You know, I know a guy that had to come out as straight.
Pretty fucking hilarious story.
Edit: decided to tell it here for ease of finding.
So, this story goes back to 1992. This was before the boom of awareness around gender and orientation, etc. That’s the key to the whole thing.
My buddy is this kinda goofy kid, never really fit in well, but ends up building a friend group in high school (including me). This group is unusually chill and inclusive for the era, and included three gay guys.
My buddy and one of the gay guys (also a buddy) fall in love. After we all graduate, they move in together, and live happily ever after. To appearances anyway.
Truth is, the guy really loves his partner. But he didn’t enjoy the sex. They try every combination they can think of, and it just doesn’t ever satisfy them both. However, the guy could orgasm from oral, and would do hand jobs, so they made it work, because love.
But, guy ends up meeting a woman at work. Ends up cheating, and the sex was fulfilling in a way sex with his partner wasn’t. He figures he’s actually bi, and once they move past the betrayal, it kinda helped.
But, the entire time, everyone not aware of the details just sees them as the perfect gay couple; and the guy was out as gay to everyone. And they really were a great couple. Finish each other’s sentences, silly in-jokes, outlasting every other relationship anyone in the friend group. It was only the sex that was bad. The guy’s partner is increasingly feeling undesired as the sex happens less and less.
Things come to a head around 2003. The partner cheated, and they decide to open the relationship. The guy starts seeing women for sex, the partner men. This works for a while, until the guy and the partner both fall in love with other people. Now, they kept all this private. It wasn’t until they broke up and started moving into their own places that anyone other than me and one other friend knew anything was wrong at all.
So, they’re apart, and people are surprised, extra so since they stayed friends. The guy, however, is fielding attempts to hook him up with other guys.
And that’s when he starts telling people he’s hetero. Which was not met with the kind of friendliness and open minded goodwill you might expect.
His parents were upset because, one, they felt they lost a son-in-law (despite the guys not having married); and two, that they had had a bumpy road to being parents of a gay son. They weren’t exactly overjoyed back when it all started. Some of the friend group were outright nasty about it, particularly one of the gay guys. His co-workers were largely unimpressed, but gossiped about it to the point that the guy quit and went elsewhere.
Hell, I was confused as all get out, and I was/am sort of the default “safe closet exit” person for my family. We had a conversation about it all, maybe three months after they split. I had known they had troubles, but the dude always said he was gay or bi, so it always seemed like things they were working on.
During that conversation, he talked about how much he loved his partner, and still did. But that it wasn’t fair to either of them to keep hurting each other by not being enough for each other, and expecting each other to keep trying anyway. He said that he’d never really liked men sexually, and had never had any sexual attraction to any other men than his now ex. He went into detail that I won’t share because he asked for me to never tell anyone, but suffice it to say that he tried really hard to be gay, and only gay.
So, some time passes, and he calls me out of the blue (which is rare because I’m known for not answering the phone, I check messages and call back, so ppl text me instead). He starts babbling joyous things about how he’s figured it all out.
He ran across the term “pan-romantic”. And it was a magic word that unlocked a lot of emotion for him, but it ended up being joyous. He is pan-romantic, but heterosexual. For him, it was proof that he wasn’t just weak, or didn’t love his partner enough, or a bad person, he just didn’t have fully matching romantic and sexual attractions. He could love anyone, under the right circumstances. It explained how he could have crushes on guys, and girls, but only ever sexually wanted women.
Seriously, he was on the phone with me for about three hours, just venting, and vacillating through emotions.
So, yeah, he found a label, an idea that finally gave him a way of thinking about himself that didn’t involve the shame and self hatred because he’s straight in almost every way except being able to love anyone. Love isn’t always enough, so he knows not to chase it with someone he won’t be sexually attracted to.
Now, I had to ask, “dude, how were you having sex with a guy if you weren’t sexually attracted to him?”
He thought that if he kept trying here and there, that maybe it would be enough. That it was his “duty” to do something, and it wasn’t so bad that he couldn’t do it at all, he’d just fantasize and get through it because he loved his partner.
But, yeah, dude had to fully come out, and he said it was just as nerve wracking as when he came out as gay back in the nineties, because “people thought I was joking, and then got mad because they thought I had betrayed gay people, or them by somehow changing. but I didn’t change, I just didn’t know.”
That’s the story
I sort of had that happen to me. In middle school, someone started a rumor that I was gay. This was early 90s, and I was young, so it bothered me. I was new to the district, and didn’t have many friends, and being called “gay” was something bad in my mind.
But then I suddenly had a bunch of friends who were being really supportive. Some were gay, some were straight, but everyone just encouraged each other to be who they are. I learned a lot from them about acceptance and being myself. Years passed.
But none of them ever asked me if I was gay. Anyone that asked, I would say “no, I’m straight.” Apparently people thought I was in denial.
But then I asked a girl out, and she was like, “Wait, but… Aren’t you gay?” The look on her face is seared into my subconscious. It was a mixture of confusion, betrayal, and contempt. Like I had been pretending to be gay to worm my way into her friendship, all the while being a lecherous creep waiting to strike.
Also it turns out, one of my gay friends was working up the courage to ask me out. It was the talk of the lunch table, except they had been keeping it from me because they didn’t want to embarrass our friend.
So I had to go to that friend and explain that I liked them as a friend, but I was not attracted to men. He then claimed that he wasn’t interested in me, which was really fucking confusing. And then I had to clarify to everyone at the lunch table that I was, and had always been, straight. Which is weird enough, but I had also now rejected one friend and creeped on another.
Well, are you going to tell us the story?
Apparently not.
Edited it in
That’s funny that his parents were mad about it. I can just imagine them going, “Look, I know we talked about how sexuality isn’t a choice… but can’t you just choose to like dicks? It would make the conversations with the neighbors so much easier.”
His dad actually said “but we were so nice about it!”
Bro doesn’t know he’s Asexual yet. I was 25 when I found out. Also thought I might be bi growing up. It was a weird time for us adult Asexuals.
I figured out I was ace about a year or two ago. When I told a friend he said, “Yeah, everyone can tell, you’re the least sexual person I’ve ever met.”
What do asexuals think about when they masterbate?
A
Aaaaaaaah
What a wholesome story
Of a guy stealing $1000 and not doing the job he we hired for? Good for the kid, but it doesn’t change the fact he stole $1000. And put the kid in a morally ambiguous situation of having a $300 that he knows were stolen from his parents.
Edit: I think people are missing my point. There are three options:
- Do “real” conversion therapy
- Save the kid as he did, steal $700 from the family
- Save the kid as he did (donate the money or give it to the kid)
I’m advocating for option 3, not as people seem to think, option 1.
Stealing from bigots isn’t the moral evil you seem to think it is.
Two wrongs don’t make a right is what I’m thinking.
You can’t purchase a belief. You can only purchase a claim. They can’t buy their kid’s sexuality, but you don’t have to be straight to claim heterosexuality.
Neither of the two acts is a “wrong” in any legal sense, so any concept of “fraud” is off the table. There is no established set of relevant shared standards or expectations adopted by the affected individuals, so ethicality is also off the table. That just leaves morality to determine right from wrong, and morality is personally subjective: it’s only a moral “wrong” if the individual perceives it to be a wrong.
Aside from situations where legally or ethically compelled to speak the truth, I think that deceiving bigots is a moral imperative. They should be lied to everywhere it is legal and ethical to lie to them.
They want to pay me to lie to them? That’s a win for everyone involved.
