Straight Until Proven Gay

(Posted by Dominic, '11)
I’m going to put it out there- it’s been a long time since I’ve been accused of being exclusively attracted to persons who happen to fall under the general category of “female” by someone I consider a friend or even an acquaintance (and usually even by the general public), so it always surprises me when the assumption is made.

But maybe that’s just a little bit of a New York/Vassar College specific bias showing itself.

Back in Hometown, USA, the rule of thumb is simple: Straight Until Proven Gay. And apparently it’s been a while since I’ve been back home, because the second I stepped off the plane, I appear to have slipped into my “straight” costume unwittingly, even to my friends.

After spending seven days back in the town in which I was born and raised, I have yet to encounter a friend who doesn’t manage to mention my apparent exclusive interest in women.
News to me. Why am I always the last to know these things?

But, really, while I realize that a large portion of the fault here falls on my shoulders for a failure to communicate with my friends back home, what gets to me is the underlying assumption that I must be a certain way, unless I say otherwise.

What also surprises me is that, while I never explicitly stated an attraction to men in high school, by my junior year I dated both genders intermittently in plain view of my peers. I had my own fears and discomfort about being “out” in terms of dating men, which led to difficulty in maintaining those relationships. But I never hid those relationships, and even introduced a boyfriend to my group of friends when I was seventeen. It seems to me that I did nearly everything aside from labeling myself.

Clearly, it wasn’t enough. Amidst the frenzied cacophony of beer, cigarettes, flashing lights, pounding music, and falling pins known as a bowling alley one night in my hometown, I explained the layout of my (small) dorm room to an old friend. Especially difficult to explain is the orientation of my bed, which resides literally six feet off the ground above both my desk and the bookshelf on top of it.

In the middle of my explanation that with desk, dresser, and my other bookshelf, there was nowhere else to put my bed other than a mere foot lower than the ceiling, above several other pieces of furniture, my friend interrupts with a blunt, dubious,

“But don’t the women ever hit their heads on the ceiling??”

My first reaction is to laugh uneasily. It’s true, I don’t consider myself exclusively attracted to men, but I will generally identify myself as gay if pressed. How much of that should I reveal here, where I’ll need to shout over the noise to be heard? Should I slip on my game face and go along with it until a more private time? The convenient cloak of “straight” is sitting right in plain sight, for me to put on if I should so decide.

A great majority of the time, my heterosexuality is not a baseline assumption of those with whom I’m at least acquaintanced. I don’t know if the tip off is my Britney Spears playlist or my great fashion sense…but stereotypes aside, I do know that I’ve become much more likely to articulate an orientation for myself these days.

Thus far, it seems my actions have only been circumstantial evidence for my orientation. So it seems the power of identification lies in the words themselves, whatever they might be. Unless, of course, you happen to be straight.

If you’re wondering what I did- I told my friend the truth. I haven’t decided what I’m going to be for Halloween yet, but I can say that I’ll be anything but straight.