Can Gays Turn Straights?

Gays dream of converting heterosexual men. Success doesn't much matter, it's the endless thrill of the quest.

SOME STRAIGHT GUYS COMPLAIN THAT HOMOS are always trying to get into their pants. My friend Mark is a perfect example. He's very handsome and very vain and very hetero. Still, he enjoys getting looks from women and men alike. But the second a guy wants more than eye contact, Mark gets his panties in a bunch, "Why does he think he can con­vert me?" Mark recently asked. He was talking about his friend Eric. It seems that the two had been out drinking, and in a haze of alcohol Eric had made a pass, I rolled my eyes and waved it away. "Mark, forget about it. I mean, who hasn't ingested too much booze and then done something mortifying, like call an ex-girlfriend at three in the morning and cry? And then realize it's her new boyfriend who answered the phone and not her." I decided not to remind him that this example came so easily because I'd tried to initiate phone sex with a client back in my hideously alcoholic advertising days.

Mark said, "Well, it really pisses me off. You become friends with them, you treat them like equals, you let your guard down, and then-Wham.'—there's a homo hand on your ass."

He has a point—sort of. It's actually a guy thing more than a gay thing. Guys are instinctively attracted to challenge. The hunt. The pursuit of prey that occasionally wants to be caught. Give a guy impossible odds and you awaken his primal need to conquer. I've known more than a few below-average-looking slobs who have pursued incredibly beautiful women. Their beer bellies and bad breath in no way prevent them from stalking the lithe Helsinki model. If anything, it makes them more aggressive because a loser has nothing to lose and he knows it.

It's a similar thing with gay guys. They see a handsome, sexy straight man who is maybe even a little flirty, and they rise to the challenge. For some fags, netting a straight guy is a real accomplish­ment. (Sort of like being a Canon brand manager who snares a Victoria's Secret model.) "You should have seen his apartment! What a joke! But, girl, he had a sweet ass and a really bling-bling watch," he can later brag to his friends at the tanning salon.

Of course,alot of straight guys are just asking for it. Although they won't admit it, they understand that they are not truly hot unless a gay guy thinks they are. It is widely assumed that the modern unattached American woman is a desperate crea­ture, sitting home alone with pints of ice cream and reading single-girl chick-lit as her standards sink lower and lower and lesbianism looms on the horizon. The sad fact is, even a pig of a guy can get a beautiful girl if he has money, power, or, put simply, the balls to call her.



A LOT OF STRAIGHT GUYS UNDERSTAND THAT THEY ARE NOT TRULY HOT UNLESS THE GAY GUYS THINK THEY ARE


But like teenage girls, gay men are shallow and obsessed with appearances. So straight guys know that if gay guys think they're hot, women must be thrown into a state of instant ovulation whenever they enter the room. It was only a year ago that Mark asked me, "Do you think I've lost it?" When I asked what he meant, he explained that there were three gay guys on his floor at his new job, "and not one of them has looked twice at me." It was then that I explained to him the fine points of shaving the back of his neck. And I told him the one thing most straight guys do not want to hear. I said, "You know, you're probably imagining it. All these homos you think are always coming on to you? They're probably just being nice. And because you're such an insecure fuckwad, you think it's because they want to convert you or something. But I bet," and here, I smiled, "I bet they wouldn't want to get into your pants. Because, you know, they can tell." And I gave him a sad, I-know-your-penis-is-tiny look.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he said, quite' alarmed.

"Mean?" I responded innocently. "Nothing."

"Like hell," he fired back. "And I can prove it." He jumped up and closed his office door, unzipped his pants, and waved his dick at me. "See? That's not small!"

And I said, "Mark? Why the fuck are you showing me your dick? I've told you before, I like you a lot as a friend, but I am not interested in anything romantic. Jesus."

Faking Gay

Why should a little thing like sexual preference come between you and that coveted corner office you deserve?
 

OPERATION AMBIGUOUS WAS GOING EXACTLY AS PLANNED. CHRIS* WAS JUST A HANDSHAKE AWAY from closing the deal that would see his software distributed by a top Hollywood movie company. After six weeks of tense negotiations, a gay senior executive—who happened to be in charge of signing the big check—had asked; Chris to attend a charity event as his guest. What's the big deal? he thought. So what if I'm straight? ?
The 28-year-old comer was more than happy to bat his lashes if it meant a quicker semi-retirement. A little thing like sexual preference wasn't going to get in the way of this deal. Besides, Chris constantly flirted with women he wasn't interested in, especially if they could improve his bottom line. But now the film executive was whispering in his ear and a manly hand was grazing his thigh. Still, as long as the touching stayed outside the lap, Chris was willing to play along—that is, until he realized his potential new partner wanted him to spend the night. "I told him I had to meet my significant other," Chris says with a smile. "To this day, he still doesn't know I'm straight."

 

 

Meanwhile, Chris just closed on a brand-new loft.
There are two kinds of people in any profession: those who think success is based on the meritocracy and those who know that sex sells. For ages, women have used a well-chosen sweater to prove that men don't check their libidos at the office door. Now more and more guys are doing the same. Having long since dispensed with pleats, straight men are increasingly comfortable going covertly girly if it means getting approval from their homosexual bosses. When the only thing between that dusty futon and a new flat-screen is a little misunderstanding, who wouldn't consider faking gay? What was once Sex and the City fodder is increas­ingly part of the straight man's script.

Take the case of Matt, a hetero 28-year-old writer at the New York Times. "It's not that I lie, necessarily," he says. "It's just what I don't say." To Matt, announcing that he's meeting up with the boys at Beige when he's actu­ally headed home to his girlfriend isn't immoral. It's char­acter acting. He'll tell his boss he's having a "fat day" and then point out cute actors in magazines.

Then there's David, a model whose cheekbones have brightened ads for Dolce & Gabbana, among other designers. After a supposedly straight rock-and-roll designer propositioned him in his showroom—and offered him lots more work—David learned that pansy posing has its rewards. "It's a challenge to be a straight man in certain industries," he says. "Gay men have the power, and they can get away with extremely forward comments. You'd be an idiot not to flirt back."

John, a VP at a high-profile PR firm, argues that clothes make the man. To run with a mostly gay flock of flacks, he wears pink button-downs and pointy boots.

"GAY MEN HAVE THE POWER. AND THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH EXTREMELY FORWARD COMMENTS." SAYS ONE HETERO MODEL. "YOU'D BE AN IDIOT NOT TO FLIRT BACK."

"I'll pretend to fit in and get ahead," he says. Whereas John used to point out a model's 34Cs, he now drools over her Marc Jacobs clutch. When he split work early to go to a basketball game last week, his friends wished him a nice time "playing straight." John had arrived.

And then there are the men who start off faking and wind up nearly fooling themselves. For Cameron, an actor, what began as a role turned into something more. When an infamous New York theater director sug­gested he stay the night to study a script, Cameron set the tone by moving in for a kiss. "Okay, I was attracted to him," he says, but it's not what you think: "I was attracted because he was a person who could further my career." After more than a year of saliva-swapping.

he landed a lead part. Privately, he admits to a few fleeting moments of guilt over fudging his faggotry, but the paycheck helps him live with it.

If the boss flaunts his femme side and a guy doesn't want to play along, he can always sue—taking inspira­tion from 23-year-old model and former Abercrombie & Fitch employee Mladen Djankovich. Djankovich claimed that Sam Shahid, the mega ad man behind the com­pany's controversial catalogs, touched him in all the wrong places, and even withheld promotions. That was grounds for a $20 million lawsuit, which resulted in a jury verdict of $70,000—Shahid was found liable last June.

While some guys think a soft touch goes too far, others are willing to cozy right up to their homosexual employers. But is it really that easy to gain professional ground in the gay world? Don't bet your bottom dollar on it. "I can see right through the whole flirty-straight-guy thing, where they let you think that if it were late enough and they'd had enough drinks, they might be into some man-on-man love," says director Don Roos.
For some gay men, though, having their tail feathers tickled is a form of flattery. "It's cool," says Bob, a journalist at a popular celebrity weekly, "when a guy respects my sexuality enough to try and play it to his advantage." That's exactly what he says Vin Diesel did when the two sat down in Los Angeles for an interview. "He leaned in really close and did a lot of complimentary talk about how he liked me and how now I was part of his inner circle," says Bob, who can't imagine Diesel talking to a straight guy about joining his personal club. But it's Low & Order: SVU's Chris Meloni who takes the fruitcake. "He's very open about loving to spend time out at the Pines in Fire Island," says Bob, remembering the generous hug they shared after talking.

"It's certainly not offensive," says Roos. "It shows a guy's liberal." At least that's what he thought about Ben Affleck's wayward glances. "I totally ignored Gywneth," says Roos, who directed the two in Bounce. "With Ben batting his eyes, I was too busy flirting right back."

After two hours of vogueing in black leather lace-up pants, David was almost sure he had won the $50,000 modeling campaign. When the designer asked for his phone number, he was certain. "I thought it was a little weird that he wanted my cell instead of my agent's office," he says. All was made clear when the designer called later that evening, proposing they meet for drinks in his hotel lobby. To defuse the situation, David sug­gested he bring a few model friends along. "The designer said don't bother coming," says David. "Guess who didn't get the job?" (*Names have been changed.)

The New Gay Gut

Protein shakes and personal trainers are no longer the norm. For many gay men, the must-have accessory is a roll.

LET US NOW SPEAK OF OUR FRIEND THE HOMOSEXUAL. THERE IS SOMETHING ABNORMAL ABOUT HIM. I don't mean sex, which all God's creatures know is better the farther from normal it gets. No, it's some­thing else that's out of order. A startling number of gay men have begun to—how to put this—plump up. You could see it, unbelievably, at the recent fashion shows in Milan, where industry types of the homo­sexual persuasion were taking up more front-row fanny space than in the past. It's visible on the Sunday pundit programs too: Just watch Andrew Sullivan hold forth, looking more like a gone-to-seed gym teacher than the chiseled conservative voice of gay America. And there's Richard Hatch, back on the all-star Survivor and looking much better fed than he did four naked years ago. I even see it in the bistros of my own image-conscious neighborhood, where male couples order dessert and are built surprisingly like—paging Jenny Craig—me. Yes, attendance at spinning class has clearly slipped. The pumped pectoral is going flat. And butts, rather than resembling walnut-cracking bundles, look more and more like the back of a bus; it is a trend that does not please everyone. "I mean, Jesus, they don't sell a decent pair of pants at Barneys in anything larger than a 36," says Ted Allen, food person from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, speaking of what he calls "the waistline issues of his people." But why these waistline issues to begin with? Allow me to posit a couple of theories.

AT THE RECENT FASHION SHOWS IN MILAN. INDUSTRY TYPES OF THE HOMOSEXUAL PERSUASION WERE TAKING UP MORE FRONT-ROW FANNY SPACE THAN BEFORE.

• As we all know, there's a cabal of intolerant conservatives afoot in the land, one that talks of constitutional bans and rightly provokes conster-nation, anxiety, even anger in the gay community Is it not possible that like John Candy's character in Stripes, they are swallowing "a lot of aggression along with a lot of pizzas"? Or whatever it is they'll swallowing.

• There have been fat ones before. It's just that didn't ask and they didn't tell. In previous genera-tions, most show-tune lovers of a certain age kept their XL clothes with them in the closet—men like Charles Laughton, Paul Lynde, Eleanor Roosevelt, and, of course, Liberace. Recall, please, the saga cious Austin Powers: "I didn't see that one coming,"

But now we do see it coming, because this is the first generation of homosexuals straight Ameri-cans actually know to be homosexuals. Now gay men age ungracefully just like the rest of us. As example, we need only gaze upon Elton John, who as a youthful song stylist didn't, in his sequins look quite like the rotund disco ball he now resem-bles. "It's in the late thirties that you really start seeing a difference," says Michael Alvear, gay columnist and author of Men Are Pigs, But We Love Bacon. "It comes with maturity."

 • Which brings us to Theory Three. For a long time, gays have struggled to get the same right and privileges that their straight counterparts have And as their movement ages, they are achieving these aims—but not without a price.

You want a TV presence? You got it, though you just might be relegated to the role of the hyperactive humping puppy that is Jack on Will & Grace. You want to serve in the military? Now that the Pentagon looks the other way because of the need for war grunts, you can stand at attention, soldier, but you just might get yourself shot. You want legally rec-ognized till-death-do-us-part relationships? You're making progress there, too, but that, I'm afraid comes with the heftiest price of all: the dreaded but nearly universal Postnuptial Pounds. That which comes from too much tube time watching football Or Barbra Streisand specials.
If I may directly address the men who love with the love that dare not speak its name: Gentleme, welcome to the rest of America, where, says our friend Alvear, the columnist, "a gay man will be as fat as his straight counterpart because he's basi-cally retired to pasture." Whether the grass in that pasture is any greener remains open for debate, but I can sure tell you this: There's a lot more of it to eat.

Passing for Straight

For every gay man throwing around the word fabulous, there is another at home watching the Knicks with an ice-cold Bud.

IN THE EARLY NINETIES I DATED A GUY WHO WAS FRESHLY DIVORCED-FROM A WOMAN. HIS NAME WAS JEFF. "I guess I've always been aware of an attraction to other guys," he told me. "But then I'd walk down Eighth Avenue i and see all those homos with the exact same haircut, same cutoff jeans with rolled-up edges, same white socks and construction boots, and I'd think, No fucking way. I can't be one of them."

I Alas, he was one of them. But even after he accepted this fact, questions remained. "Why do so many gays make sibilant sounds with a 'th'?" he asked me. "I mean, why is it you can tell a guy's a fudge-packer just from listening to him speak?"
Something I myself had wondered.

I Back when I had an office job—before I became a full-time writer—I was often mistaken for straight by my co-workers. "No shit?" they'd say when they learned of my deviant homosexual lifestyle. "I never would have guessed." This was usually followed by the observation "You don't seem gay." was like a black girl who seemed white. Like a gay-guy Halle Berry. This made me realize there are two kinds of fags: Faggy Fags and Straight Fags.

I While the Faggy Fag speaks with a lisp, highlights his hair, and throws the word fabulous around like it's a |- boomerang, the Straight Fag dresses in outdated cargo pants, listens to the Goo Goo Dolls, and would only go to a piano bar to deliver the piano.
Yet both men paid $12 for the Abercrombie S Fitch catalog. [We had to, unfortunately—it came wrapped in plastic to prevent any pervy previews.)

A similar situation existed for a black person at one of the agencies where I rotted. She didn't have a trace of a southern accent and was often described as "a very white black." I recall somebody asking her, "You've never even tried crack, not even once?"

My apparent straightness—and her apparent white­ness—surprised and interested people. In some way, it also comforted them by removing the perceived dis­tance between us.
When somebody goes against stereotype, it's always fascinating. Who didn't love watching Connie Chung deliver the evening news on CNN with her utterly American inflection? When we look at Connie, we expect to hear "Bee fwi wi ana egga woll?" And when we hear her talk like Jodie Foster, it makes us clap and want to be her friend.

Personally, I find it creepy that so many gay guys sound alike. "The gay accent" is a little too Stepford Wives, if you ask me. [Both Faggy Fags and Straight Fags will reference campy movies at every possible opportunity.) But then, I always find it somewhat creepy when what you'd expect is exactly what is.
I like people who do not sit politely in their boxes. Give me the glamorous anorectic lesbian who "puts down" cats at the vet. The heterosexual father of three who cries at Sex and the City reruns.

"It's like a lot of different people, all wearing the same mask," Jeff observed of Faggy Fags.

But why?
In all likelihood, FFs tended to stick together in nellie packs because gay people were pelted with rocks and shot in the head for years. [And in some places, they still are.) Thus, they started to sound alike.

But in some ways, this homo-homogenization isn't a great thing. Jeff was trapped in a very unhappy marriage for 13 years because he felt he couldn't possibly be gay. Because he didn't feel like any of them. He didn't feel fabulous. Had he known there was more than one variety of fruit, he might have been out of the closet and into Yankee Stadium a little sooner.
Personally, I crave a little less fab and a lot more exclusive: stars without MAkEUP. In other words, authentic. Even painfully ordinary, like me: outdated cargo pants, the Goo Goo Dolls, and no napkin—I can use my sleeve.

Oh, and Jeff. I ran into him a couple of years ago. It's Jeffrey now. He was dressed like every other fag on Eighth Avenue. He even had a rainbow pin stabbed to his Prada backpack.
Pride!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Go, girl!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Another thing I've observed: the Faggier the Fag, the better the chances he was once married.