Gaydar

No question: I want gaydar. If it were a gadget or device, I would run right out and buy one. I’m an early adopter.

Cell phone applications can tell me if another gay man is within hailing distance and social networking helps us find each other and meet if online chemistry catalyzes face-to-face. But I’m after something more instantaneous, impulsive, and intuitive, a mechanism that generates a little brain-ping when activated. I want side-looking, front-scanning, heat-seeking gaydar…especially the heat-seeking part.

I knew right away I wanted to develop this second sense, the intuitive insight that is gaydar. I want to be able to tell instantly if a man shares my orientation. Gaydar is a learned skill—at least for me—and I have to recalibrate and fine-tune my perception to make it work.

I know gaydar exists because I have on one or two occasions, experienced it. The few times my gaydar pinged were surprises, but I knew immediately what it was. I marveled that it really works. Perhaps that is part of the learning curve: open to it, exercise a little faith and let it happen.

The first blooming of my nascent ability took place while sitting in a restaurant with a couple of friends. I was struck speechless when a man—regular guy—walked in and I knew he was gay. We held eye contact a split second longer and passed mutual acknowledgment between us. He knew I was gay and he knew I knew he was gay. It was subtle; my friends didn’t notice anything, but all during dinner my mind was on what had happened. It was exhilarating. So gay.

According to Wordspy.com, gaydar is “an intuitive sense that enables someone to identify whether another person is gay.” Urbandictionary.com defines gaydar as “the ability to tell when someone near you is homosexual, even if they have given no obvious indications of being so. This is an ability usually possessed by homosexuals [which] allows you to ‘feel’ when there is gayness nearby.”

A New York Magazine article (http://nymag.com/news/features/33520/) reports more scholarly attempts: Northwestern University psychologist J. Michael Bailey posits that sexual orientation is not something we acquire through social experience, but instead is something we’re born with. As a function of sexual orientation, gaydar is innate and genetic and will leave a trail of telltale biological indicators revealed by gender mapping.

Gender Mapping?! And then they tattoo the results into your barcode. Suddenly it’s political. If gender mapping identifies gay biological indicators, could they not be used to more sinister purpose? Furthermore, what happened to all that spontaneity? Better to keep gaydar at a low-key and personal level, and stay away from black helicopters.

So lacking a gaydar device, I will hone my emerging skills and rely on simple intuition. I will remain vigilant, always on the watch, tuned to that wayward glance and momentary eye contact, a certain way of catching his eye. Perhaps it is a skill as simple as really looking at a person instead of giving only a passing glance. That’s a valuable social skill in its own right.

Although the odds are admittedly slim, I know damned well there are like-minded souls out there. Turn up the volume.

Is you is or is you ain’t?

I understand why gay men often dismiss bisexual as either transitional, or gay without knowing or admitting it. But I remember at puberty learning the word “bisexual,” and knowing right away that it applied to me. It had the cachet of broadening the field, and undoubtedly rationalized my attraction to men by equal attraction to women. Whatever: it was mine.

Now, all these years later, it occurs to me that when I first discovered and immediately accepted my same sex attraction as bisexual, I could as easily have seen it as I see it now: homosexual. I must have wondered if my enjoyment with other boys made me homosexual, yet I was attracted to girls too. I couldn’t be homosexual, could I?

In the awakening of puberty, it was easy to exercise my attraction to both sexes. I was attracted to women; all boys lusted after chicks. Nor, after my bisexual epiphany, did I ever feel terribly shameful having sex with other boys. I remember feeling an occasional and displaced sense of guilt, but no long-lived shame. I did, however, generally keep my same-sex experiences discreet (denial?), which was easy because I was chasing after girls. I could never have been gay because unless I was fooling myself—who knows?—I enjoyed honest desire for women. Bisexuality served me well.

But forty years ago it was easier to be bisexual than homosexual. Back then I wouldn’t have been “gay,” but would have been branded queer or fairy. Dirty. The 1960s was not a good time for homosexual men, but in the “free love” atmosphere of social revolution, bisexual was as acceptable as long hair. At least that’s the way I perceived it.

Bisexual was a way for me to keep it all inside the box, but now there is no need for the box we nowadays call a closet. That this realization only surfaced now that I am out of the closet and after the better part of a lifetime of failed heterosexual relationships is best evidence of its veracity. Now I can look back and say: no wonder I was unable to sustain marriage or intimate relationships with women: I’m gay.

With the acumen of retrospect, I can re-affirm that my sexuality and orientation evolved and changed more than once. I do wonder whether my self-identified bisexuality was simply transitional or somehow prefatory to coming out gay, but I don’t think so.

By the same token, it is not surprising that I now gravitate toward and feel desire exclusively for my own gender. I’m old enough and confident that I won’t again be seeking another heterosexual relationship. I am secure and comfortable in my homosexuality. Things change over time, and time has surely changed things over.