You Don't Know Gay!

*Sigh* It was bound to happen one day. As sure as Evolution created Little Green Apples and Snooki, at some point in my blogging journey I was certain to find a mailbox of angry readers all full of piss and vinegar about this viewpoint or that. That's okay; it's part of the process, and when you express your views on everything under the Sun, you have to expect that not everyone will agree with you, and that many people will take exception with something you've written.

There are four kinds of blog posts that you can write that will bring you an automatic, and often overwhelming, visceral response. The first is to defend the Jews. The Second is to make fun of Christians. The Third is to tell the truth, as you see it, about minorities.The Fourth, and perhaps the one that evokes the most visceral responses of all, is to write something about Gays.

The first accusation of all my gay responders is that I must be one of those super-secret self-hating gays myself, the sort that's deep in the closet and who just hasn't come to grips with my own sexuality. My personal confusion is expressed by the most vitriolic hyperbole upon the page. Sorry fellas, but this is patently false. I'm not Gay; I have no desire to pork another man in his ass, accept a penis in my mouth, or dress like Lady Gaga. I don't buy FDNY Beefcake calendars. I detest Enya and k.d. lang, and the Village People and Tim Gunn are not my personal heroes. My rectum is Exit-Only, thank you. I like women, and the more feminine they are, the better I like them.

And besides, it's about time you guys came up with a better retort than this one. It's worn and threadbare from overuse.

The second accusation they usually make is that I don't understand the problems of being a homosexual in modern society. To a certain extent, this is true, but then again, I don't engage in disgusting sexual acts that require you to wipe another man's shit off your appendages. Other than that, we all have the same problems; life is unfair, we will all eventually die, no one gets everything they desire.

I've heard all the complaints about the difficulties of being gay, mostly because I've been sent (banished) to Diversity Training more times than most people have had hot dinners. Modern American business makes a fetish of "Diversity", which is just a code word for "Black people get to be openly racist for a couple of days, just so we don't get sued". If there's anything that is absolutely-bet-the-farm-on-it certain to come up during a Diversity Training session, it's the eternal struggle between Gays and Blacks to compete with one another with overwrought horror stories as to who's discriminated against more. Once that fight starts, we White Guys, Jews and Asians sit back and watch the fireworks show. It's entertaining. Most of it is bullshit, too, but that's beside the point.

So no, I don't have first-hand experience of being gay. However, I've been surrounded by gay men and women most of my adult life, about two decades now. I have a highly-developed sense of "Gaydar", however, it's not foolproof, and my response to being confronted by an obviously-gay person is to...behave in the way I would expect them to behave towards me. This close and personal (but not too close and personal, if you get my drift) contact with the homosexual community in my daily life has given me some insights into the Gay Lifestyle (most of which, I would have been happy to remain ignorant of), which just reinforced something I think I always knew: it takes all kinds. It's just that some kinds are more entertaining than others.

I've known your stereotypical, flaming, Oscar Wilde gays. Your buttoned-down-deep-in-the-closet gays. Your I'm-so-fucking-gay-other-gays-say-holy-shit-you're-fucking-gay! gays. I've known the campy kind, the catty kind, the ones that never speak about it, and the ones who can't shut up about it. The ones that have been married to members of the opposite sex at some point in their lives and have families. The ones who think no one else knows they're gay and try to keep it a secret, but are betrayed by their behavior. The ones who can't stop cracking jokes that invariably have a gay element to them, and the one's who try to stick their gay attitude right under your nose 24/7. The Militant Gays, the Passive Gays, the Happy Gays, the Dramatic Gays, the Gays on the verge of suicide every goddamned day. The Attention Whores, the Out-to-Offend, the ones who use their Gayness as a weapon to extort better jobs, raises, and other benefits.

The Drama Queens, the Bomb-Throwers, the I Wish-I-Were-A-Man/Woman/Hermaphrodite kind, the I-Can-See-That-Guy-in-Gossamer-wings-and-Magic-wand-Ensemble. The Rugged Individualist, the Betty-Crocker-I've-Made-a-Pear-Tarte-Tatin-for-the-office, the Boy/Girl Next Door, The Always-on-the-Make kind,The Self-Mutilators, The Drug/Booze Addicts, The I-Have-No-Sense-of-Humor, the Can-Wake-The-Fucking-Dead-With-Their-Gay-Banter, and the limp-wristed-caricature, the Bon Vivant, and the Light-in-the-Loafers varieties.

I've made a list. I have known approximately 70 people (male, female and who-the-fuck-knows) who I either knew to be gay, or suspected of being gay, including the three-piece-Brooks-Brother's suit who was unceremoniously fired and escorted from the building for downloading Gay Porn, and who, come to think of it, hardly ever left his office or spoke a word to anyone. That one was a surprise.

I've heard the stories; freely-told, spilled in a moment of drunken camaraderie, or loudly proclaimed to the world during Diversity Class so as to ensure that a claim has been staked. This doesn't make me an "expert" on Gay, but it does make me an expert on this: you'll find as many varieties of Gay as you will Straight, and it's only individuals, not identity groups, that have ever made we want to attack someone with a ball-peen hammer. And perhaps a blunt butter knife.

So, please, spare me your drama about how "difficult" it is to be gay. It's difficult just being a human being, on a good day. Your "persecution" is my belly laugh; my "persecution" is to have to listen to your incessant whining about how "special" you are. Guess what? You aren't; at some point in all of our lives, we're all whining, whinging, hypocritical, heartless, careless, clueless douchebags with burdens to bear.

Such is life. Get over yourselves.

Update: In response to Jimmy H. in Lindenhurst, N.Y. who wants to know:

"Who was the most offensive/funniest gay dude u ever met?"

I don't know if Jimmy is looking for a date, or what,but to answer the question:

That would be the Jamaican gentlemen Iworked with on my first real job in 1985, and his phallo-centric Carribean lunch menu, which included such fine faire as Cowcock soup (yes, the description is accurate), goat balls cooked a dozen ways, and as many permutations of meat-on-a-stick as you might imagine.

After he had put on a show in eating it all, he would then settle in to read his Bible for the remainder of his lunch hour.