“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.
Guilty. Although I like to think that I’ve used the term with an amusing level of irony, being a gay man. Your post has me thinking I should kick the habit.
In the past, when somebody has referred to something as being “gay” I HAVE responded with a “so get on board with it now because all the straight people will be doing it in five more years.”
A nifty response to your boss might’ve been, “Ha. They’ll never be THAT good.” However, I say that with the benefit of not having been there and on the spot.
Powerful post! So good that you can think quickly enough to respond to a comment that. I usually come up with a good response a week or more later!
Love you, son! Dad
I love your thoughts, and how you write them – a fantastic, important personal essay. Your idea of the power of disassociation, as you explain it above, is one worth a lot of thought.
I have an unrelated, but related, story. I won’t take the time to write it well, but I’d still like to share it.
When I was in third or fourth grade, reading “Charlotte’s Web” for the second, third, or fourth time I was genuinely naive about any other meaning for “gay” than happy – as it is used in that beloved story. The only contexts in which I had heard and understood the word “gay”, up to that point in my life, were positive contexts. I was a kid who took in the language of the authors I read. I actually used the word gay to mean happy and bright and lively. I’d occasionally say things like, “Those flowers are so gay!” with a look of pure admiration and excitement for spring spread across my face.
Until one day in school when my teacher told me to go to some room I had never been to before to meet with some woman I had never heard of before. I went.
A very sincere looking, flowy-skirted, long dark-haired woman greeted me and asked me to take a seat at a table with her. In front of us, and above us in a loft, sat a classmate of mine, smiling broadly, looking down at us. I smiled a nervous smile back up at her. The woman invited my classmate to share her feelings with me.
My classmate pinched up her face and said, “I don’t think you should say the word gay. It’s not nice.”
I think my jaw dropped just a little. I stared up at her, completely confused and speechless. There was a long silence.
The woman turned to me, “Is there something you’d like to say?”
Silence.
I was a compliant kid and, at that age, thought I should please the people around me. I was also getting the sense that I did not know something the two of them did. I began to feel really stupid.
“Gay is something that people say to put other people down,” the woman said. My cheeks flushed. I didn’t understand. That’s not what E.B. White’s characters were doing. That’s not what I was doing. I was trying to figure it out and I couldn’t. Tears welled up in my eyes.
She followed with, “Is there anything you’d like to say to your friend?” She used that adult tone that lets you know it’s time to apologize.
I barely got out “I’m sorry” before several tears broke free to streak my cheeks. My classmate was still smiling, broadly, looking down at me.
The sincere woman handed me a tissue and said I could go back to class.
Too shattered to ask anyone to clarify things for me I went on reading the word gay in the positive context it is used in the literature and poetry I was given as a kid in school but not daring to speak it or write it…ever. The thought that I could hurt someone’s feelings if I did was horrifying to me, though I still didn’t understand it.
It wasn’t until my uncle came out as a gay man three years later that I understood what gay meant in relation to sexuality and how the word can be used derogatorily. Though my hurt drastically diminished with that new knowledge, it didn’t leave completely. As one poet says,
It’s true one learns by failing, still I know
that failing without learning brings a tear.
I strive to learn against a mind too slow.
I think my personal anecdote connects to your concept of 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,” though maybe in a nuanced way. As a nine year old I failed to understand the full meaning of the word “gay,” let alone its full weight. Thus, I couldn’t have stripped it of its full meaning even unintentionally as so many people do today (even nine year olds) by using it derogatorily to mean lame or uncool. I didn’t understand the word as negative in a social way, only as positive.
I don’t know if my classmate was using the power of disassociation to her pleasure, though it felt that way. But I do know that the sincere woman (who was likely the school psychologist) missed a really big opportunity to inquire, to listen, to hear, and THEN to teach.
Wow! I love this story! It shows how much language changes and I especially appreciate the lesson of the necessity to listen before assuming what someone else means. That was part of my intent with my boss, to put him on notice that his use of the word derogatorily wasn’t something I’d accept but not taking it to mean more unless I knew more about where he was coming from.
Thank you so much for sharing the story!
Yes. Mine was an “unrelated, but related” story for the very reasons you state. Your teaching move was perfect I think.
Rebecca, I enjoyed your story very much. My heart hurt with your (innocent) heart. The very word “gay” — the way we used to use it — was such a lilting, sunshiny word. I am sorry it can no longer be used that way.