What I Love About Being Gay
Told with the help of a simple game of strip poker.
The furthest I’ve ever felt of not belonging was at a house party in my early 20s. The small crowd was teeming with heterosexuality, and there I was: a homosexual outcast. How could I relate to any of these people? It also didn’t help the fact that this was bogan territory, set amongst the facade of government housing, where the fear of druggos and dole bludgers is rife. And yet I went there anyway because I trusted the person who invited me.
But something happened that night that made me reconsider everything I knew about being gay. And it was a simple game of strip poker.
I remember thinking, as the clothes slipped from our bodies, that the straight guys were gonna get antsy about me being there. But somehow not one of them did. We all whinged when we lost and we laughed when the dangly bits were on show. And as I thought about it, I felt the trust between us was borne out of the fact that I wasn’t expressing my sexuality. I didn’t suppress it (it was kind of hard to do that), but I didn’t bring it to the forefront of my personality as I have always done. Instead, I focused on all the other things that make me… me. My charm, my love for music, my power with words. And even though I still felt I didn’t belong, I somehow did.
But sometimes we truly belong in places where we feel so alone. As a gay man, I chose to believe that I just didn’t belong with any of these straight people until one of them actually cracked onto me. It was startling — him planting me against the wall and telling me he wants me. Unfortunately, I truly thought he was pulling my leg, which led me to abandon him and return to the party. But I eventually knew he wanted me when he ignored me the rest of the night. Of course, while our levels of acceptance of our own sexualities were vastly different, we clearly had a connection with same-sex attraction.
That night, I learned my sexual identity is not a marker for belonging. It’s just another part of me. True belonging is not borne out of similarities, it’s borne through our exquisite differences. And this is what I love about being gay — because if I wasn’t, I would never have learned this sage wisdom.
More recently, I uncovered more about what it means to belong. In Brene Brown’s book Braving The Wilderness, she writes:
True belonging is not passive… It’s not fitting in or pretending or selling out because it’s safer. It’s a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are.
How profound is this quote? Here I thought, all along, that belonging had a literal meaning. That you belong to something if you fit with it. Comparisons, similarities, puzzle pieces that slip together perfectly. Who knew that true belonging is just simply being yourself in any given situation? And this makes sense with how I managed to belong in such a far-fetched situation as a straight, bogan house party.
I could have put on a facade, pretending to be another bogan so I could fit in. Hell, I could have pretended to be straight. But I think either situation would have felt so un-belonging because I wasn’t being myself. And people can tell when you’re not being yourself. Especially us, we who are being.
That’s why it’s important to belong to yourself, first and foremost. To accept your own identity, holistically and without condition. Once you learn not to care what other people think, you can be whatever your heart desires. And that includes your sexuality — something that we all cannot change.
As the saying goes: grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the tenacity to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. The original perspective of this saying is directed towards the world, but it can equally be directed towards ourselves.
So, in the words of Oscar Wilde:
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
In the end, while I did tone down my sexuality at that house party, I didn’t aim to hide it either. It was a smart decision because we have to accept that not everyone cares about our sexuality — especially people who prefer the opposite sex to yours. But I couldn’t just bottle up my sexuality and hide it from everyone either. Because I knew that while there are so many other amazing things that make me Christopher Kelly, being gay is also another part of that awesome package.
Put simply: I will never sell out my own true identity for the sake of others; sorry, not sorry.
