Married Homosexuals

I was at a friend's birthday party a couple of weeks ago and one of his old college roommates was there. He talked not so much about his wife -- who was not present -- but a lot about his daughters, whom he seemed genuinely proud of. He seemed to be a nice, rather attractive fellow in his fifties -- and as gay as a goose.

Yes, I know, if gay guys can be very masculine, straight guys can be kind of "girly," I suppose. Still, something told me that this guy was essentially -- well I really can't say "gay" because he's not exactly out and proud -- but I can say homosexual. Since he has children which I assume are his own one could get technical and call him "bisexual," but I don't think that was the case. I felt sorry for him, depressed by him, and irritated by him all at the same time.

I have met a lot of married homosexuals (as opposed to married gays or gay couples who are married). I would say that one in four men that I meet and have met in gay bars have either a wife, girlfriend, or fiancee. I'm not talking about so-called "straight" guys but guys who are actively cruising for sex partners.

Now the politically correct view of bisexuality says that bi's do not need to have sex with both sexes, only that they can have sex or fall in love with either a man or a woman. Which is -- if we accept this -- why I see these guys with wifes and kids who cruise gay bars as being married homos and not bi's. Presumably a bisexual man who's fallen in love with a woman can be satisfied by her alone (unless monogamy is simply not natural for him, which is true of some gays, straights, and bi's), but if he is driven to have sex with men, then it's probably because his homosexual impulses are stronger than any attraction he has for his wife. He is not "bi" -- he is gay (or would be if he ever came out).

Cornell University did a study of married homosexual men (there are married lesbians as well, of course) and found that they all had serious self-esteem issues stemming from childhood which made it impossible for them to "take on" society, as it were, by being openly gay and equally impossible for them to fully accept their sexual orientation. Sad.

Yes, this is still going on all these years after Stonewall.

In my twenties and later I would occasionally wind up with a man who turned out to be married. There would be this picture of the wife and kids in the bedroom, and the guy was almost always a bit arrogant, conspiratorial almost, about who he really was and what he really wanted. ["Yeah I'm gay, too." Well ... ] Gay Pride did not enter into these guys' way of thinking. They were either suffering so much internalized homophobia that only the sex urge got them out into the gay bar -- where they'd look right or left before exiting or entering -- or else they felt the wife and kids routine would get them farther in their chosen career. They weren't "conflicted;" they knew they were homo -- they just didn't care about using a woman as a beard. A typical example of this kind of person is Jim McGreevey. [Let me make it clear that I've never slept with Jim McGreevey!]

I don't recall if I'd give them my Gay Lib rap. Probably not. It seemed too hopeless and they wouldn't listen. I did not like helping someone commit adultery, although I could have argued that if it wasn't me it would have been someone else. Then there was the night I slept with a guy who in the middle of sex shouted out "Yes! Yes! It's men! Men! Yes, yes, yes! Men!" I thought to myself, "yes, men are great --I'm pretty great (my egotistical twenties)-- but what's up with this guy?" What was up is that I later found out that he was just about to get married. [Don't know if that wedding ever took place or not. It probably did. Maybe I wasn't that great.]

I don't feel sorry for former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey. He came out of the closet because of circumstances, not because he'd suddenly developed a conscience and a sense of gay pride. He treated his wife like crap, and I'm of two minds about whether or not she knew he was homo (let's not call him gay at that point). Some women do feel a man can "change," especially if she sees him as being bisexual. But it's just as likely that, like many other wives, Mrs. McGreevey hadn't an inkling. Understandably hurt and bitter, she's bound to get tacky and homophobic in her tell-all book, so what exactly has Mcgreevey done for us all? Nothing but started a round of stupid, stereotyping jokes. Yes, there he is -- smug jackass Jay Leno, who hasn't got a clue about any of this, laughing at the very notion of any woman not knowing that her husband was gay.

Yet many of them don't.

I have met other, more positive "married homosexuals" but this was after a sense of pride [or at least a deperate need to be true to themselves] brought them out of the closet. They were no longer married homosexuals, but gay men. Some remained friendly with their ex-wives; some did not. Some wives came to accept and understand --- bless 'em -- some did not. Most of these guys were genuinely conflicted; they did not neccesarily view their wives as beards. Some of them may have been bisexuals who ultimately realized that they leaned strongly in the gay direction. Whatever the case, whatever the initial pain and disillusionment for their families, they were all the better for it.

So there I was at this party, and the activist in me wanted so badly to say something to this poor married homosexual, but the only time I got him alone we talked about Edgar Allan Poe.
(Wouldn't it have been funny if instead of Poe we had talked about Oscar Wilde?! Talk about openings!)

I settled for giving the fellow a big wink as I walked out the door. I'm convinced I'm going to run into him at the Eagle some night. [Okay, maybe not the Eagle. Maybe Marie's Crisis -- if I ever went there. Besides, nowadays he'd probably be there with his wife!]

Things seem to go in cycles. I'm running into a lot of "married homosexuals" in gay bars these days as I did years ago. Gay pride has never taken such a beating. So many guys want to have sex with other men -- they just don't want to be "gay." Occasionally I get cruised by one of these guys.

Curiously, they're almost always bottoms.