“My high school was gay,” I said. Disgusted.

Perplexed looks crossed the faces of my dinner companions.
A moment passes.

And another.

With perplexed hesitation, a sincere query: “Really? Everyone in your high school was gay?”

Another moment passes. Maybe more.

Realization dawns, synapse by embarrassing synapse, what I, a gay man, barely beginning his coming out process, has just said to his dinner companions, consisting of his first boyfriend, his boyfriend’s gay roommate and his boyfriend’s gay roommate’s gay friend.

The preceding, commiserate conversation among burgeoning college friends about the trials and tribulations of living through high school on the fringe was innocent enough. Round the table went the stories telling tales of petty high school shenanigans, implying the emotional growth of the participating conversationalists in the intervening years.

But my own mouth gave voice to words that betrayed my own immature notions and deep-seated, self-hating bigotry – bigotry so subtly taught, I hadn’t even realized the lessons took hold. I hadn’t even yet been able to say “I’m gay” – preferring to say “I’m attracted to men – to anyone, much less myself, and maybe this was why: I couldn’t separate the thought that I was “so gay” from … well, being gay. In the past, a “so gay” comment was an exasperating, eye-roll inducing, flippant belittlement. It didn’t have anything to do with my attraction to men. But in that moment, when my flippant words were combined with the context of the people I was with, I experienced an “a-ha” moment.

That embarrassingly painful foot-in-mouth moment taught me something terribly important: sometimes we don’t realize the gravity of lessons we’ve taken in, even when that which we’ve taken in as truth is detrimental to ourselves. I realized in that moment the power of disassociation. The power to simultaneously say something with the intent of a particular meaning while stripping it of the full weight of its full meaning.

I’m sure that’s what my boss did when the other day he flippantly said “they’re so gay” when looking at a concert video from the ’70’s of the long-haired metal band, Deep Purple. His comment caught me off guard as I’m sure mine did my college dinner party friends. He has heard me talk about my honey bunch and he’s expressed support to the other gay man and his partner in our department. Therefore, I’m sure(ly hoping) he meant that they were “gay” like I thought of my high school experience – only applying the socially negative meaning of the word while disassociating it from those of us who use it to identify ourselves.

In our society, that high school definition of “gay” includes “lame”, “uncool”, “effeminate”, “gutless”, “dishonorable”, “unmasculine”.

I refuse these associations to my person. Utterly.

And so, with an intentionally naive, optimistic attitude, I now assume when someone says such a thing in my presence, knowing who I am, that they must be praising the object of their comment. Therefore, to my boss, with a smile on my face and lilt in my voice, I responded “Oh! So you think they’re cool!” Statement. Exclamation point.

Stunned, thoughtful silence was his response as I finished doctoring my coffee and returned to my desk. Perhaps that embarrassing firing of synapses was now making its way across his brain.