Love and Relationships: Case Studies, Closet-cases, and Aliens!

So, you might have met him on the train, at the supermarket (no comment *guilty look*), at work (no comment, again), at the gym, walking home from the movies, at the movies, at your Soho hair salon, while shopping for that ‘must have’ scarf to match that ‘needed to have’ sweater you bought last year, at church (no comment, again), at a friend’s BBQ, while partying with your girls, or just sitting at the park. But one thing was sure: he made the first move!

In the gay fraternity, all (or most….) gays are equipped with two things: impeccable oral presentation skills and a GAYDAR. Now, if you are asking what a GAYDAR is, you should be glad you found this blog! A GAYDAR is a gay-guy’s inner instinct that tells him if someone (he has come in contact with) is straight or gay (as we will know). This GAYDAR becomes more reliable over time and as one gets more ‘seasoned’ in Gayville. Some GAYDARs are so good/reliable that it can pick out a guy on the ‘’DL’’ out of a crowd of Muslims at prayer time at a Mosque! It can’t be explained (or we just don’t want to give away the secrets!). I trust my GAYDAR; I follow it and I don’t think it has failed me – It’s just that the guys are so deep in the closet and denial that even if you are offering an ‘amnesty’ to them to come out, they just get scared and deny deny deny deny!

Are we too hard on them? Do we expect too much from them? Come on! What exactly do they expect us to think when they were the ones who approached us with that charming, dashing smile, offered us a drink, invited themselves back to our apartments, arranged dinner for two, volunteered to go shopping with us at Victoria’s Secret, helped to choose our mother’s Christmas present, hung with us on our loneliest night and sat with us while waiting for bad news. I might not know much about ‘heterosexual male friendships’, but I’m sure they don’t involve all that (well, unless they are Indians… lolol… That’s a whole new drama). So, should we have been blamed for thinking that they were gay? Shouldn’t we have expressed our feelings? Were we wrong to have ‘tried’ something with all those signs pointing to ‘green… go ahead’? Should the GAYDAR be responsible for these tragedies? Or maybe, just maybe it’s a case of denial and NOT mistaken identity. Who knows?

Closet-case vs. Alien-among-us! Which is easier to deal with anyway? It’s like choosing between a volcano or a nuclear bomb; a plaid flannel shirts or a paper bag; advance calculus or advance trigonometry! Come on!!! OK! So, because our GAYDARs are programmed to pick up the slightest of ‘gay-rays’, it will automatically pick up a closet-case. And for the record (I don’t know where I got this phrase from, but I need to return it…hmmmm), a ‘closet-case’ is a guy who is obviously gay (I’m telling you, we always know) but he is stuck so deep in the closet that he brain-washes himself to think that he is NOT and often times burdens himself with a girlfriend and in the worst case scenario, a marriage without a prenup’ and ten kids (God only knows how he got them). These are the ones who constantly reach out for help, ergo come across our radar. But somehow even though they are reaching out for help, they insist that they are ‘’OK’’ and ‘’STRAIGHT’’ (as we know).

On the top side (pun INTENDED…lolol), there are those few ‘aliens’ who, for some reason, should have been born gay (as we know), but I guess the memo got lost in the mail. So they have been condemned to live a ‘’STRAIGHT LIFE’’ (as we know). Then you might ask yourself, why do they constantly show up on the GAYDAR? Well, just say that although the memo was lost in the mail, you can always rely on those ‘chatter-boxes’ who will pass on useful information. Somewhere in those aliens’ DNA, their souls cry out for the good old ‘’GAY LIFE’’ (as we know). Ergo, they subconsciously find and make gay friends just to be around fabulousness, which is gay; they try to acquire taste in fashion and fine arts, as the gays do; and strangely, from time to time, pretend to get drunk and make-out (to say the least) with a guy they feel comfortable with. [No comment, AGAIN… damn!!!]

For that reason, every time you meet a guy and your GAYDAR goes off, deep down you might hope he is not another case study, not another closet-case, not another alien. While the case-studies will make you pull your hair out; and the closet-cases take up all the space in the closet and may never come out, I guess the aliens aren’t too bad, right? (At least the aliens know how to choose a good restaurant).

Dwayne Cobourne