My Gays

Way before it was in fashion, I fell in love with gay men.  It started out with my high school boyfriend.  He wasn’t gay when we were dating.  Well, that’s not entirely accurate, because I guess he was, but he certainly seemed very, very interested in girls.  We still dated on and off when I moved away to college, but to be honest, there were a lot of boys at college and I got a little distracted by them.  Turns out so did he.  A couple of years later I was at a party and someone mentioned he was gay.

I laughed out loud—he wasn’t gay!  I mean, he was happy and fun and all, but not gay.  But then it seemed as if everyone else in the room knew this and it got kind of awkward and then it got worse because out of nowhere I burst into tears.  I was actually dating Dan at this point and he kept asking me what was wrong and I wailed “my boyfriend is gay!” and then he looked kind of confused because he was my boyfriend.  “Not you-my other boyfriend!”  That didn’t exactly reassure him but in classic Dan fashion he shrugged it off.  He already knew I was a little whack-a-doodle.

Ultimately my gay ex-boyfriend and I became BFFs and he introduced me to a whole new world of fabulous gay men.  I was dazzled by the glam life of gay bars and drag shows.  I became a proper old school fruit fly.  I’ve continued to worm my way in to gay men’s hearts over the years.  Then one day, I met THE ONE; my true soul mate, my lifelong companion, my gay husband. Our story, meeting, falling in love, making that final big commitment, is worthy of its own posting, so I won’t elaborate here.  The point is, I loved gay men before it was cool.

Nowadays, a posse of gay men is part of a woman’s standard composition of friends; young women collect them like beanie babies and parade them around at parties.  Obviously gay men serve as a stand-in for any occasion in which a woman is date-less.  They go to a lot of weddings and Bar Mitzvahs.  And of course every female celebrity or wanna be must also have a fan base of “My gays!” in order to get anywhere in show biz.  Frankly, no one wants to leave home without one.

Gay men are also ideal pity party guests, so women call them when they’ve had a bad break-up.  They will pick up gallons of ice cream and bottles of wine and although the damsel in distress is still in the pajamas she’s worn for the last 3 days, surrounded by piles of used tissues and playing R.E.M.’s Everybody Hurts on an endless loop, they will sit right next to her and hold her hand.  That is real friendship right there.

So now everyone has discovered fabulosity and gay men are constantly in demand.  It’s heartwarming.   Just remember, I called dibs first.