It's after-hours at a bar in San Francisco, and Kelly, a straight 19-year-old college student, is making out with a gay guy.

They met the previous day at a social-media marketing conference and became buddies, sitting side by side while Kelly trolled Tinder and he swiped through Grindr. He made her laugh when he showed her that he'd packed an extra suitcase filled only with shoes. But he was also, in Kelly's eyes, super hot.

"We started dancing, and it just happened. Like, Oh, hey, this feels right," she remembers. It wasn't the first time Kelly has made out with a gay man…and it probably won't be the last. Her friends make fun of her for it, but she doesn't care. In fact, she says, "Queer guys are my type." There have been other makeout sessions and hookups (but not intercourse) with "effeminate" guys who were either gay or seemed like they "swung both ways," she says. A recent summer fling was a bisexual guy who was usually with men.

Straight guys have long salivated over same-sex lady action: "Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!" is the rallying cry of the basic bro six beers deep at the bar, urging his girl friends to go at it for his enjoyment. Pretty much every threesome in pop culture is between a lucky man sandwiched between two sultry women (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Savages, Wild Things), whether lesbians or just conveniently gorgeous, sexually fluid women.

It's been more hush-hush—and can feel more taboo—but some straight women feel the same way about gay men.

Like Kelly, some are down to make out or hook up with gay men in real life, a community that reluctantly calls itself girlfags or "girls who like boys who like boys." But more common is to fantasize about two hot guys having hot sex.

Last year, researchers at the University of Montreal asked 1,516 people about their sexual fantasies and found that approximately 1 in 5 women is attracted to the idea of two men having sex. Out gay stars are the new heartthrobs. Remember the rabid Matt Bomer fan base that created a Change.org petition when he was passed over for the Christian Grey role in Fifty Shades? And erotic male/male (M/M) fan fiction—or slash, as it's commonly called, inspired by the slash between male/male—is exploding at Wattpad, one of the largest fan fiction communities online, where two-thirds of users are women. On another major fan-fic hub, Archive of Our Own, data from more than 10,000 respondents found that up to 36 percent of M/M fans surveyed were both heterosexual and female. Instead of just following Harry Styles on Twitter, girls are reading gay erotica that imagines Styles' One Direction bandmate, Louis Tomlinson, going down on him. Larry Stylinson, as the steamy fictional relationship is hashtagged, is one of the most popular "ships" online, generating an estimated 600,000 stories on Wattpad. "My sister seriously needs to leave my room," one young woman recently tweeted, "so I can read Larry porn."

Also an indication that plenty of ladies have eyes for two guys: the porn women watch. The second most-viewed category for women last year on PornHub.com, a site that boasts more than 38 million visits a day, was "gay (male)." "It's becoming normal for women to want to see two boys kiss," says Cecilia Tan, editor of Circlet Press, an erotic publishing house, and a writer of M/M erotica, including the Harry Potter–inspired series The Prince's Boy. "Gay sex fuels the magic in these worlds," says Tan, who identifies as bisexual. "It's totally hot for me."

This can be confusing for people who don't find it hot. Why is reading about or watching two gay guys—who, by definition, aren't interested in ladies—such a turn-on?

For some, it's as simple as raw man meat. "There's something about masculinity pushing against masculinity that draws me right in," says Janet Hardy, a sex educator and author of Girlfag: A Life Told in Sex and Musicals, who is attracted to and has had relationships—some sexual—with gay men. But for many women, the appeal goes deeper, says Hardy: "It's about seeing two strong men who are vulnerable with each other and the sweetness of finding affection inside that strength."

Guy-on-guy action can also offer a break from complicated, clashing ideas about gender politics. There are no damsels in distress or presumptions that men have to be the aggressors and women the delicate flowers. In a series of interviews with straight female college students who watch gay male porn, Leila Rupp, PhD, a sexuality researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara, says the students told her they like it "because they feel like the power is equal between the partners." In straight porn, however, they said they don't like the "traditional" dynamic of "men having power over women."

Carrie, 22, a popular Larry Stylinson writer at Archive of Our Own, says, "It's just better when it's two hot guys. It's more equal." Not to discount the racy rush that comes with imagining illicit oral sex between two world-famous pop stars. "I really like the whole forbidden love trope," she adds. In one of Carrie's tales (she asked us not to reveal her real name because the One Direction fan base sometimes lashes out at Larry shippers online, accusing them of sparking fights within the band), Louis Tomlinson goes down on Harry Styles while now-former One Direction member Zayn Malik watches. "'I'm close, so close,' Harry breathed," she writes in one story. "It couldn't have been more than a couple of bobs of Louis's head before Harry moaned low, eyebrows knitting together and lips parting as he came." Uh, did that feel tingly for anyone else?

For some women, reading about two guys getting their freak on is a chance to explore their own non-straight leanings—whether it's an attraction to women or curiosity about anal. Tina, a married 33-year-old slash fan, says her jam is the Johnlock ship, about Benedict Cumberbatch's TV incarnation of Sherlock Holmes and his partner John Watson. It's a "kinky little escape" from her routine sex life, "something totally different from the missionary I'm used to having." Indeed, says Tan, "a lot of women who are living a very straight life—they're married with kids or they're young single girls—are yearning for queerness. Our society pushes us away from that, but this—gay erotica, gay fan fiction—gives women an outlet."

In some cases, fantasizing about gay sex can even be a sign of a woman feeling what Hardy describes as "sexually trans." As in, identifying as one gender emotionally and psychologically but another sexually. Hardy, for one, says she feels like a woman on the streets and a man in the sheets. "I am attracted to very masculine guys who are attracted to guys because I love that energy and I want to be part of that energy. And when I'm with a guy, I want to be a guy sharing in that energy."

Girls liking boys who like boys could be yet another sign that we're living in a brave new world of gender, sexuality, and sexual attraction, where there is more blurring of the labels male and female, gay and straight. In the past, a girl who is turned on by two guys "might feel isolated, weird, even sick," says Ritch Savin-Williams, PhD, a professor of developmental psychology and director of the Sex and Gender Lab at Cornell University. Now she and others like her "can find each other online and not feel like they're crazy or the only ones in the world like them."

A version of this story was published as "Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys" in the September issue of Cosmopolitan. Pick up the September 2015 issue on newsstands or click here to subscribe to the digital edition!

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