Jessica Sutich

Dear Ask a Gay,

Do you think Constance should be able to go to prom with her girlfriend? What if it’s so offensive to see two girls dancing together to Stairway to Heaven that some students burst into flames?

Well no one has asked but I could tell that the question was hanging the air and I figured I should talk about the elephant in the prom court. For those of you who don’t know what this is all about, read this. After you read that, go ahead and click here to support her.

Yes, Constance McMillen wanted to go to the prom with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo. Not only that but she wanted to do it at a Mississippi school in the Bible Belt that is still reeling from the idea that they can’t require bible classes in a public school. Before diving into anything else on the topic of gays at the prom though, I feel like I have to mention that because of all of the hubbub this has caused, Constance got to be on the Ellen DeGeneres show which is so much cooler than the prom. I would like to be on the Ellen show. If I could retroactively trade in my stupid prom experience for that, I would in seconds. Ellen, please call me. In exchange I will give you my pair of long black gloves, a can of Aquanet, some pictures of me standing awkwardly in front of a white limo, and a prom wine glass inscribed with threatening words from Billy Joel, “These are the days to remember.” Good God. I hope not. Now back to prom.

I searched for a little prom history and was led to a site that I am disturbed exists called “Pretty for Prom”. They have a prom planning timeline. Apparently you need to start doing things three months in advance. It’s like early training for the bride you will someday become. Oh women. So many of the dreams we are supposed to have seem to treat men almost as an accessory and an afterthought. At least in this scenario Constance was smart enough to choose the role that would simply require her to rent a tux. Pretty for prom did lead me to an interesting tidbit on prom’s past. It seems that “the first reference to prom in popular history comes from the journal of an Amherst College student who described his invitation and attendance at an early prom at Smith College in 1894.” There you go! Constance should definitely be allowed to go to the prom with her girlfriend because the prom started “in the elite colleges of the Northeast” and we all know that those colleges are way okay with gay. So everyone who ever attends a prom today, no matter where they are or what they believe in, is ultimately doing something liberal and kind of gay anyway. Sorry to tell you.

So this little Mississippi school canceled the prom entirely. NO PROM?? Great job Constance. There are a whole bunch of students in Mississippi now wondering where the hell they are going to ditch their unwanted babies thanks to you. Because of you there is some student out there who will be able to go to graduation without a problem because she won’t have gotten drunk and vomited on one of the chaperone’s shoes. Off like a private, non-school sanctioned, dance in which the law can’t prevent us from discriminating against anyone we want dress? Doesn’t have the same ring to it does it? Plus, at the new discrimination dance that the school hopes someone will be hosting there will probably be some inter-racial couple that won’t be allowed to go either.

What would have happened if the school just let her attend the prom instead of canceling the dance? Some parents would keep their kids home. Some people would be fine with it and not care. Some people would say nasty things. Some people would say nice things. Some people would make signs and protest. Some would make signs and support her. A good life lesson would have been learned about how humans have the capacity to be both great and loving AND small, nasty and hateful. What is happening now because they canceled the dance? Pretty much the same thing except Constance now has a great college essay and has been on Ellen. Constance, you did a great job by standing up for yourself and sticking to your convictions. This is one more step on the way to a future in which people will hopefully be more accepting of diversity. Now finish up that Smith application.

Sorry to drop a serious question on you, but it does say “ask a Gay” and I need to ask someone who is homosexual-

I am 16 and i have a gf currently and we do have sex often, and i am atracted to her and other girls, but every now and then with only certain guys i find myself not sexually attracted but “romantically” attracted. I sit and listen to my friend talk while i dream away about cuddling with him, yet its only with two of my close friends. Now i remember when i was younger i experimented with another boy he was like a year older then me i don’t really remember much but it was nothing, and shortly after i found myself attracted to girls. Now here’s the thing i’m not sexually attracted to them but romantically, yet i am sexually attracted to women, but not so much romantically. Does this mean i am gay, or bi or what?

First of all a quick PSA. If you are 16 and sexually active with your girlfriend while questioning your sexuality, definitely use all of the birth control you can get your hands on. No one likes an ironic pregnancy. While we’re at it, watch this. It’s both funny and informative. I hate to sound like your mother, but well, I’m old enough to be your mother (but if I was, we both would remember my high school graduation) (and I couldn’t have afforded fun cereal while you were growing up) (but I probably would have blown your college savings to buy it anyway). OKAY! PSA is all done.

Now, are you gay, bi or what? Good question. It sounds like you might fall into a great category that a friend of mine coined the other day, “at least bisexual”. You may very well be greater than or equal to bisexual. Since you are sixteen though, I am going to guess that you won’t know the exact answer to that for a while and shouldn’t push yourself to pick a label. Choose a liberal college—think Hampshire, Amherst, Berkshire, NYU—and while you’re there keep an open mind. If you aren’t thinking about college, maybe do an internship in a gay friendly city. Basically, put yourself a very open minded atmosphere and try stuff out (safely—lots of latex, no drugs). If you have some sexual experiences with guys then you might be gay, but you might not be. Try a little of both if it feels right. Hell, go have a threesome! Maybe not in high school though. Again, I will sound old and boring, but depending on where you live and how open-minded folks are, you need to be smart and careful. One terrible experience while you are figuring your life out and suddenly you’ll be in the middle of a Lifetime after-school special and who needs the drama?

Which brings me to this: Those two friends that you want to cuddle with might not take that information well. They might. They might be gay themselves and totally cool with being gay. But on average, there are so many factors happening in high school, that even great friends aren’t always predictable. Your girlfriend may also have a hard time with this information. Also, if you start checking out some gay porn, “just to see”, this may lead to a very awkward conversation with your parents that you might not be ready to have. If your parents are super cool, then that’s awesome. Who knows, maybe they are the kind of parents that ask you to recommend a good pot dealer (don’t do drugs). I am going play it safe though, and guess that they aren’t, so don’t get yourself in a stupid situation. Watch some indie films, read some Savage Love by Dan Savage. I think that out of this you’ll get a good sense that most people have no idea what the heck they should label themselves. Also I think you’ll learn this: Although the media sometimes portrays homosexuals as on the sexual fringe we aren’t even close. To make it to the fringe you usually need a lot more creativity and equipment.

SO! Ultimately, the romantic attraction will be really important. You want to find something that gives you both. Sexual attraction can be the easier part. If you rub two things together you can get a positive result. Romantic attraction can be a little more complicated. Sometimes your head and your junk just won’t be in agreement even if you decide you are totally one way or another. Hence the phrases, “I like you, but I don’t LIKE like you.”, “It’s not you it’s me”, and the ever popular, “YOU SAID YOU LOVED ME! HOW CAN YOU DO THIS TO ME!” Finally, here is my cover my ass statement. I’m gay and have been down this road, so I’m just speaking from experience. Most of the time I’m just some comedian talking out of my ass. So, if shit gets really confusing check out your local resources. Here’s one site. And of course there are more. You sound like you are just in the “Huh, what’s that all about?” phase. That’s pretty normal. Also, if your parents aren’t the type to root around your things, keep a journal. You won’t regret that. From my experience though, I was much happier to have had “the talk” with my parents after I was more grounded in who I was, so if they are the type of parents that you tend to find elbow deep in your underwear drawer looking for drug paraphernalia, then keep that in mind.

Good luck!

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.

What is the “Q” in LGBTQ?

Good question! It means questioning. By writing you are now Q. Welcome to the club. I also, as is reflected in this post title, often accidentally say LGBTA because I live in Boston and I ride on the MBTA. There is no Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transit Authority though—did he ever bareback, no he never barebacked and his fate is still unlearned.

I originally thought that the “Q” meant “queer” as some folks use that word as opposed to the L, G, B, or T and it can mean that. Actually, the T can also mean transexual, transgender, or two-spirited. So this leads to another question. Is the queer community slowly but surely taking over the alphabet? Yes. Soon the whole alphabet will be queer. And once we own language then we will call things whatever we want. Is it marriage? Well let’s just check. Are all of the letters in the word marriage gay? Yes, they are so I suppose that it is a gay marriage. We are a tricky bunch. While I was writing this I also made the letter “Z” gay. Sorry straight folks, you are going to either going to have to accept the new lexicon or go learn the cyrillic alphabet. I would offer you the greek alphabet but that has been gay for centuries. Greeks have an entire island of lesbians. Much to their chagrin.

Language is difficult to keep track of. I am in my thirties now, so I will officially never be able to use any new slang without immediately making it a little less cool. So now you can define yourself as questioning, whereas back when I was in college (a sentence that just made me even older) you weren’t questioning, you were on anti-depressants and hopelessly in the closet. Then bisexual. Then gay. Questioning sounds much more laid back.

Do gay people get tired of having to come out to people?

Yes. A long time ago I came out. First I told my journal that I suspected myself of being gay. Then I finally told it the truth. My journal had to take some time to get used to the idea. For a while every time I would write “gay”, my journal would translate it to read “bi-sexual”—seriously, you can go back and read the entries as proof. Eventually though, my journal learned to accept it. Then I told my parents and it was pretty much the same process. By the time I got to telling friends, I had one “very special moment” in which I actually started a conversation of with, “Can we talk? For a while I have been trying to figure out how to say this…” Somewhere in the middle of that conversation I started hating myself and I haven’t ever gone down that road again. I began to find more creative ways to work it into conversation. Also, for a while one of my friends found it amusing to introduce me to anyone new as, “his lesbian friend Jess.” At first I thought to myself, but I’m so much more than that. Then I just gave up and figured, that takes care of that.

The dilemma is this, you just can’t tell everyone. People close to you know but you are always in new situations, or there are distant relatives or acquaintances that aren’t in the know and so it just feels sometimes like it goes on forever. For example, it has now been years since I came out, and yet I still have to tell people more often than you would think. Especially considering the fact that I run a blog called Ask a Gay. Actually, the entire reason for me starting this blog, might be my way of hoping to never having to tell people again. This isn’t about shame folks, this is about the awkwardness of forcing someone into a revelation conversation. Straight people, try it. Find an acquaintance. Ask them out to lunch and at some point over the course of the meal say, “I just wanted to let you know. I’ve begun dating someone new. This might be surprising, but…” Then bring it on home by flooring them with the news that you are seeing someone of the opposite sex. Even stranger, try this in the work place with your work friends. Work friends are already a strange combination of small-talk and random assignment let alone having to say to them, “So this year at the office Christmas party I was going to bring the person I am dating and I just thought you should know…” This is why I refuse to do it. I have decided to just do what straight people do. Show up with my girlfriend and head for the bar. If Dan in accounting or those extended family members look surprised, well there you go. I heard that Dan still lives with his mother, and everyone knows that Aunt Mary and Uncle Fred haven’t slept in the same bedroom since the Reagan administration. What can you do?

It works. People have a small a-ha moment and then everyone moves on with their lives. Because you haven’t asked them to weigh in with advice or opinions, they don’t. You also get to experience something that always surprises me, some people won’t get it. You go to a wedding with your girlfriend, you dance together, you have a grand old time, and yet there will be some people, often the older folks, who just think, “well doesn’t she have a lovely friend.” Really, is that so bad? There is a theory that it is really important to make Grandma face the facts, but I guess I just don’t care. I’m already doing what I want to do by happily living my life with whoever I want to and if Aunt Edna wants to google me, then she will definitely find out about my alternative lifestyle. Beyond that I had my shocking season three sit-com outing years ago and I’m ready to move on. I also encourage you to spare someone the situation. Since we all know that being gay is completely fine and normal, then if you have a friend who has not told you in a long time that they are dating anyone new and they seem to hang around with one really good friend ALL the time. Try saying to this friend, “hey are you guys dating?” Then they can say, “Yes, my goodness, thought I mentioned that.” And if they freak out on you then that will be okay too, because then they can get into therapy sooner rather than later. That will take care of that!