I’m going to admit it: I have an over-active gaydar. My friends have been telling me this for years after I’ve drunkenly pulled them aside at too many parties and whispered “I think your friend is gay.”
How overactive is my gaydar? Let’s just say that at the beginning of each of my relationships, I have a long period where I observe a boy, Jane Goodall style, noting signs of gayness. Before dating my former boyfriend of 2.5 years, I had a mild crisis over his sexuality simply because he had a set of flip-flops that matched one of his belts. I initially thought my current boyfriend might be gay because his voice sounds kind of like my gay friend John’s voice. (When I met John, I looked long and hard at him and thought, “Gay or … cyclist.”) Cyclists are their own breed.
Once, I came home from a newspaper training session where I met two new Arts & Entertainment writers and told my boyfriend, “I met two nice gay boys today! I think we’re going to be friends.” How shocked was I to look at one of their Facebook profiles later and see that he had a girlfriend. The other one actually was gay.
I remember my parents were marveling over some statistic that says about 1.5% of the population is gay. “That seems like a lot.” This boggled my mind. “Are you sure it’s not 15%? Even that seems low.”
To my own credit, I do think many more people are gay than we realize. Or, to put it more frankly, I think a lot of people out there are in the closet or at least bicurious. But don’t ask me if I believe in male bisexuality or the whole Kinsey scale sexuality gradient. My answer is an anti-climactic, “I guess?”
What makes me think someone is gay? Surprisingly, it has little do do with what you might guess. Wearing a pink V-neck does not a gay boy make. It’s more just something about the way they talk. If a guy calls a girl “pretty,” boom – I think he’s gay.
What if they flirt with gay boys? Now this one I’ve learned through lots of observation – this does not make a guy gay. Gay boys and straight boys have one thing in common – dicks – and the more they drink the more they like to relate over this. Also I think that straight boys feel more comfortable around gay guys if the subject of gayness becomes very explicit through constant mock touching. (Or is it real and they’re all secretly gay? People have differing opinions.)
With my overactive gaydar, I’m pretty sure I could not handle Europe. Between accents, men who actually like “style,” and general confusion, it would simply spin out of control.
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