-----Original Message-----
From:    S
Sent:    Monday, October 28, 2002 10:38PM
To:      J
Subject: Just asking?

When did you first know/think you were gay?    Honestly….

From:    J
Sent:    28 October 2002 10:16PM
To:      S
Subject: Re: Just asking?

Let’s see, when did I first know? Well, there was always the bizzo of playing with the girls at primary school. Definitely had an inkling by high school, but you know, you do your best to fit in. Then I left school and well, just sort of bumbled into a relationship with Leah. Definitely knew after Leah (1992/93?) and didn’t shag anyone for about two years if I remember correctly, which is certainly not normal behaviour for a 21 year old. But all my friends were straight, didn’t know one single poof. Then had a horrible string of 3 month relationships separated by never less than 12 months of singledom. But I knew before Louise. There’s a lot of “knowing” going on here, but the difference really is between knowing and deciding to do something about it. Louise was my last best hope – she’s attractive, creative, fun, beautiful… I thought “If I can’t get THIS to work …”

The reason it took me so long was a) no bent mates, and b) my whole philosophical approach to life which dictates inertia as the ruling principal: the path of least resistance. Why do you think I stayed at that hell, hole job for eight years? Why do you think I’m always the person who stays the longest in a share house? Why do you think I stayed with Louise for 14 months?  I’m LAZY! That’s right, laaaaa-azy.  (I also stayed with Louise out of pure fear, too. She was scary.)

To be honest, you know it’s not really that different to me. The sex isn’t anyway. It’s still the same principals applying – it’s still with a person, covered in the same skin with two hands and two legs and two eyes and a mouth and a neck and a back and everything. The similarities are far greater than the differences. If I think about it too much, I can’t really understand why I prefer one over the other. It must be the pheromones or something. It’s ineffable is what it is. Do you like pears or apples? and why? Who can say? No accounting for taste (and other clichés).

So yeah, there you go. Actually, now I think about it, at first it was more that feeling of knowing that you’re not the same as everyone else. Perhaps that just turns into poofta-ness, because you sense you’re somehow not the same, and being a poof seems the obvious choice – is there a better role for a non-violent misfit in our society?  It’s hard to say what any of it’s about, self-analysis is something I try to avoid, it breeds unhappiness.  I reckon (and it’s a tired image I know, but it’s the best I can do on a Tuesday morning with only one coffee in my belly).  You and I sis, are like those bugs that skate on the water surface – sit still to reflect for too long and down you go.

There is also the school of thought – unpopular in Pooftatown cos it implies it’s a treatable condition – that male pooftaness is a result of an absent or distant father. You see, the boychild gets no paternal love and, missing it, he eroticises it and spends the rest of his life fruitlessly (no pun intended) trying to capture that elusive father love. And you could say that this looks good on paper, cos you see a lot of young guys going for much older men, but then the whole scene is just wriggling with perversions, and that’s only one of them. There’s the leather thing, the Asian thing (“Rice Queens” they’re called), the fat thing, the bald thing, the hairy thing… I reckon that Gaytown is just a portrait of what straight men would be like if they were let off the leash – they treat each other the way straight men wish they could treat women. And lezzos are the same – moving in together after two dates and all that. But it’s politically dodgy turf, so I try to steer clear of it and concentrate on making caustic one-liners.

Anyway, better go. I have to convert 3 more blokes this quarter to get my Diamond Pin.

Toodle-oo.