Living Life With A Broken Gaydar

It’s my freshmen year of college and I’m at Lee’s house. I’ve bee seeing him for the past 5 months—consistently, but not too seriously.

“Hey, want to hear something funny?” he asks me.
“Always.”
“There’s this rumor going around that I like to get fucked in the ass.”

I waited…for him to deny it. Silence ensued, and I managed to let out a sweaty “heh…”

Living life with a broken gaydar is quite simply not an easy task. To further confound my situation, it would seem that I attract men who are a hop, skip, and a jump away from coming out. One might assume that past experiences with this would strengthen my gaydar. One would be wrong. Because only two years before Lee happened, Scott happened.

I remember the day I graduated 8th grade because it was the first time an older guy showed interest in me. Scott texted me, out of the blue, asking “what’s up?” despite the fact that we had never really exchanged words. We had exchanged glances (we went to the same school), but never words. And so it was, just like that, that I found myself paired up with a rising 11th grader. And in the following weeks, five of his closest friends plucked up my five best friends. The pairing was so arbitrary; it wasn’t based on common interests, but rather which guy got to which girl first.

I was 14-years-old and it didn’t once cross my mind that Scott could be gay. Even when my friends started to develop deeper relationships with his friends, as ours remained stagnant. Even when he’d black out every time we hooked up. Even when he sent his friends to my friend’s house, where I was hanging out, to end it with me.

Then a year later, he invited me over, presumably to explain himself. Again, he was black out. This time, he was trying to tell me something, but couldn’t. He was writhing back and forth; it was clearly urgent. I left stumped and STILL never once considered that he might be gay. A year later he goes to college, comes out, and what does he do? That’s right, dates Alexander Wang, as if I couldn’t get slighted any harder. What did I do? Naturally, I went on to date another gay man.

I haven’t dated a gay man since and I like to think of this one as my last hoorah (gay guys really are more fun). His name was Daniel. Things got kind of serious. Then things got kind of gay. It was college, a year after Lee, we had plans to meet up one night and I couldn’t find him. Turned out he was hooking up with Lee.

So that, my friends, concludes my tale of living life with a broken gaydar. As I like to say: fool me once, gaydar, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times? WHAT, IN THE NAME OF GOLDEN SNUB-NOSED MONKEYS IS GOING ON?