One of the Guys

*This is one man’s experience. It doesn’t speak for anyone else, and I’m not trying to. I’m writing it because I like understanding why I think and do the things I do, and because I’ve never stopped being curious about what it means to be a man, gay or straight. If any of it lands with you, I’m glad. If it doesn’t, that’s fine too.*

***

I live in a small Midwest town, which means a lot of men in jeans.

Recently, in the dog food aisle of my grocery store, I found myself next to a guy of about thirty in tight jeans and, judging by the bulge, nothing underneath.

“What kind of dog do you have?” I asked.

“Golden retriever and a black lab,” he said, and turned to grab a large bag of dry food. When he swung back around with it on his shoulder, I glanced. Of course I did. And when I looked up, he was looking dead in my eyes.

I did what I always do. I smiled. It’s a small, apologetic smile, the kind that says *yes, you saw that.* I’m a deeply private introvert, and a smile is the one thing I’ve learned most people answer kindly, so over the years it became my default. “Sorry,” I said, knowing perfectly well he’d seen exactly where I’d looked.

I learned that smile the hard way, and I wasn’t sixty.

I was fourteen, sitting on a locker room bench in my Fruit of the Looms, waiting for a shower. The boy beside me was changing. I stared too long, and he caught me.

He hit me across the face with a closed fist, not a punch but not a slap either, hard enough that the sound carried through the whole room. That was the point. He wanted everyone to hear it, and then, in case anyone missed the point, he told them why, loudly: *We’ve got a fag here.* The room erupted: jeers and kissing noises, guys asking if I wanted to kiss them. I got dressed so fast I left my shoes behind, and I spent the rest of the day in my socks.

I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t think I could, and I didn’t know how. For weeks afterward, a few of the guys who’d been there would pinch or pat my ass as I stood at my book locker, laughing, making sure I knew it wasn’t over. I don’t remember whether I ever went back to gym class. What I do remember is the feeling beneath the humiliation: betrayal. Some of the boys in that room I’d have called friends. They weren’t who I’d hoped they were, and I couldn’t have explained that to anyone.

I’d already come out by then, at least to my parents. I was twelve when I told them, and they sent me to therapy to fix it. I don’t blame them, and I never have. It was a different time, and they were conservative, faith-based people doing what they thought they should.

The therapist was a pleasant older man, and I couldn’t help noticing something I found attractive about him, which didn’t make any of it easier. It wasn’t him I dreaded. It was the conversations. Therapy felt like being stripped and examined for a defect that everyone had already agreed I had. I was a child, made to sit across from a grown man and say out loud the thing I was most ashamed of. And I couldn’t say a word about what was happening at school, because the bullying was too raw to speak of. So I carried the two things separately, and each made the other heavier.

Those years taught me two skills at once. I learned how to hide, and I learned how to keep what I felt alive while hiding it. Both lived in the same body.

***

I remember the boy’s name. Ricky. I think about that day now and then, more than I think about him. He doesn’t haunt me, and I don’t forgive or condemn him; we were kids. But he was my first gay lesson, and a hard one, and he gets this paragraph and no more.

Over the years I’ve come to believe that day wasn’t really about me. It was a performance. One boy was proving something to a room, and I was the proof. What I understand about being a man comes partly from watching how much of it is done for an audience, and how much to convince the performer himself.

There’s something else I believe. Men glance at other men, all of us, whatever our orientation. It seems built in, almost reflexive. We look to compare, to check ourselves against the man beside us, and not always unkindly. I don’t think I was the only boy in that room whose eyes wandered. The difference is that when their eyes wandered, it meant nothing. When mine did, it had a name, and a price.

My own looking hasn’t changed. It isn’t always about comparison, and I won’t pretend it is. I still look, because I appreciate other men: their bodies in every shape and size, their humor, the way they carry themselves. At sixty, I’m a little more comfortable admitting how much those small moments mean to me.

The policing, though, never stops. You just get better at it. I became a master of stealth: a glance, a shift of the eyes, a sense of how long is too long. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I still know that if I’m caught, it may not end well.

The bullying didn’t stop either. It carried on through high school, and as the years passed, it grew quieter, until the childish taunts became something harder to point at.

***

Because most people wouldn’t know I’m gay, I live in two rooms. I don’t assume I know what people think of me. In one room, I’m one of the guys. Men talk about women, assuming I share the interest. They make the occasional gay joke. They explain what makes a “real man,” without the slightest suspicion of who’s listening. It’s so casual that I barely register it anymore. I’m included, and quietly aware that their understanding of who I am is incomplete.

In the other room, if the subject comes up and I trust the people there, or half-trust them, I say what I think as a gay man, and I’m proud to say it. As I’ve gotten older, I’m also more comfortable hinting at it when the conversation allows. There’s still a flicker of hesitation about how it might go, but whether to catch the hint or let it pass is the other person’s call. I choose which room to stand in.

I learned about those two rooms long before I understood them. What taught me to move between them came later, in my freshman year of college. A guy on my dorm floor became a close friend, and one day he mentioned a gay group that met on campus, one he sometimes went to. There wasn’t an alphabet for it yet. There was just a group. I walked into the first meeting terrified, convinced, for reasons I can’t defend now, that it would be a hook-up in disguise. It wasn’t. After a few meetings, I realized it was the therapy I’d actually needed: smart, honest, and aimed only at understanding. It became my first lifeline, the first place where I started to accept who I was, not just hide it.

***

So these days, when I’m caught and I smile, I’m not asking for forgiveness, and I’m not defending myself. I’m owning it. The man who caught me has probably looked at another man the same way, without a second thought. The difference is that nobody ever taught him to fear it. None of that lessens my respect for him. He caught me, and his reaction is his to have.

Remember the guy in the dog food aisle? He just grinned and said, “All good, man,” then went down the aisle with the bag slung over his shoulder. Usually I’m the one who leaves quickly, so the other man doesn’t have to decide what to do with me. He didn’t need me to. I’ll never know what the grin meant. I took it to mean *you like that, huh?* It might have been. It might have been kindness, or nothing at all.

I couldn’t have had that moment at fourteen. At fourteen, being caught meant a fist.

I’m sixty now. He’s still fourteen, sitting on that bench in his Fruit of the Looms. If I could sit down beside him, I’d say nothing for a minute. I’d just be there, so he wasn’t alone in that room. Then I’d tell him he isn’t broken. That feeling different is frightening, but it isn’t wrong, and it will take us longer than we’d like to feel at home in our own skin. I’d tell him he can’t choose who he’s drawn to, and that whoever it turns out to be doesn’t matter. Being true to himself does.

Oh, and I’d remind him to put his shoes on.