Feeling like a minority in a social situation is a strange experience, and I guess by definition, an untranslatable one.
A few nights ago my younger brother invited me to his friend’s house, and along with my older brother, we sat on the balcony, drank and played music. There was certainly nothing homophobic about the situation, but as the night wore on and the beer dried up, I found myself dwelling on the overwhelming straightness of the evening. Even knowing my boyfriend was at home in bed, I knew I could never be a part of this, surrounded by straighties in varying states of pre-sexual intoxication.
Being a gay man I feel doomed to always be an outsider. Becoming more involved in the gay community is an alluring prospect, but I’m too cynical—I’ve spent too long being excluded for being different to find comfort in another in-group representing another kind of conformity.
I don’t think I’m alone. I have often had (in hindsight) contradictory discussions with gay male friends about how we have no gay male friends, and we hate the scene. I recognised these conversations in a piece The Advocate ran last month by a filmmaker who had interviewed young gay men disillusioned with the gay community. And yet, we have so many ways to make contact—Grindr, Scruff, Manhunt and the rest mean a quick fuck is usually only a 15-minute chat away.
Perhaps this disjunct between a desire for sexual connection and a desire for platonic companionship is our shared experience. As gay men, maybe our commonality is a heightened ability to feel alone and unmet even in each other’s company. A friend once put it to me that identifying as ”excluded” defines being gay just as much as being gay causes feelings of exclusion.
Riding home on the tram that night, I found myself amidst a group of drunk teenagers loudly proclaiming this or that was “gay”. Instead of moving to other end of the tram or trying to talk to them, I embraced exclusion. I turned up my music until it blared audibly through my cheap headphones, and I sang along.
