When Did You Know You Were Straight?
By JEFF SIMMERMON & KENNETH HILL

Editors' Note: Reading this won't make you any straighter or gayer than you already are.

 


Gay men are incredibly perceptive, Jeff. For example, I can tell just by looking at you that you were inspired to eat half a pizza and watch ‘Harold and Kumar' last night. I can tell that you're trying to improve your wardrobe in order to get laid. I can also tell that it might not work. But lost in an impenetrable fog behind my keen gay powers of perception is the answer that I'm dying to know: When did you know you were straight?

In order to give that question the answer it deserves, I'm going to have to know what the hell you're talking about, Kenny.

I'm just asking you a very simple, easy-to-answer question here: What was the definitive moment in your life when you knew that you were absolutely, inarguably straight?

I've never really thought about it at all -- it's just a naturally occurring thing for me, like having brown eyes or hating the Dave Matthews Band. 		 


Exactly what I expected. This is a perfect example of a gaping chasm between hetero and homo.

You mean you people just sit around drinking champagne and thinking about this stuff?
 
Um, yes, actually. Any gay man worth his hand-harvested sea salt has a story of the moment he realized he was gay. And yes, we do sometimes drink champagne when we're hanging out together.

We drink Miller High Life. It's the Champagne of Beers.


You poor slobs.


Hey, man, easy to please = frequently happy. But I digress. When did you know that you were gay? What's your story?

 

It's like building a pearl, Jeff -- a gradual accumulation of layers that lead up to the realization. For example, when I was very small, all I wanted in the world was an Easy-Bake Oven. One Christmas, my 5-year-old brother asked Santa to bring me a doll. Even he knew I wanted one.
 
When you're that age, you don't know it's gay to want that stuff. You just want it. But the world begins to penetrate those wants and starts to tell you that you shouldn't want them at all, and that's when the layers -- the feelings of being different -- start to form.

When I was 10, I can remember going to my dad's softball game. I was "in love" with one of his teammates. This guy was my dad's age. I thought he was so handsome, and I was incredibly attracted to him. The funny thing is, I told my mom I really liked the guy -- and that I really liked his name: Bruce.


That name is so gay.

Yeah, well, that's what Mom thought, too. I told her, “I just really like that name,” and she turned to me and said, “Really? That name is kind of …” and dangled her hand from a limp wrist.

Jesus.
 


I was like, “What's that?” I had no idea. She proceeds to tell me that “a lot of Bruces are boys who like other boys.” That added five or 10 layers to the pearl right there.


My God. I had no idea at all. You mean, you guys ALL go through that?


So my moment of realization came when I was 15. Shortly after lunch one Saturday, I just began crying. Hard. Huge racking sobs from lunchtime all the way into a late supper. My parents kept asking me what was wrong, and I was like, “I don't know!” My dad whispered that it was probably a problem with a girl.


Sounds like it was a problem with all girls. Were you sad that you were gay?


I don't think so. That day, I just came to know who I really was. The Easy-Bake Oven, wanting a Barbie, hating Little League, having a crush on my best friend at school and discovering Playgirl -- et cetera, et cetera, et cetera -- all came together for me, and I owned it. I cried about everything happy, everything sad, everything scary, everything everything about the fact that I was gay.


It sounds like the pearl was going from pea to softball-sized in one afternoon. It must have hurt pretty badly.

  


There's a reason they're called growing pains, right? The thing is, I didn't feel a lot of a lot of angst about who I was before that afternoon, and I felt zero angst afterwards. I became a bigger, more beautiful thing in that one day of high-drama catharsis. All the grainy moments of growing up to that point, came to fruition.


Wow. You came out as a big, shiny gay pearl.
 


That's my story, Jeff. My world. Can you top it?


Kenny, I asked you to quit talking about “tops” all the time. Straight people, male or female, just don't have moments that compare to what you just described.

I guess since being straight is the norm, it just never occurs to straight people to even have that moment of, “Uh oh, I think I'm straight.”


Right.
 

Just to make sure it wasn't just me who never had “the moment”, I double-checked with some of my straight friends. The guys I asked mostly didn't respond at all, but one guy sent me this story:
 

“The year was 1984. I was home early one Saturday afternoon and found my Dad meddling with a new piece of technology -- the VCR. He had rented Risky Business when nobody was supposed to be home, but he played it off cool and let me watch. This was the perfect litmus test for my untested sexuality: boyishly naughty Tom Cruise prancing about in his undies, or Rebecca De Mornay as the hooker with the heart of gold? Well, I still don't like Bob Seger and ever since the train scene I've been straight up and down like six-o'clock.”

If I had seen Tom Cruise in ‘Risky Business' when I was an adolescent -- knowing what I know now about Tom Cruise -- I may have turned out straight as well.



LAST WEEK, Kenny Asked Jeff: "Could The Right Man Make You Gay ?"

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