I’m not gay, but it sounds like it sucks. You are surrounded by sharks gnawing for an ounce of your blood: conservatives who shit on you for your sexuality, wokes who want to use you as a pawn in their culture war game, and normies like these who expect you to fulfill their expectations for what they think a gay friend is like—in other words, people desperate for a pet gay. Good article!
Please continue writing. I read your work and I want more. Even when I disagree, I still enjoy your style. You are inspiring me to make my own. Expect comments from me more often!
I grew up in that milieu, but was happy to watch it fade as the years went by. When I was in high school in the 70s, the worst thing that could happen to a guy was to be accused of being gay, gay or not. It was like being turned out in the woods to survive on your own. I participated in behaving that way toward some fine people I now wish I'd had the wit to befriend. I did learn better, eventually, but the Ghost of Stupid Past haunts me still.
Once being out was no longer quite like catching leprosy, I worked with openly gay guys on several jobs. Some of them were just delightfully present; something about an outsider's perspective, maybe? Others were of course dullards, but at least they weren't all bound up in transphobia. Man, that stuff gets hugely tiresome for straight guys after high school, and I have to say, straight women are the main enforcers. Think, "Bromance." Whose sneer is that? Straight guys need friends, too.
I'm rambling, and I mainly meant to thank you for the link to this post in a recent comment. You're a fine writer, and I hope you get back to it soon.
Thanks Alan, appreciated. High school in England in the 90s wasn't too bad, but some of the closeted gay boys dealt with their self-hatred by becoming bullies themselves. And there are definitely a lot of gay dullards...
"My being gay, something that had been a central point of trauma in my life and that I had learned to conceal and compartmentalise as a survival mechanism, was reduced to something that would be fun for them."
Oof, I really feel that one. I don't think people have grasped that being a man who acknowledges or expresses desire for other men is still a pretty risky and fraught thing to do in a lot of contexts, considering the full sweep of history. People presume everything's "fixed" now. I don't know how old you are, but I'm in my mid-30s, and even when I started coming out at eighteen, it was not easy, even among people you presumed might be supportive. Then Obergefell & Windsor were decided less than a decade later. It's a head-spinning switch, but I still carry the pain of discovering very-much-unwanted gayness in myself at a time when it wasn't so trendy. It makes these situations, where someone is eager to draw it out of you for their own titillation, all the more painful.
I'm 39 and have spent my life in the UK and Germany. The first person I came out to was when I was 20. But yeah, you're never finished. And a lot of the time I just don't come out because there's no need to or or it's not relevant, and because I'd rather see people's true behaviour rather than them filtering themselves around me. When I attended an event a year or two ago where I was out as gay, it was almost like people treated me with kid gloves and were afraid I was going to get outraged about something or cancel them because I was part of "LGBT".
My worst coming-out story (from when I was 21) hasn't made it into Selenite Days yet, but involved a straight Scottish guy - now a history lecturer at a Scottish university - who accused me of lying to him because I'd been in the closet the year previously, then later (when he was drunk) pretended to telephone my parents and out me to them. I was terrified: he did genuinely have my home phone number and he made it sound really convincing. It was a way to bully me, and he did controlling and spiteful things like that to his straight male friends too.
"I still carry the pain of discovering very-much-unwanted gayness in myself" - you know, I have a crystal clear memory of being about 9 years old and hearing for the first time (from my parents, after seeing a TV news story about AIDS) that there was this thing called being gay, which is when men are attracted to men instead of women, and that apparently it's a taboo and nobody likes them. I remember thinking to myself later that evening "I hope I don't grow up to be that, but it'd be just my luck if I did". Well, whaddaya know. Years later my neurotic brain even occasionally wondered if I'd somehow made myself gay by thinking that, as if I'd jinxed myself.
"It's a head-spinning switch" - indeed, I say this half in jest, but the worst thing about being gay in the West in 2023 is you're expected to be happy about it. I think my straight liberal friends from back in the day don't know how to deal with me being a combination of gay and sad, or gay and grumpy, or gay and critical of the LGBT movement... it's not simple, they'd rather just wave a rainbow flag and be generically "supportive" of me without any pushback than deal with complexity. And they definitely don't want to hear about the bad parts of my dating life; when they want to hear stories, they want to hear funny and positive ones that make being gay sound wacky and fabulous. So I deliberately frustrate them. A few years ago when I chose to move back to rural England to help care for my parents, some of my friends didn't get it and even advised me against it - it was like they thought I should be in a dance party somewhere living my Best Life.
Thanks for these reflections. It's lovely that you've decided to adopt a caring role for your parents, though I would imagine it's difficult too.
I think a lot of my own internal conflict boils down to what you describe in the last paragraph. I have found being gay a neutral-to-unlucky fact about my life, whereas there exists a lot of brand-new cultural pressure among Western liberals to feel like it's a "lucky" thing for some reason. I care deeply about finding someone and building a relationship, and if I were straight, it's likely I could've begun that a long time ago with one of the many lovely girls/women who had crushes on me in high school and college. But I couldn't reciprocate, and here I am, still single and searching. So it goes~
I have had good experiences too - I have 4-5 great local gay male friends in their 50s who I'm incredibly thankful for. I used to "care deeply about finding someone and building a relationship", but I've moved away from that again because almost every gay male long-term relationship is either "open", has cheating or is miserable (the guys essentially become roommates, with codependency and simmering resentment). I was placing the idea of a loving relationship on a pedestal instead of looking at the reality of what gay relationships are actually like.
I'm sorry to hear that's been your experience. I'm seeking a healthy monogamous relationship, and I've seen examples of it in my life so I'm hopeful I can find it as well. But I know there's hurdles to overcome beyond just the baseline numbers running contrary to my favor. Maybe I've been too picky with some of the more marginal candidates that I've encountered in dating; I don't know. I can't wait for a unicorn.
I’m not gay, but it sounds like it sucks. You are surrounded by sharks gnawing for an ounce of your blood: conservatives who shit on you for your sexuality, wokes who want to use you as a pawn in their culture war game, and normies like these who expect you to fulfill their expectations for what they think a gay friend is like—in other words, people desperate for a pet gay. Good article!
Please continue writing. I read your work and I want more. Even when I disagree, I still enjoy your style. You are inspiring me to make my own. Expect comments from me more often!
Thanks Jack, I really appreciate that. I'm taking a break from writing any new articles at the moment but I'll be back at some point.
Please come back soon!
Wow, you know some really crass folks, lol.
I grew up in that milieu, but was happy to watch it fade as the years went by. When I was in high school in the 70s, the worst thing that could happen to a guy was to be accused of being gay, gay or not. It was like being turned out in the woods to survive on your own. I participated in behaving that way toward some fine people I now wish I'd had the wit to befriend. I did learn better, eventually, but the Ghost of Stupid Past haunts me still.
Once being out was no longer quite like catching leprosy, I worked with openly gay guys on several jobs. Some of them were just delightfully present; something about an outsider's perspective, maybe? Others were of course dullards, but at least they weren't all bound up in transphobia. Man, that stuff gets hugely tiresome for straight guys after high school, and I have to say, straight women are the main enforcers. Think, "Bromance." Whose sneer is that? Straight guys need friends, too.
I'm rambling, and I mainly meant to thank you for the link to this post in a recent comment. You're a fine writer, and I hope you get back to it soon.
Thanks Alan, appreciated. High school in England in the 90s wasn't too bad, but some of the closeted gay boys dealt with their self-hatred by becoming bullies themselves. And there are definitely a lot of gay dullards...
"My being gay, something that had been a central point of trauma in my life and that I had learned to conceal and compartmentalise as a survival mechanism, was reduced to something that would be fun for them."
Oof, I really feel that one. I don't think people have grasped that being a man who acknowledges or expresses desire for other men is still a pretty risky and fraught thing to do in a lot of contexts, considering the full sweep of history. People presume everything's "fixed" now. I don't know how old you are, but I'm in my mid-30s, and even when I started coming out at eighteen, it was not easy, even among people you presumed might be supportive. Then Obergefell & Windsor were decided less than a decade later. It's a head-spinning switch, but I still carry the pain of discovering very-much-unwanted gayness in myself at a time when it wasn't so trendy. It makes these situations, where someone is eager to draw it out of you for their own titillation, all the more painful.
I'm 39 and have spent my life in the UK and Germany. The first person I came out to was when I was 20. But yeah, you're never finished. And a lot of the time I just don't come out because there's no need to or or it's not relevant, and because I'd rather see people's true behaviour rather than them filtering themselves around me. When I attended an event a year or two ago where I was out as gay, it was almost like people treated me with kid gloves and were afraid I was going to get outraged about something or cancel them because I was part of "LGBT".
My worst coming-out story (from when I was 21) hasn't made it into Selenite Days yet, but involved a straight Scottish guy - now a history lecturer at a Scottish university - who accused me of lying to him because I'd been in the closet the year previously, then later (when he was drunk) pretended to telephone my parents and out me to them. I was terrified: he did genuinely have my home phone number and he made it sound really convincing. It was a way to bully me, and he did controlling and spiteful things like that to his straight male friends too.
"I still carry the pain of discovering very-much-unwanted gayness in myself" - you know, I have a crystal clear memory of being about 9 years old and hearing for the first time (from my parents, after seeing a TV news story about AIDS) that there was this thing called being gay, which is when men are attracted to men instead of women, and that apparently it's a taboo and nobody likes them. I remember thinking to myself later that evening "I hope I don't grow up to be that, but it'd be just my luck if I did". Well, whaddaya know. Years later my neurotic brain even occasionally wondered if I'd somehow made myself gay by thinking that, as if I'd jinxed myself.
"It's a head-spinning switch" - indeed, I say this half in jest, but the worst thing about being gay in the West in 2023 is you're expected to be happy about it. I think my straight liberal friends from back in the day don't know how to deal with me being a combination of gay and sad, or gay and grumpy, or gay and critical of the LGBT movement... it's not simple, they'd rather just wave a rainbow flag and be generically "supportive" of me without any pushback than deal with complexity. And they definitely don't want to hear about the bad parts of my dating life; when they want to hear stories, they want to hear funny and positive ones that make being gay sound wacky and fabulous. So I deliberately frustrate them. A few years ago when I chose to move back to rural England to help care for my parents, some of my friends didn't get it and even advised me against it - it was like they thought I should be in a dance party somewhere living my Best Life.
Thanks for these reflections. It's lovely that you've decided to adopt a caring role for your parents, though I would imagine it's difficult too.
I think a lot of my own internal conflict boils down to what you describe in the last paragraph. I have found being gay a neutral-to-unlucky fact about my life, whereas there exists a lot of brand-new cultural pressure among Western liberals to feel like it's a "lucky" thing for some reason. I care deeply about finding someone and building a relationship, and if I were straight, it's likely I could've begun that a long time ago with one of the many lovely girls/women who had crushes on me in high school and college. But I couldn't reciprocate, and here I am, still single and searching. So it goes~
Perfectly expressed.
I have had good experiences too - I have 4-5 great local gay male friends in their 50s who I'm incredibly thankful for. I used to "care deeply about finding someone and building a relationship", but I've moved away from that again because almost every gay male long-term relationship is either "open", has cheating or is miserable (the guys essentially become roommates, with codependency and simmering resentment). I was placing the idea of a loving relationship on a pedestal instead of looking at the reality of what gay relationships are actually like.
I'm sorry to hear that's been your experience. I'm seeking a healthy monogamous relationship, and I've seen examples of it in my life so I'm hopeful I can find it as well. But I know there's hurdles to overcome beyond just the baseline numbers running contrary to my favor. Maybe I've been too picky with some of the more marginal candidates that I've encountered in dating; I don't know. I can't wait for a unicorn.