Confined Wisdom

The author is a heterosexual who respects people with different sexual preferences. The term “gay” in this article is not used as a derogatory. He has, on occasion, been on the receiving end of same-sex flirtation, and has been rather flattered each time. So, thank you gentlemen.

Living in the Arab world has its disadvantages. There’s no open gay culture that the common man can be exposed to, leading to packs of homophobic wolves running free, preaching their non-acceptance towards this different breed. We all know and witness the stereotypical version of a gay man. Clad in skin-tight t-shirts, these somewhat effeminate men walk like ramp models, snap their fingers and say “fabulous, dah-ling” at anything that pleases them. Busted! The conformists suddenly remember all the holy rules of living in an Islamic state, and Kevin J is dragged away by the coppers, right when he was about to offer that cute guy on the other side (me!) a daiquiri. I was going to decline and tell him that I don’t swing that way, but the pigs got to him first. And then a few days later, everything changed.

Through mutual friends, I met a guy who I shall refer to as Bantu, and we hit it off quite well. Bantu was easily over 6 feet tall (I’m reasonably below that!), well-built, moderately hairy, and generally dressed down. He watched boxing for non-sexual reasons, said “fuck that shit” more times than anything else and fist bumped me whenever I said something clever. He was such a guy’s guy that he made me feel girly. On our many meetings (only as bros, though) we discussed politics, pythons, football (the real one, not the American version), and Scarface. There were no “Oh my God, did you watch the Teen Awards last night?” conversations and no discussions about Clay Aiken. Honestly, it wasn’t until I had known him for about a month and a half that I found out he doesn’t dig the ladies. And much like the end-sequence of that really cool movie, I attempted to piece together the clues, as the glass labeled “Amstel” fell from my hands. But, you know what, I hardly found much. Since we had never discussed women (which I had actually credited my own maturity for), Bantu seemed like one of my straight friends. He was a dude, a bro. He never suggested sodomy, and that was good enough. And aside from that heart-breaking memory of me walking back from the toilet towards a heavily inebriated Bantu only to find him lip-locked with a David Beckham clone, I never thought he was queer. Bantu was a totally new breed of gay. He was a non-exhibitionist gay man. No sleeveless mesh vests, no gyrating moves on the floor, no nut-hugging leather pants and definitely no daiquiris. Bantu was all man. He was the guy in a guy-guy sequence. Bantu was everything I wanted to be. Only not.

Suddenly, right in front of me, a whole lot of Bantus sprang to life. I looked around and I realized why we never discussed women. There were no women around. I was at a gay bar and I didn’t even know it. Cleverly camouflaged as a “Sports Bar”, this watering-hole was the meeting point for the nex-gen homosexual. They weren’t hiding their sexuality. No. They just weren’t girly. These were men. Real men. Except for the fact that they looked at other real men and thought “I wanna tap that tonight”. But, other than that – real men.

And it works out pretty well for this part of the world. Because after that “boys night out” they scatter back into our lives, and we don’t know it. And they scatter back into your lives, you fucking homophobics. And I laugh at that. Because, let me tell you, he might even be that beefed up guy in the stubble you went out with for a beer last weekend. And when you bent over to pick up that coin he accidentally dropped, he mentally raped you. And that’s what you deserve. In your face, homophobics. Big up to my new bros.