The Gay Lifestyle part 5

Continuation of The Gay Lifestyle.

This guy came up and stood beside me for a moment before speaking. The moment couldn’t have been more than three or four seconds, but it felt a lot longer. Oh geez, this guy’s gonna hit on me, I winced. And he did.

“I see you lusting over him,” he said, meaning the current strip dancer.

“Not really,” I answered, “I’m not gay.”

I didn’t want to be an ass, here. I was trying to be polite while straight forward. I mean, after all, I was at a gay/lesbian club, so I had no right to be rude to a gay guy approaching me. And so far, for the couple of hours I’d been there, no one had made a move on me. (I figured my woman-shield had been working as planned.)

“You’re not gay?” he said. “What’s a straight guy doing at a gay bar?”

I avoided looking at him as I said, “I’m with my girlfriend.”

He made an obvious show of looking around me, and then noted, “Where is she at?”

“Yeah,” I sighed, “I think she went up to the bar. She’ll be back in a minute.” I hope.

He continued, “So what do you think of the dancer, as a straight guy?”

“Well,” I said, “he’s not in really good shape.”

“Yeah, they don’t get the high-end dancers for places like this,” he said.

“And,” I said, “he’s kind of staring off into space. I thought the dancers were supposed to play to the crowd.”

“He’s not gay,” he said, “so he’s not really into it tonight.”

He continued to chat, friendly, not aggressive. This experience taught me something about personal interaction that I have never forgotten. No matter how much someone doesn’t want to have anything to do with you, if you are friendly, polite, and persistent, you can win that someone over. In the five minutes this guy stuck there with me and chatted, he got me to actually like him, despite my initial revulsion over being hit on by a gay guy.

He was sort of becoming a new buddy. I even eventually turned to face him as we talked, rather than continuing to keep my eyes averted and my expression neutral. It was like just talking with any other guy, in any other venue. We could have been chatting about watching a baseball game or listening to an opera (two things I have about as much interest in as watching male strippers — all not exciting to me).

“Well,” he said, to end the encounter, “I hope you enjoy the club with your girlfriend.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Just don’t ever tell a gay man that your not gay,” he advised.

“Huh,” I said, “OK, but why?”

“It’s a turn on.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Have a good night,” he said. He patted me on the chest and then turned and walked away.

The pat on the chest surprised me.

A moment later, all three of my female companions came back to me. “Sorry we left you alone, there.”

“Yeah,” I said, slightly perturbed at them. “I got hit on.”

“We saw it.”

Turns out, they hadn’t meant to leave me alone, against their promise, but when they saw the guy talking with me, they decided as a group, to watch how the situation played out. Errr.

Anyway, nothing else interesting occurred for me at the gay and lesbian club that night. We didn’t stay much longer, and I never went to such a place again. If the experience did anything for me other than give me a fun story to tell, I guess it disensitized me to any “fear” of gay men.

Bullgrit