Just saying…

Misadventures in Atlanta
A Dating Scene Blog

Excuse me ma’am, but your husband is gay
By Blanca

When I moved to the South, I thought I lost an important tool: my gaydar. I routinely met men I believed were gay, only to discover they either only dated women or were married to them.

I mourned the loss of my sixth sense, but then a co-worker clued me in: Blanca, if you think they are gay, it’s likely because they Are.

Obviously this isn’t always true, but I’ve since learned that some of the couplings I questioned were indeed what I suspected.

As we all know, Atlanta has an expansive, vibrant and seemingly supportive gay community, but some men (and women) instead choose a traditional partnership with someone of the opposite sex. In some cases, their spouse knows, while in others it can either be a lifelong secret or a Jerry Springer episode…

In the case of people who go into these gay-straight marriages knowing what they’re doing, as opposed to being in denial about their sexual orientation, I’m willing to bet that it’s mostly a generational thing, with more older gay folk doing this then younger, and that it’s also mostly a bible-belt thing.

As I said in a previous post, I’ve had this track record in my dating life of falling for guys who later claimed to be completely, perfectly, absolutely heterosexual.  Yet my shyness when it comes to dating nearly immobilizes me, and I am not one of those who likes to hit on straight guys by any means.  And yes, there are gay guys like that.  Think of it as the gay male version of a straight guy who thinks lesbians are hot.  I am not anything like that guy.  I need someone who is on the same page as me.  Very much so.  And between that and my shyness I have never, Never approached any guy who wasn’t pinging my gaydar pretty solidly…or so I thought at the time. 

Yet I seemed to keep making the same mistake over and over again.  So over the years I came to think that the problem is I have lousy gaydar.  I began making jokes about how bad my it is.  But now I look back over the course of my adult life and I realize that I have spent most of the waking hours in a week in the workplace with tons of heterosexuals.  And when I look at how those heterosexuals relate to each other, verses the ersatz straight guys in my life, I have to wonder.  Anyone who thinks that gay people, gay men in particular, are way more preoccupied with sex then heterosexuals are, is living in Fantasyland.  The subtext between them is always there, just as it is between gay guys or lesbians…

Harry Burns: You realize of course that we could never be friends.
Sally Albright: Why not?
Harry Burns: What I’m saying is – and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form – is that men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.
Sally Albright: That’s not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved.
Harry Burns: No you don’t.
Sally Albright: Yes I do.
Harry Burns: No you don’t.
Sally Albright: Yes I do.
Harry Burns: You only think you do.
Sally Albright: You say I’m having sex with these men without my knowledge?
Harry Burns: No, what I’m saying is they all WANT to have sex with you.
Sally Albright: They do not.
Harry Burns: Do too.
Sally Albright: They do not.
Harry Burns: Do too.
Sally Albright: How do you know?
Harry Burns: Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
Sally Albright: So, you’re saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?
Harry Burns: No. You pretty much want to nail ’em too.
Sally Albright: What if THEY don’t want to have sex with YOU?
Harry Burns: Doesn’t matter because the sex thing is already out there so the friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story.
Sally Albright: Well, I guess we’re not going to be friends then.
Harry Burns: I guess not.
Sally Albright: That’s too bad. You were the only person I knew in New York. 

–When Harry Met Sally 

And it’s exactly that subtext, which I see all the time when I’m in a mixed company of straight men and women, that I just never pick up on in certain other contexts.  Just as there is a difference between acting gay and being gay…

…there is a difference between acting and being straight. 

Was I really mistaken about the sexual orientation of those guys I tried to date once upon a time?  Or was it the nobility I thought I saw within them that I was mistaken about?