01 Sep 2009
Because I'm Bad, I'm Bad, Really Really Bad...
I’d like to recount a dialogue for you that took place
between a seemingly nice guy and myself at PRHomo this past week. We’ll call him: Judgmental D-Bag.
Judgmental D-Bag: Hey. Can I buy you a drink?
Me: Absolutely. Thank you.
JDB: So where are you from?
Me: The states. Kansas actually.
JDB: You’ve been in Dublin long?
Me: About three months.
JDB: Well, how do you like PRHomo?
Me: It’s actually my first time getting here.
JDB: You’ve been in Dublin for three months and you’re just now getting to PRHomo?
Me: Well, I’ve had a lot to do, and I’m…
JDB: At least you were here for Pride. That was great,
wasn’t it?
Me: Well, I was only here for a day of it. I was traveling
around Europe that week so…
JDB: It took you this long to get to PRHomo and you missed Pride? (Snort of
derision.) You’re a bad gay.
Scene.
For alacrity’s sake, that wasn’t the entire conversation:
just the main points.
I’m confused. I wasn’t aware there were qualitative levels
of gayness. One of my bigger pet peeves is when a woman is described as being really pregnant. She is either pregnant,
or not. She can be far along, but she’s still just pregnant. (I don’t know why
this bothers me so much. It’s weird, I know.) This “bad gay” thing seems to fit
into the same category. Either you’re gay, or your not. (Without
delving into bisexuality for the moment.) It’s not really a skill to practice and make perfect. Is there some sort of school to attend and learn the necessary talents of being a successful homosexual?
This conversation made me wonder: if the lifestyle of gays
here is so much different than that in the States, is my normal U.S. level of
gayness below the gaydar here? I don’t think so. On my trip that made me
foolishly miss Pride week, I stopped by a smaller town in the west of Ireland.
Two completely random twelve-year-olds came up to me on the street and asked
point blank how many guys I’d had sex with since I’ve been here. Clearly
something about me brought a gay blip onto their gaydar’s screen. Perhaps it’s
a city/country contrast. The wider acceptance of gays in the city rather than
rural areas acts as a kind of jammer to peoples’ gay-sense.
The more I thought about it, the more circles I went in.
Then I thought about my friend Vince from back home. He has managed to fit in
perfectly in many traditionally non-gay environments and yet he is absolutely
gay; and in my humble, unskilled gay opinion, he's quite good at it. (Vince, if you’re reading this, I hope people have stopped confusing you with
Brad Pitt.)
There’s not a rubric for different tiers of
gayness. Everyone has their own
personality, even within their own smaller community, that adds to the whole. Ireland
and the States are the same in that respect. And while I might not be as savvy on gay hotspots in Dublin
as JDB is, at least I was better dressed than he was.
Looking forward to diversifying the gay community,
An American in Dublin
