Larry, two of the Davids and I went to the bar Red Chair and played a game of dominoes on one of the round tables there in a corner. The lights flashing around us, the music videos playing, and we were playing a variation on dominoes called "Chicken Foot." It was the sort of game my grandpa would teach me. It was fun. We were all but ignored by the crowd of young, gay people, and the domino game felt like clever subversion.
Because I'm in my twenties, I occasionally feel doubts about who I am. I think sometimes that I should be gayer. Or more into gay things. Drag shows. Bars. Magazines with shirtless, oiled men on the front of them and articles advising how to give a better blow job. But I hate that stuff.
In the bar, I read an editorial tonight in one of those magazines, written by a guy I used to know in college who's now the mag's editor. He spent his editorial waxing nostalgic about how the Armorettes Drag Show on Sunday nights at the Armory "used to be." My old friend's editorial said that, by naming off the drag queen roster from his days of yore, he was "showing his age." I couldn't relate. It seemed like only a narrow, gay-as-hobby group of people could. And he was talking about post-college/pre-thirtysomething days.
Was there an aspect of my gay 20s that I missed? Like, an entire portion of my youth that, feeling uncomfortable in bars and not wanting to be primarily known as "that gay guy," I intentionally skipped. When a group of my friends began to design their own porn site, I stopped going by their apartment so much. If a stripper is at a party I'm attending, I'm the token giggler/sarcastic remark guy. If I get hit on in a bar, usually I dissuade the guy by criticizing his methods of approach.
"You've been staring at me for a half hour," I said to one. "I walked by five times. Why did you have to WAIT until I said hello to say hello back?"
Not knowing my name but still talking and smiling at me minutes later, that same guy asked me to fuck him. I laughed and said, "Dude, I don't even KNOW you."
Nowadays, I still feel uncomfortable in bars. I have no friends with gym bodies. I can hold full conversations with gay friends of mine without reference to "tricking out" or "popper usage." If a drag show is going on in a bar that I walk into, I avoid it. The last time I intentionally attended a drag show was for my friend Kate's bachelorette party about two years ago. And there was a kitsch factor involved in that.
I don't think I much like being gay. It's annoying me. I'm a damn good writer. I'm a damn good movie critic. I'm a damn good bookstore clerk. I'm a damn good friend to people. I'm a damn good conversationalist. I'm smart. I'm funny. I'm interesting. I'm attractive. I'm self-supporting and decently well-off.
I'm fucking lousy at being gay.
Red Chair, where I also spent a few moments during my birthday last June, puts me in a mood. A bad one. I enjoyed playing the dominoes there. I didn't enjoy walking around in circles with no real destination, surrounded by techno bullshit music and softcore pornographic videos and looking at all the pretty people. I lack the confidence. I lack that look.
I lack the ability to give a shit anymore.
Fuck bars. I'm not going to meet the love of my life in a place where the music is so loud and pervasive that conversation isn't possible or likely. I'm a talker. I NEED to talk to someone. I like art. I like movies. I like reading. I like my interests. Being gay doesn't interest me the way being a movie fan does.
Fuck gay pride. I can't adopt my lifestyle choice and flesh it out until it becomes a hobby - as others do. I can't watch gay movies and seek out "gay role models." I subscribe to OUT Magazine, which I did because it was less than $15 a year - and I was trying to adapt and be more accepting of my lifestyle-as-hobby. But I can't read the mag. I throw it across the room in frustration.
I wrote Wes Culwell from BOY MEETS BOY an e-mail once, and I asked him how he felt when someone referred to a date of his as "Mr. Right Now." He wrote me back, surprisingly, and said that publicity was publicity. Reading his website, though, the man has nothing to say - except about being gay. And he has nothing new to say about that.
Fuck gym looks. I can't do the stand-and-pose. My legs are uneven, and I'll fall over.
When we started playing dominoes at Red Chair, the crowd of apparent catalog models from International Male, at first, wasn't there. They kept the lights up, and the music, though loud, wasn't ear-bleed.
When the game of dominoes ended, I tried walking amongst the beauty crowd. I got pushed to the side. Seriously, someone pushed me. Beyond that, I couldn't see anyone who was really my height beyond all the broad shoulders and such. There was no one my height there - and I'm 5'8". I don't usually feel short in a crowd.
I'm not an unattractive man. I'm not an unintelligent, anti-social man. I just don't really like being gay. I never quite found out how I fit in with the rest of them. I know I wasn't the only one playing dominoes at a stand-and-pose bar, but I was the only one of our group under 40.
My friend Jennifer once told me that Atlanta Gay Culture was going to suck me in and transform me into some sort of gym-bodied club kid. I didn't know, at the time, whether I wanted that. So I tried losing weight, and I didn't at first. Then, when my dad got diabetes and I tried looking at it as a health matter, I lost 15 pounds. I no longer feel chubby or as chubby. But I don't go to a gym, so I'm not rippled abs, bulging chest, broad shoulders guy.
I've never had a long-term relationship with a guy, and I want to learn from one - if it happens. I want to learn how to have someone else around. But I can't "put myself out there" into places that I wouldn't otherwise want to go - because the people I'll identify with most there are also the ones who won't be comfortable and don't fit in. So I'm going to stick to doing stuff I like doing. And I don't like being around young gay men. They make me nervous. They make me angry. They frustrate me. They abandon me and find my friendship useless. Just like I can't deal with someone closeted and unable to admit they're gay, I can't deal with someone gay who's only good at being gay.
I've still only ever been to Backstreet once - and I found it annoying because I spent the entire time talking to this closeted kid who told me his name was Chet Vandergelder. Seriously, the guy claimed to have a name out of HELLO DOLLY! Meanwhile, the friend I went to the bar with was getting a handjob from some kid laced on Ecstacy in the bathroom. I tried dancing at Backstreet. Someone pushed me. Someone else offered me drugs. I felt like I was in a Bret Easton Ellis novel.
My only real gay friends are Larry, David and their crowd of other Davids. And we stay home and talk plays, politics, cooking, television, movies, writing and, yes, being gay.
I'm not a member of a gym. My legs are bad. Instead, I got a part-time job. I see movies. I read books. I fucking write books - in which my homosexuality is not the only topic nor the prevailing topic.
Honestly, this is beyond me "just not getting it." This is beyond me "not finding my niche." I'm never going to fit in the way other people are able to make it work, but that doesn't mean that I don't want it to work. It doesn't make me a self-hating gay. I want it to work, and I want configure it to work within my guidelines.
I'm hoping that my argument here makes sense to people. I'm hoping that I'm explaining better than Van did at the bar to me last week, when he complained to me about guys and not fitting in. I hope I'm explaining this better than I did to Lupo last week.
I'm interesting in being me more than I am in being gay. Is that a workable situation that will still allow me to have and learn from relationships? Because I've seen gay culture, and some parts of it I'd rather do without.
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