Jessica Sutich

Over the summer, I had one of those “kind of” relationships with someone of the same sex, who I thought was gay. We didn’t really go much past kissing, but we had an emotional connection and it seemed like we might have gone somewhere else… if you know what I mean. All of a sudden though, he got a girlfriend and sooner or later he broke it to me that we should “stop lying to ourselves” even though we had both proclaimed love for one another, and he stated “I’ve had three girlfriends for over eight months, and not one of them had I said I love. So far you have been the first and only.” I know his parents are large homophobes and I was wondering if he merely obtained her as a “cover-up” seeing how their whole relationship is mostly via text. I’ve even lied for him a couple times in order for him to leave with me to get away from her when she just shows up places. Recently, he also composed the idea of spending the rest of his life with me in Paris… what? Isn’t the whole “There’s no one I’d rather spend the rest of my life with than you” chat for someone you love and well… plan to spend the rest of your life with? My biggest fear is that he ended us because when he did start going out with that girl, he still wanted to kiss me and such, but I felt so embarrassed I said “Maybe it wasn’t you I was in love with, but the thought of being in love” and that may have given him the impression I’m not gay, because we both often evaded the subject. Still, if he felt that way, wouldn’t he have not dated her in the first place? Or did he just pick her out of the bunch for a cover-up since his parents were suspicious of me? I’ve also heard from one of his longer relationships in the past that she offered many forms of sexual pleasure, but he denied it because he thought it was “gross”. Please, I don’t know much about this whole dating business because he was my first and only love, so if you can give me some advice, that would be great! Is this boy merely trying to hide because he’s scared of his parents and thinks I don’t REALLY love him that way, or was I really just a month long fling that he all of a sudden wishes to spend the rest of his life with, even though he has a girlfriend currently? Should I tell him that I realized I really do love him? I still want to be friends, but I’d really like to be something more again, and of course, as most thoughts do, it consumes my life. Thank you in advance and sorry for rambling!

Oh dear. Well, the long and short of this is forget this guy and move on. I will say more on this, but there it is. Actually, forget anyone who dates you for a month, starts dating someone else, and then talks about being game to run away to another country to have a secret life with you devoid of all contact with those troublesome people who might judge your forbidden love. Bad sign.

To get into this a bit more let’s start with him being your first and only love. Here’s some good news: there will be other loves and greater loves. Loves that go way past kissing and leave you a wreck. Some will totally be 100% gay. Some will be more in love with you than you are with them. There are people who marry their first and only love, but they sure as hell have less stories than the rest of us; and they don’t understand romantic comedies. Now let’s talk about you apart from this guy and his cover-girl. Are you comfortable with being gay? Why are you evading the subject? Perhaps it would be a good idea to use this relationship as an exploratory mission that might inspire you to start hanging out at some gay clubs and meeting people who are out and comfortable with being out. Then you can become more grounded in who you are. That is never a bad thing especially if you discover yourself in a relationship with someone who is questioning. So basically, have some more loves and see how those go. Hell, go to Paris without this dude. Have some French flings. Why the hell not! Own it!

Next up. Straight folks who have homosexual encounters. Yes, I am sticking with the phrase homosexual encounters. Like galiens coming down to whisk you out of your pick-up truck, engage in some probing explorations, and then leave you in the midst of unexplained crop circles with “questions”. I am a big fan of the sliding scale of sexuality and everyone who knows me, knows I love the chase of the undecided girl. Beware of this though, it can really mess you up. Mostly because once you do all the work and figure out who you are and you have told all of the people who are important to tell, and you are living up your awesome gay life, it can present problems in getting together with someone who hasn’t done all of that work. It is something like being sent back to the beginning in Candyland. Sure it’s a fun game but wouldn’t it be much more fun to get to the end already and just go have sex? All right, perhaps it’s only a little bit like Candyland. No matter what it can be an emotional choice to make, so if you are going to go that route you definitely need to be grounded in who you are.

Finally, regarding the huge homophobes and this guy. I will start off by saying this about huge homophobe parents. They can surprise you. Really. Watch “For The Bible Tells Me So”. It’s a good flick and shows that people do surprise you in good ways sometimes. As for the guy, his girlfriends, and his suggestion that you run away to Paris he sounds like he needs to get his life in order. (Sidenote to the girl who is dating him: if he runs away every time you show up up at a party unannounced, dump him.) It sounds like even if you told him that you were in love with him that you two probably wouldn’t live happily ever after so I wouldn’t obsess about that. If you need to tell him though, to get it out of your head, then just try to not make it overly dramatic. You will be thankful later on for your cool reserved behavior. That being said, let me take a moment to apologize to everyone I have ever dated for not having cool and reserved behavior. Hopefully this was a fun little fling for you. Now go write some tragic journal entries and then go out and meet some new boys. Oh, and be safe. But that’s enough PSA out of me.

Are you offended when people use the word “gay” in a negative sense?

It is pretty gay but then it is usually only gaywads that do it so sometimes I can let it slide. I actually like using the phrase, “that’s so gay,” when something seems particularly stereotypically homosexual. For example, if I saw two men having sex with each other (which is so stereotypically gay) I would definitely call them on it. I probably have also been guilty of using the phrase to put something or someone down, but look what happened. Now I’m gay. So let’s see what is out there on the interwebs.

Thanks to the urban dictionary we have this definition of the word gay:

1. jovial or happy; good-spirited
2. a homosexual male or female
3. often used to describe something stupid or unfortunate. originating from homophobia. quite preferable among many teenage males in order to buff up their “masculinity”

Sadly the first definition is only used by old people which is a shame because there are days when I feel pretty gay but when I try to express that to people we all just end up confused. So let’s focus on the third definition. I suppose the short answer is just, yes, it’s offensive. Even if it is only on a subconscious level, it perpetuates the idea that being gay is a negative or bad thing which is harmful to the community. That being said, I have always found that it showed such a lack of creativity that it ended up making the person using the phrase look like a bit of an idiot and therefore lost some of it’s fire.

Something equally troubling is that I did a search for the phrase “that’s so gay” and I found a video of someone saying that it doesn’t even make sense because “gay isn’t and adjective”. Another person, arguing in favor of using the phrase, likened it to other situations in which words have double meanings, “such as which and witch”. Perhaps the reason why people use insults as dull-witted as “that’s so gay” is due to lacking a basic grasp of the English language. They recognize a situation in which they dislike something and so they dive into the sentence wanting to find a scathing put-down but then they get as far as , “that’s so…” and realize the limits of their vocabulary. Then they just fizzle out with a “…gay”.

I actually found an entire PSA campaign trying to discourage use of the phrase. The tag line is “When you say that’s so gay, do you realize what you say? Knock it off.” I think that the knock it off punctuation is really what will stop people. That and the fact that Hillary Duff is one of the spokespeople for the campaign. Though she softens the blow by complimenting the girl’s jeans. I believe that perhaps a PSA with more punch would have been a bunch of old people using the phrase, “that’s mighty white of you” and then a tag line of, “When you say that’s so gay it makes you look like a racist senior citizen.” That’s just one suggestion though.