Top, Bottom or Versatile?

I have to write a chapter on this. While chatting to a couple of guys this week, I was confronted with the standard gay question: "Are you a top or a bottom?" For the general public who doesn't know what this means, a top in a homosexual relationship is the one who does the penetration, and the bottom is the one that receives the penetration during sexual intercourse.

So top or bottom? I can't help but wonder if the term is being coined as a substitute for the conventional heterosexual partnership in a gay one. Whereby one guy plays the role of the active and the other the passive. A dominant and a submissive.

I'd say about 80% of the guys I come across tells me that they're a bottom. In fact, they kept repeating it throughout the conversation for emphasis. Initially I couldn't understand why, but then it hit me that these guys actually take their gay roles very seriously and I don't. At this point, my inner journalist has never been more ready to get to the bottom of this. Interesting choice of expression! 

I think there are many ways in which one can demarcate their role of what being a top and a bottoms truly entails. So I've been asking guys what being a bottom really means to them. Some call themselves "the bride" in the relationship, others say is a purely sexual thing because they only want to be fucked. 

There are also those who see themselves comfortably in the female role of the relationship, whereby they adhere to conventional practices of how a submissive would behave around a dominant. One guy in his own words, said that he wants to serve his husband, like how a heterosexual wife would serve their male partners.

The reason why this system has never really registered itself in my head, is because we now live in an era where straight-gay-men (masculine homosexuals) and gay-straight-men (heterosexuals) co-exist side by side along side walks all over the world. So can conventional principles such as a top or a bottom, still be properly applied in 2013?

If roles are really that important in one's search for a partner, does this mean that if a guy feels that he is a bottom, would his search be limited to other guys out there who are purely tops? Is that how this whole partnership pairing works? Are there even enough tops to go around if everyone is a bottom?

Although I don't believe in categorising myself, but it is precisely at moments like these that I reflect deeply about what I want, what I'm about and how I fit into this top-bottom context. Truth is, I've never been the most securely masculine guy. But yet I make no bones about wanting to be treated and respected like a true man, even as a homosexual because for some reason, that turns me on beyond words.

On the other hand, I've also always dreamt of being dominated. Attached to an older boyfriend that is more mature and masculine than I am because I like the idea of being bonded, sexually and emotionally to an elder brother that I idolise. A mentor perhaps. In my fantasy, we both enjoy giving and receiving unconditionally. He whom I'm attached with, is broad-minded and secure enough to explore and share roles with me without limiting himself. 

So what am I really? What am I looking for and what do I prefer? Top, bottom, versatile? Hope to find out soon enough.