BREAKING THE CODE: ONCE THEY KNOW YOU ARE GAY

By Jerome Cleary

When you tell someone you are gay or they eventually know or find out you are gay, something happens in the universe between a gay person and a straight person. It’s as if you have given them a license to spill — spill out all their dark and dirty secrets or just some odd or mundane ones too.

Since now they know you are gay, they probably feel that you will not judge them since you have let them know you are a minority in your own right.

Since I am socializing a lot more as a comic, I end up in many more social settings that I have not been around in the past. Recently I began to realize more that once people know I am a gay comic or gay, there seems to be an invisible code broken that now has opened a portal between them and me. All bets are off. Or maybe they are on.

Last weekend I was out in a bar that is really straight and I ran into a few people I know. As the night began, I was introduced by my friend to this guy. At first I thought there was a mutual attraction. Which, let me tell you, I have no gaydar, and I also miss it completely if someone is hitting on me or has hit on me. So maybe what I thought was a mutual attraction was really him staring at me since possibly a cowlick of my hair was sticking out.

So it turns out that this guy is, I guess, straight. But as the night wore on, he would lean over during the show as some comic was performing and make asides to me. One comment he makes is that he tells women he dates that he is 78 per cent straight. He may have said 70 percent, instead 78. But at this point, does the percentile really matter?

Then some more time passes and he says to me: 'I’m afraid to wash my jeans because I won’t be able to get them back on again.' Now at this point I am thinking: 'What the hell does that mean?' But at the same time I respond to each new piece of information with an 'oh.'

I also think maybe he is fishing around for laundry tips or that he thinks I have hints to give him on how to get really tight jeans on or off. I spoke to two straight women friends the next day, and they both swore to me that these were come ons. But when I questioned them further of what exactly these two statements meant, they were both befuddled.

I know in the past when guys want to ‘share’ things with me out of the blue, I sometimes respond with what a therapist would say like: 'I understand.' Which is comforting and says everything and nothing at the same time.

I also do not want to perceive a vague or ambiguous statement as a come on, since if it isn’t I look like the bozo. And in life if you can avoid looking like a bozo, take the high road and do not think anything remotely odd or a half come-on as a full come-on.

So to extradite myself from this situation at the end of the evening, I say: 'It was nice meeting you. Email me if you want to come to my show.' See I know how to be nice and vague too.

Jerome Cleary is an actor, writer and comic at The World Famous Comedy Store-www.freecomedytickets.com and can be reached at: jeromeclearytalk@aol.com