by Michael Reed
What did a gay man want? My expectations had been mired in cliché and were considerably off the mark. I had expected this part of the site to be a meat market, just because the people were gay. I clicked on some profiles. “Looking for a mate” said one. And another. This was getting better. What a great starting point, to be looking for someone to be friends with. I had long suspected that was a large part of being gay. A mate that you could discuss James Bond and cameras with before heading upstairs for a bit of sex!
I flicked back to “women seeking men” for a moment. On the whole, it was a different story from the profiles that I had just been looking at. Many of the women's ads began by telling the reader off in the first line, if not in the title itself. “Sick of liars” or “Are there any good men around?” were common ones. One woman had cut and pasted a picture of a list that specified what makes a good boyfriend. These cropped up quite often. None of the adverts (by men or by women) contained a list of what was wrong with the typical woman or what standards should be expected from a good girlfriend. This particular Facebook-fodder list, in amongst the requirements for the man to be supportive and always take her side, specified that the man should always be willing to lend her money if she needed it.
Sometimes, the telling off was a warning that a prospective male shouldn't be after sex. Amusingly, a large proportion of the ones telling men that they needn't expect a one-night-stand were accompanied by saucy, down-blouse selfies of the woman. I was looking at this scene through very different eyes, now that I was an outsider. I would have estimated some of them to be at about the same attractiveness level as myself, but it was clear that they had never had to get the hang of being nice to people. Many of them came across as fat, miserable and aggressive. And yet, they were calling the shots.
About fifty percent of the women's ads were what I would call “nasty”, but they weren't all like that. In fact, a lot of them were charming and respectful. I wondered why I hadn't picked up on these differences when I was interested in women. That said, flipping back to the gay side of the site, it looked more like a dating scene that I could get along with. It was what I had been looking for, in slightly different packaging, my whole life. Was it the sexual free-for-all that I had expected? No. A world that I could see myself fitting into? It looked like it could be.
Having eaten, a shower and a shave later, I was ready to hit the street. It was a bit chilly, so the smart trousers and the same shirt as last week were complemented with my best black jacket. Not getting dressed up to go out at the weekend now seemed unacceptable; how things had changed. I hope I looked good, but at the very least, I had adhered to symbols and customs to show my intent. At least I was trying, and I looked like me on a good day, for once. I was sure that men would give me a chance. You didn't have to be a superbly masculine winner in life to impress other men, I felt.
The changes I had made were easy. Mouse had made me brave. I always felt that I had been treated badly, or at the very least that I had been underrated by the opposite sex. However, it was only fifty percent of the equation. I had lacked the bravery to make an effort on my own behalf. It takes a lot of courage to be yourself. Yes, I'd been a coward, and no, there was no excuse for that.
My look was gay-lite, I wasn't going to camp things up too much. There was no denying that mouse had an effect on me, though. In the first week of it, I think that I imagined myself as a camp party lad, but that wasn't the sort of gay man I wanted to be, or could ever be. Back in the playground, being gay had meant sticking one's hand out and making the teapot sign. I remember seeing an episode of The Ellen Show in which a lad was given the opportunity to tell Madonna that he came out to his family by dancing to one of her songs. This raises the question: what does dancing to a Madonna song have to do with being a homosexual?
The “gay community” wanted it both ways. Half the time, being gay meant you were like Graham Norton, but when it suited them, gay people were just like everyone else. And yet, for so many prominent gay men, even gay activists, being gay influenced their personality. Maybe that's what camp is? It's what happens when a man doesn't have to win female approval. I no longer cared about that stuff. For me, all controls were set to zero, and I was finding out what sort of man I wanted to be. Something had gone wrong in society, people had allowed debates about sexual role to become the purview of gay people. Everyone should be involved in it, and I wished I had been before now.
***
One of the lads from work had asked if I'd be down the pub on Saturday, but I blew him off.
“Family stuff,” I told him.
I've made myself gay, chemically, I didn't tell him. I'll almost certainly be too hung over on Saturday morning, and besides, with a bit of luck, I'll be waking up next to some bloke I've just shagged. Then I'll have shagged someone and be a fully sexual being, at last.
Maybe, in time, I could learn to straddle both worlds, but for the moment, holding a pint at chest height in a beer garden didn't hold any interest for me. How could it ever have done? The biggest thrill for me in the last few years? Seeing a woman's mammary glands. Now I'd be about as interested in seeing her elbows, and that had freed me, as so many aspects of being gay had. What had constituted the humiliation that defined my character and made me, ironically, the human equivalent of a mouse? The fact that I had never managed to court a woman into bed. Heterosexual culture was crap, particularly for the man, I decided. That was one of the things I was rebelling against.
Into the town centre I swaggered. First, a quick-stop in a pub to start getting smashed, an essential piece of the puzzle. Then a shot of sambuca. And then another. I looked around the pub at the other thirty-somethings. Lots of couples and mates out with mates from work. What a boring scene. Fuelled up, I locked in mission parameters and headed off.
As I walked into Gypsy, I nodded at the doorman, who recognised me and greeted me with a friendly “How ya doin', mate?” I went upstairs, and as I hoped, the dance floor was well populated by fellow gay men. First, a couple of drinks as I scoped things out.
As I moved, first to the edge of the dance floor, and then away from the edge, I spotted one of the lads that I'd danced with last Friday, and he recognised me as I approached. I, however, screwed my face up with bafflement when I saw him before suddenly exclaiming, “OH, IT'S YOU AGAIN!” with a manic smile. He laughed, and his friends, who had caught sight of my flouncing, looked over. Being funny didn't work against you when you were gay, it seemed. I started to bust some moves in time to theirs, and we all began to dance together. Once again, I was throwing it about, and loving it, and people seemed to like me all of a sudden. I didn't know how to dance, but I didn't seem to be doing anything wrong. Looking around, my fellow gays had disappeared again. C'est la vie.
At one point, for irony, I decided to give a giggling work group of middle-aged ladies a few thrills when I somehow got sucked into their circle. Clumsily, I stood on the foot of one of the women and quickly apologised.
Damn it, John, a real man wouldn't apologize! Oh, who cares? I'm a gay man now.
I locked eyes with her and mouthed, “Sorry. You okay?” At least being gay meant you could be nice to women. No need to play the cool character now. She nodded that it was fine. To drive the point home, I dropped to my knees and exclaimed, “I'M SO SORRY!” provoking laughs and shakes of the head from her group of friends. She looked amused and embarrassed and indicated for me to stand up. Obviously, she had attracted the attention of a weirdo. Oh, I forgot: women say that they love a sense of humour in a guy who doesn't take himself seriously, but actually, they don't like it.
I was tolerated within their group as I danced. The weirdo that danced with her would form part of a joke on Monday, I bet. In jest, I reached out with my hand to touch her hair, and then jerked it back again, with a look of mock innocence, when she noticed. She shook her head, and then avoided my gaze for a while. Ah well, that's how well I did as a straight man. But I wasn't a straight man now.
I
looked her up and down, in a detached way. She looked nice. Pretty. Chubby. About fifty. She would once have been my type. Did she know she was attractive? Living on the floorboards for so long had given me a different perspective. “Every woman has her charms” is the old expression, and to me it had always been true. If I had a type, back when I was straight, I had about a dozen types.
I had made most of my observations on this subject from the comments under porn videos, from bloke-banter down the pub and from looking around at what men actually went for. In my estimation, you could divide men into three groups, in terms of whether they found nearly all female body types attractive. There were people like me who weren't in any doubt about it, and that made up the first third. Second were men who would probably see it my way, if feminists and the rest of society would stop hammering a message into them about what they supposedly liked. The third group were mostly those who just happened to have a very narrow view of what they liked. Good for them, I say. You can't always control what you like. There was a subgroup within that group who just saw women as potential fucktoys to be fucked and nothing else. They were shitheads and you could normally spot them, walking around with their arm around their latest adoring girlfriend.
I used to find most women attractive, even if none of them would give me a second look. I considered leaning over and explaining all of this to the woman. I could tell her that this was objective information and philosophy from a gay man and assure her that she was attractive, as a parting shot. I decided not to bother. Red sambuca was wonderful stuff, but the wisdom it evoked was not always understood by others, I had discovered.
I would try one thing, I decided. I leaned over and bellowed, “I'm gay,” and pointed at myself. She was the first person I had told. I wanted to try it on for size, and it felt extremely empowering. She half grinned and half grimaced. Maybe I was a straight guy and this was my chat up line?
I didn't feel like bothering with this stuff any more tonight. Even as a gay man I was getting rejected by women.
Chapter 15 - The next month
“Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning.”
New patterns established themselves over the course of the next month. In some ways, the changes were small. For example, at six o'clock one evening, I went for a walk on the beach, even though there was no real need. I got dressed up with some tan chinos and a powder blue shirt. I had learnt that dressing up was worth doing, a little pick-me-up that didn't cost much. Fifteen minutes later, I was at the beach, and I wandered through the crowd as a stranger. A bit of a walk, crouching down to take an occasional photograph of a shell or other leftover bit of sea life, and I had wasted an hour and half not really doing anything. “Keep calm, nothing is under control” was a slogan that I had seen on a poster once. That was the vibe.
When I got home, I casually started putting dinner together. Later, as I sat eating it to the accompaniment of some Tom Baker era Doctor Who, I remember thinking I had things pretty good.
Keeping a promise to myself, I bought some weights from a local shop and took them home in the car. I set them up immediately but ended up overdoing it. I had a great workout, but the next day I felt so exhausted that I considered calling in sick. By midday, I felt like I was coming down with the flu. By bedtime, I had to hobble up the stairs sideways. I gave it a couple of days before I dared try the weights again but took things slowly, second time around. By the end of the first week, I still felt exhausted, but oddly great, too.
During the week, I was thinking about the weekend. My relationship with the dozens of women I bumped into over the course of a week had improved. I was polite and friendly, but no longer their clown. I'd chat to them when I had the chance, but it was a conversation between adults now.
“Oh John, do something to cheer me up!” one of them said in an attempt to initiate the old behaviour. I later gleaned that she had had a falling out with her boyfriend of the moment. In reply, I just smiled without further comment.
I don't think that most of them liked me as much as they used to, but I wasn't bothered. If someone didn't respect me and see me as an adult man, I didn't want to know them. Despite my efforts to amuse and endear myself to them, none of them was a friend, and by that I mean, I had never seen a single one of them outside of work. As for being their jester and their anti-depressant when they were feeling down? I no longer wanted the job.
Things were going pretty good when it came to going out at night. I started off with a big meal to line the stomach; I was planning to get smashed, after all. A nap, if I needed it, followed by a shower before getting dressed up and heading out. Strolling into town, I would find somewhere quiet to get the first drinks in. Once I was sufficiently drunk, I'd usually go to Gypsy or one of the other places I had found. I had made a discovery at a relatively late stage in life: I was a dancer. Is it strange to dance so late? I had decided that, if I can get in enough dancing, everything else seemed to fall into place. As a gay man, I was still trying to have sex, and I didn't have any success to report on that front. But things were different this time around. I was a dancer and a Doctor Who fan and a desirer of sex, but the latter didn't define me any more.
My masturbation life had become confusing. I was still mostly looking at straight porn. I reasoned that I had been getting cheap thrills by trying to get a look at heterosexual sexual imagery since I was about twelve years old. Maybe this confusion would always exist? Look at the way cultural ideals of beauty differ. In one society or period of history, fat is beautiful. In another, thin is beautiful. That means that those things are learned. No wonder I was now wired up to be aroused by heterosexual imagery after eighteen years of constant exposure and stimulation. I'd throw in a bit of gay and a bit of bi with the regular stuff to see if I could turn the tide on that one. As it happened, my interest had waned anyway, and I'd gone from at least every other night to about twice a week. For now, I decided, I'd keep using the old stuff and hope that, gradually, a contextual shift would begin to establish itself within me.
***
Something marvellous happened one morning. I had decided to start jogging on the sea front before work. That sounds admirable, but the real reason for making such an early start was so that I wouldn't be seen. Jesus, I had only been away from this sort of physical activity for a few years and I was a wreck. The first attempt left me gasping for breath after only a few minutes.
Besides, Command had been in contact, damn them. I thought they had forgotten about me. I thought they had given up on me after my last fuck-up, just like I had given up on myself. I had become used to the idea of leading the quiet life of a regular person, in the twenty-first century. I knew what they wanted, the same thing they always wanted: someone (or something) needed rubbing out. This was why I was getting back into shape; I needed to be ready. No doubt, I would soon be up against other, younger agents, also from the future. Or cybernetic androids, I thought, with a wince, remembering a previous assignment, five years ago.
I thought I was alone on the promenade, so I jumped a bit when I heard a male voice say, “Watcher, mate!” It was one of the guys that I'd met a couple of times at Gypsy.
“Hello there,” I replied to the man. “Off for a run as well?” I enquired redundantly.
I realised what was about to happen. We were going to fall into conversation and we were going to end up running together. He was about twenty, and while he didn't look like a fitness freak, he didn't look like he would completely embarrass himself. At all costs, up to and including lying about a made-up illness or suddenly pretending to remember an appointment, I felt I must endeavour to avoid this potential humiliation. I hate lying, but mentally, I had dug my heels in over this. Even if I had to fake a sudden heart attack, there was no way I was going to run alongside this fitter, younger gay man.
“Do you want to run together?” he enquired.
“Sure,” I replied happily, and off we went.
Having someone else there made me run a bit better
than before. Trying to remain as upright as possible also seemed to help. I was able to keep up for about five full minutes, but after that I had to signal to him to stop.
“Look, the truth is that I've only just started running again. I'm a fat, flabby bastard and I can't keep up,” I gasped. Somehow, I found the strength for a Scotty impression and added “I canea teak it anie moor captain!” complete with an impassioned facial expression that made him laugh.
“That's okay,” he said with a shake of the head.
Then I remembered, having a sense of humour doesn't equal failure when you're with gay men. I leaned against a wall while we chatted. He asked me if I'd just moved here. I told him that I had lived here my entire life, but that I'd only just started going out at night. I felt that the expression might work as a euphemism that a fellow gay man would understand. It went over without comment. His name was Alan. I remember how he introduced himself: “By the way, my name is Alan.” It was polite and direct.
Overall, it was a lovely chat. I wonder why I had presumed that a conversation with a gay man would be about sexual things? I threw in some anecdotes about some of my drunken experiences in the town, which caused mutual laughter. I was still finding my feet in this world, but it seemed that you were allowed to be less than perfect without implying that you were an idiot, unworthy of any respect.
For a younger man, he was reasonably well versed in the geek arts. He wasn't into Doctor Who, that was a Russell T. Davies reinforced myth about gay people, but he knew his Bond. He was a Connery man. Interesting. I made a case for Dalton. I put forward my usual thesis that he could have been the best Bond, but he had never been given a great film. You can call me sexist, but I find it difficult to imagine a conversation like that with a woman. Men and women often like different things. If you are in a same-sex relationship, you increase the odds of meeting someone with overlapping interests.