Essay about being gay

Regrets

I had a single conversation that caused me to see the world differently.

A neighbor of mine mentioned a story about how his brother came out of the closet in college. (this was in the 1970s I think) There was something about a boomer talking about his own personal memory, not couched in any politicized language or media-shaped assumptions, that got the wheels turning in my head. I started to think about my own life, and the lives of other people. You only see a fraction of people's lives, and they only ever see a fraction of yours.

When I was in High School I never exposed personal information to anyone, not even my friends. Some people had trouble telling if I was serious or not, but I wasn't doing it on purpose. At one point some of the students who knew me started talking about whether I was gay or straight, and even then I couldn't bring myself to say anything about it.

Every gay guy I know came out when they were younger than me, it seems most people get over it as teenagers and move on with their lives. I wonder about an alternate timeline where I didn't run away from my problems. Would I be better off today? I struggle to have truly personal relationship with people. I wonder if I've ever let relationships die before they had a chance to start.

Would I wear different things? Have different interests? Coming out implies revealing some sort of authentic self, one that I'm not even sure exists. Maybe he get left behind years ago.

If you're a gay man, you're fucked no matter what you do. You either act normal, and other gay men don't know you're gay, and you become lonely, or you wear it on your sleeve, acting like a faggot. Then people point to you and say you're everything wrong with society.

My own experience vs media

In movies and on TV I see stereotypes. I'm not a socialite, but at least I can say I've met more gay guys than the average straight person. How many have I met personally who acted like clones from the media? One? Instead, the majority I've met were their own person.

Is "gay culture" really a thing, or is it just a manufactured media consensus?

I'm biased and this is anecdotal, I know, maybe it's just like attracting like. Maybe if I started hanging out at clubs I'd meet more stereotypes. I have heard gay men complain before that all the other gay men they knew were "chicks with dicks," shallow people who like to gossip a lot.

I was once accused of believing in some idealized concept of gay men. This is false, I know all that cute stuff is bullshit. I just see people with their own lives. Different personalities, different personal histories. Why can't I trust what I've seen with my own eyes? I'm living in a Twilight Zone reality.

Liberals do this too. "How to spot a gay man: Look at his snap, isn't it obvious," "[celebrity] is such an important gay icon," and of course I have no idea what they're blathering about. There is no way out of getting stereotyped. Am I not really gay because I don't check off all these boxes and jump through all their hoops? Fuck these people.

More things that piss me off

I read a novel called American Gods, and there's a cutaway chapter where someone who isn't even the main character has a gay one night stand. (I think he died in a throwaway line later.) American Gods is a terrible novel, I wouldn't recommend it to anybody, but when I read that chapter it made me upset. I didn't realize it was possible for a shitty romance plot to exist that I'd actually relate to. My whole life I never had any hope of relating to these things that are supposed to be normal. It was just something I lived with.

After that I started to wonder what other types of media were meant to be interpreted differently by a straight audience. James Bond movies, obviously. Slasher movies with female victims? Hmmm.

I'm sick of being asked if I have a girlfriend. I'm tired of watching movies with female love interests.

"Heteronormativity" is the term for all this, although that word is a meme now.

Do they have a point?

Religion tangent

My family started listening to a radio preacher who sometimes likes to bring up that homosexuals are deviant, no further context given. The fact that he doesn't like homosexuals doesn't even upset me, it's that he doesn't bother to offer them salvation, like a real Christian might. Like we're less than human, sinners are asked to repent, but he didn't expect any gay person might be listening to his show. The church I used to attend with my parents had a stance against homosexuality, but no one ever mentioned it. People like me just don't exist.

The 1980s Sucked

Wow, the 1980s, weren't Spielberg movies great? Wasn't the NES great?

I wish I could unlearn the things I know.

The AIDS epidemic was an incredibly fucked up event. Imagine everyone you know disappearing day after day, and politicians openly don't give a fuck. You're a US citizen, but they just want you dead. And the whole thing was made worse by public relation clowns like Dr. Fauci (yes that Dr. Fauci, look it up).

The 2020s Suck

While I was having a change in perspective, it seems like in the last year the Internet has come to embody the opposite view.

"I hope gays all die of AIDS" is a kind of statement you've probably seen recently, and it rubs me the wrong way. It's a genuinely evil kind of attitude, slightly mitigated by the fact that the only people who buy into it whole-heartedly are mostly old Republicans, while the majority of people who say it are probably just living in an Internet bubble. Mindless contrarianism.

I hate how /pol/ guys all have their own retarded pet theories for why gay people exist.

• they were molested as children
• it's a type of sociopathy
• watching lesbian porn turns men gay because they self-insert as a woman

Actually being gay, it's easy to poke holes into all of these ideas. The pretense of intellectualism just falls apart, they don't have any special insight. They don't understand a goddamn thing but they're all convinced that they're experts. And no one will ever challenge them within their own circlejerks. You can say absolutely anything, and as long as it sounds contrarian you'll get a thousand people typing "based."

Here is a post I happened to come across.

Are these his genuine experiences with gay men, or are these ideas he saw on the Internet? Who taught him to think this way?

It's amazing how many posts just like this I'm able to find on the Internet. The real stereotype is apparently closeted gay men convinced that they alone are special and un-degenerate unlike all the other gay men they've never met before.

Are your opinions really your own?