Give it to Me Straight

By Adam Kuhn
Posted Friday, August 31, 2007

From now on, I will try my best to make sure that this past weekend will be my last weekend in Connecticut… ever. Having been dragged from the city for three consecutive weekends, forced to cancel three consecutive dates with someone new, I was beginning understand why so many people in New York pretended Connecticut didn’t exist.

When one is trapped in the wealthiest state in the union, there is only one thing to do: visit your rich aunt and uncle in the country and enjoy a little of the high life. After dinner, that strange ritual some families do where they actually enjoy each other’s company for a short time, my cousin and I decided to go out and meet up with some of his friends.

Sure they were all still in high school, but after all, three or four years can’t make that much of difference. Or at least that’s what a friend of mine often tells me… and at 23, he would know these pros and cons from dating so many individuals still in high school.

At the end of the night, I found myself in a fairly disturbing situation. Picture yourself at a bar: Guys sitting around. A few disgusting women running around trying to be cute by acting dumb. The guys talking to each other about which one of these filthy vixens they’ve done, and which ones they want to do. Now imagine everyone in the bar is 17… or 16… or even 15… with no differences in behavior.

I had always wondered about the dynamics between straight boys and straight girls, having no personal experience to summon for reference. Of course we all know the stereotype of the adolescent straight boy allows for no other concerns but inserting himself into everything that walks, but I was always left to ponder: What do these guys do? Just invite girls over and talk about having sex with them? The answer is yes… yes, they do.

While these hideous little tramps ran around in their short shorts and tight tank tops, drunk off of a few shots of Malibu coconut rum, the males, who far outnumbered the females, talked about nothing more than having sex them, or having had sex with them. I think what bothered me most is that these girls appeared to be trying to look like 40-year-old barmaids. And what’s sad is that a few of them were actually pulling it off.

From observing these creatures in their natural habitat, I concluded that boys want to do, and girls want to be done. In the gay world, it gets a little more complicated. We have tops and bottoms, dominants and submissives, queens and non-queens, and somehow, through all this haze, we’re supposed to find a suitable mate.

Noticing the simplicity of these kids and their behavior, it occurred to me, for the first time in my life: Wouldn’t “straight” be so much easier?

For a while I was going back and forth as to whether or not I should publicly establish to personalities in control of the party that I didn’t play for their team. It would certainly have gotten one of the barmaids to back off, but I wasn’t sure what kind of reaction I would have gotten from the guys, much less my cousin. So I pretended, and went right back to high school.

After the party, I realized that my cousin’s and his friends’ lives weren’t easy because they were straight. What made their lives easy were their rich parents that took care of all their other concerns, which left ‘getting laid’ at the top of their priority list.

A lot of this little gathering was enjoyable, but throughout the night, I couldn’t help but be a little bitter about watching people live the life I never had. Not so much regarding a wealthy family to rely on, but more so in the sense that these kids had simple sex lives. No dramatic coming-out phase. No possibility of rejection from friends and family because of who they sleep with. No judgment from strangers because of who they are.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so difficult if gay sex wasn’t associated with so many other irrelevant subjects. Maybe life would be simpler if sex were just sex. On the other hand, maybe those associated subjects make us who we are. Who was I to judge these kids for the lves they were living?

I couldn’t tell how to subjectively approach my thoughts about that night. Was I watching young, naïve people blissfully enjoy sexual simplicity, or was I just stuck with a bunch of spoiled rich kids trying to get laid?

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