Gay?

The other night I had this really interesting conversation with a friend of mine. It was one of those drunken conversations where it gets all serious and one person starts spilling stuff that's been on their mind without really being aware that it was on their mind as much as that...you know the drill.

Anyway, I didn't mind playing counsellor/confessor, mainly because I like the guy, and other than that what he was saying affirmed some things I myself had been thinking about recently. Basically the story goes like this.

Our friend here, lets call him Tom, has been with his boyfriend for some time. A matter of years, I forget how many exactly. They're happy together. They've reached that point in the relationship where they're ridiculously comfortable with each other; they know their roles in the relationship, they pick at each other's personality traits, sex is as functional as it is emotional or sensual, and they can predict each other's behaviour to a startling degree. They are, you might say, the consummate 'married couple'.

You might expect Tom to have been bending my ear about being bored in his relationship, about wondering whether it's what he really wants. That may be the case to some extent, but it's not what he was saying as it's not as simple as that. Because Tom is straight.

That's right, despite being in a long-term committed relationship with another man, he is as straight as a die. In the time I've known Tom I'd not really thought too much about his sexuality. He told us (his group of gay friends) he was bisexual. He got a bit of ribbing about it, but only in that we all took the mick out of each other about certain things. We certainly weren't appalled by the idea as some gay people are (that "yeah we all say that at first" attitude you often get towards bisexuals).

But talking to him that night I digged a little deeper. To us he says he's bisexual, because that's the easiest way to make us understand where he's coming from. To his straight friends he describes himself as gay, because that's the easiest way to make them understand why he's in a relationship with a man. But the truth of the matter is, of all the labels we give our sexuality, he's closest to being straight.

He told me that, before he met his boyfriend, he was totally into girls; fantasised about them, went out with them, slept with them. Then he met a bloke who he happened to fall in love with. Sex with a man didn't repulse him and so he was able to embark on a relationship with him. But still, despite having been practising gay sex for some time, what he fantasises about, what porn he watches, is all to do with women.

He's young, early 20s, got the rest of his life ahead of him, but still at that age you think about who you want to settle down with, who you might grow old with. I asked him whether he saw that person as a man or a woman. He answered vaguely, saying he wasn't really sure. As drunk as he was, he was aware that the answer to that had some consequences to the relationship he was in at the moment.

But I think mostly the problem was that in our supposedly enlightened society (and relatively it is, we can't complain too much - but discrimination and bigotry are still a problem) this poor guy wasn't allowed to be who he was. He had been forced to describe himself in these different ways to different people in order to be accepted in his behaviour.What I don't understand is why we do that - why its in our human nature to categorise everything. Is the fact that sexuality is actually a fluid changing thing, a grey area for everyone rather than something that is black, white, or black and white for each person, really that hard to understand?

Apparently so. I read a feature in Attitude magazine some months back written by a man who identifies as straight, has always be sure of his attraction towards women, but thought he'd try sex with a man. He had a gay mate who was willing to indulge him, he tried it, and thought it was alright. But that was it. Job done. End of. Curiosity satisfied. There's nothing new about this. I don't doubt that this goes on all the time. It's certainly happened to me. I had a brief sexual relationship with a straight male friend of mine which was interesting and exciting and then fizzled out. We then carried on being friends as we were before. No issue.

What was different about the straight guy in Attitude was that he was open about what he'd done. Whereas most straight guys would rather die than talk about sexual experiences they've had with men - or at least understand that other people would be bothered or confused by it, even if they themselves are not - this guy was really open about it and talked about it to his friends. The confusion and sometimes repulsion he encountered said it all - people can't cope with the idea that having sex with someone of the same sex doesn't necessarily make you gay, or vice versa.

I had sex with a girl once. It didn't make me straight. I was experimenting, testing my sexuality. Admittedly I wasn't really conscious of that. Consciously it was peer pressure - I was one of the last of my group of friends to lose their virginity and I wanted to get on with it asap. But although the experience was nice and enjoyable (and a relief to get done!), I knew for sure before, during and after that I preferred men.

A lot of people see this as a rite of passage for gay men, a confirmation of what their true sexuality is. Something that, because we're brought up 'straight', we end up going through on our way to coming out as gay. I used to see it like that, but now I look at that experience as a confirmation that, if I so desired, I could have sex with women as well. Why, just because I prefer to have sex with men, should I box myself in? While I think it unlikely that I might have sex with a woman again, I'm not going to think of that first time as the last. And you never know, like Tom I could even fall in love with a woman. Why not?

I related to my friend's dilemma. Not because I have fallen in love with a woman before, but because a straight man has been in love with me. Whereas Tom didn't allow his sexuality to get in the way of his relationship, the man who loved me (who I loved in return) did. Tom's case is an unusual one. Certain factors (his lack of repulsion of gay sex, his boyfriend being very much the dominant character in the relationship) helped the relationship go in the direction it has. In my case the man I loved was the dominant character and so he dictated the course of our relationship - as he was the 'straight' one we never got it together.

How did I know he loved me? He told me for a start, and there were certain other things that made it clear - things he said, the way he behaved physically with me when we were alone. But he had an over-riding disgust at the thought of having sex with a man. We came close to having sexual encounters a number of times but our mutual fear (albeit for different reasons - his of what he was doing, mine of scaring him away for good) kept us from going for it. And ultimately I knew that he really wanted to be with a woman. I could never have made him happy even if the factors keeping us from exploring our relationship further had been different.

So maybe this is why we categorise our sexuality, put it in boxes with nice clear labels - not because we're scared of having sex with different genders, but because we all dream about who we might one day settle down with and we want it made clear to everyone what sex that person will be.

That makes sense. But in the meantime I hope the fact that more and more people are discussing sexuality, less and less people allow the label they put on themselves to stop them experimenting with it. Which of course is my long-winded way of making straight boys feel better about coming home with me.