On Being Gay...

When was the last time you distinctly thought about being straight? Kind of like, "I'm straight and so today I'm going to act like a straight person." Or, "Let's see, since I'm straight I'm going to write in my blog about being straight." It wouldn't even occur to you, would it.

That's kind of how being gay is. It's not like there's this constant thought about being gay, In fact, there's probably never much thought about it at all in my mind, except perhaps for when people ask questions about it and I do my best to answer. But even then it seems a little strange because my being gay is as much a natural state of being in my life as being straight is for you. I don't look at my reflection in a store window and think, oh wow, there's a gay guy. I don't see gay when I look in the mirror. I see me.

I don't think about being gay any more than you think about being straight. It's that simple.

So what is gay then?

To me it simply means that I respond sexually to men and that when it comes to intimate relationships I have them with men. Everything else is more about my personality than it is about being gay. There are lots of fun stereotypes about gay men out there, like us being hairdressers and dancers and interior designers and stuff. But those stereotypes are fading away quickly as the salons fill up with straight guys who finally figured out that the best place on earth to find chicks is at a salon. Gay guys have found the freedom to be in any profession they wish to be in; not all of us are inherently creative or wickedly witty or built to be a dancer. As being gay has reached a certain cautious level of social acceptability my gay bros are spreading their wings and flying off into lots of remote corners of social and career oriented pursuits. Here are some examples of what my gay friends do:

One is a set decorator/designer. Another is a technical writer. Another is a playwright. I have a gay friend in Italy who designs furniture and does large scale paintings on commission. I have several gay friends who are photographers. I have a gay friend who is a masseur and one who sells cell phones. Another sells heating and cooling units and another is a yoga and pilates teacher. Several of my gay friends work at various jobs in the corporate world as HR specialists, accountants and IT techs. And I have exactly one gay friend who is a hairdresser. One. Not two or three, but one. No interior designers at all in my stable of gay friends.

I can't speak for all of us of course, but I know for myself that being gay has somewhat normalized after a lot of years of trying to make it fit into a life that wasn't at all accomodating. I've had to create a new life wherein gay became a natural state of being, accompanied by the same kind of matter of factness that being straight has for you. Even when I meet some guy I'm attracted to I don't have the thought that I'm gay. I'm attracted and I check him out and I wonder and I sometimes pursue and all that same stuff that everybody else does. But the thought in there that I'm gay simply doesn't happen. And ditto if I meet a girl who's really got my attention, which happens quite often actually. I don't look at her and think, "Hmmm, I'm gay so I can't be interested in her." What happens is that I just look at her and talk to her and appreciate all the amazing things about her and let the conversation or the moment go where it will. I know it's never going sexual because I don't have a sexual response to women. I actually have a lot of freedom with the women I meet and am friends with because of that.

There's a gal that comes through my line at the store where I'm cashiering and she's just so beautiful and I did once say to another cashier that if I was straight I'd be all over that in a heartbeat. But otherwise I just love seeing her because she's so beautiful, and occasionally I ask her little things about her day and stuff like that. Because I don't have a sexual response the exchanges are simple and sweet and sincere. But I don't look into her eyes and think about being gay. I look into her eyes and see this beautiful gal with a kind heart and an everpresent smile.

Being gay is everything and nothing all at the same time. It is a part of a long list of things that define me, but it doesn't stand alone in the process of doing that defining. If it weren't for this culture that has such huge issues with gayness, I probably wouldn't think about it anymore than you think about being straight. But there are issues and those issues are like a scab that keeps getting picked off; the skin underneath doesn't get a chance to heal and normalize. When I pick up my sword and go off into the political battle to wage war for equal civil rights I am aware that I'm gay, but only as a peripheral thought. There's something much more basically human underneath that word gay and that very human guy wants to be treated with the same respect everyone else is. 

I like being thought of as gay because that's who I am. I also like being thought of as that guy with curly hair, because that's who I am too. I like being thought of as the person that I am in all of my myriad manifestations; dad, grandpa, gardener, photographer, etc. Some people the other day referred to me as the hippie guy at the front register. I smiled and said, "I'll take it!" If the shoe fits I wear it. The gay stereotypes are there for a reason; because they have some basis in truth. But we are a community of people in transition and we will probably never again look the way we did 20 or 30 years ago when the stereotypes took root. We are, for all intents and purposes, you. But our brains respond differently than yours when it comes to sex. It's all right there in that one simple thing. And yet all of us in our various cultures have built mountains around this one simple thing and made it into something it doesn't really need to be.

I'm gay, probably one of the gayest people I know, but in reality I don't even know what gay means anymore. It's really just a shorthand for saying that I have sex with men. Beyond that the word gay is for each of us whatever we want it to be. I don't think about being gay, I just live it; as naturally and as simply as you live being straight.

Comments

[Jim]

*Sigh* if only it were true of all of us, Tom. It's what I admire most about you; your ability to be natually you. Yes, things are so much better today, and I am so glad for the rising generation who can come out in High School with out repercussions, surrounded by positive gay role models. But some of us remain constrained by generations of fear and a compulsion to hide our true nature. I (gently) opened the closet door about five years ago, but a lifetime of denial is not thrown off so easily. I remain guarded among family and longtime friends. there are those who I'm confident would accept me, but also those from whom rejection is certain, and I can't neccessarily extricate the two. So for now,it's still baby steps. To help build my self-confidence, I've decided another visit to the Strip Club where the boys wear only baby oil is in order this weekend.

Note to self: Stop at bank and get *lots* of singles.