’t mean they excel at either position. A Top is a Top not only because it’s his preference but his specialty, his focus, his sexual vocation, if you will. Same goes for Bottoms. Does the aforementioned Versatile guy excel at a watered-down version of each? Sadly, often.

Then there’s:

Versatile As It Should Be
If a guy is going to label himself as truly Versatile, he should, in my opinion, excel at being both a Top and a Bottom. Otherwise he’s not added-value—he’s merely convenient to have around.

Going by this theory, you’d at first think the category itself isn’t worthy to consider. Not so. What’s really needed are sub-categories as a means for others to ensure they’re knocking on the right door. Finding your Versatile sub-category is easy. Even those of us who say we don’t mind either position (I include myself in this batch), if pushed we’d lean more towards one or the other, even if only by a fraction. If you could only choose one—Top or Bottom—and had to stick to it for the rest of your life, which would it be? I’d pick Bottom, and therefore label myself as a “Versatile Bottom”. If, with a gun pointed at your head, you’d choose “Top”, then you should label yourself a “Versatile Top”. (I see some guys take this approach, but not nearly enough of them.)

It makes a huge difference in clarity when hooking-up. How many true Bottoms out there have hooked-up with “Versatiles” only to be disappointed when Dude wants to hog all the shagtime as the bottom himself, and wants you to top him? In such cases, being able to read the term “Versatile Bottom” ahead of time would have come in handy.

So let’s start being clear about what we’re looking to get and what we’re willing to offer.

Top/Bottom/Versatile Top/Versatile Bottom

Those are the clearest choices I can think of.

Unless you’re awesome at ALL of it. And if you say so, you’d better be.

Be safe!

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