Ten at 10
Clark sat at the breakfast table, mindlessly thumbing his spoon in front of the oatmeal Susan prepared for him. He stared out into the distance, thinking about the magazine he saw on the rack at the A&B drugstore yesterday.
“I guess there really are gay men,” he thought to himself. “God, how does that work? I mean, I guess they do this. And, well, if I were gay, I’d certainly wanna do this. I bet they’re doing it all the time, I bet one minute they’re stocking the canned corn, and the next minute they’re banging it out on the stockroom floor. I wonder if it hurts?”
“Clark,” Susan called out, “your oatmeal getting cold; and you have that conference call at 11.”
“I can’t stand cold oatmeal,” Clark thought in reply. “At least I’m not gay.”
“Yes, dear.” Clark mumbled.
Three questions Clark isn’t asking:
Why do straight men fixate on gay men?
Sociologist Michael Kimmel argues that what we call homophobia is less a fear of gay men than a fear of being perceived as one. Gay men function as the boundary marker — the “other” against which straight men continuously measure and prove their own identity. The fixation isn’t incidental. It’s structural. You can’t maintain the wall without checking it constantly.
Are there men so far in the closet they don’t know they’re in it?
Yes. Clinicians have a name for what happens when desire becomes so unacceptable to a person that it can’t enter conscious awareness at all. The attraction is present. The man is simply not home to receive it. Psychiatrists Sullivan and Roughton documented how closeted individuals routinely separate their same-sex feelings from their sense of self so completely that they lead a double life they are genuinely unaware of. Not lying. Not performing. Actually not knowing.
What happens when they’re confronted with gay sexuality?
In 1996, researchers at the University of Georgia measured physiological arousal in self-identified straight men while showing them gay pornography. The homophobic men in the study showed measurable genital response. The non-homophobic men did not. The researchers’ interpretation: the arousal was already there. The hostility was the management strategy.
Clark stares out the window. The oatmeal is cold. The conference call is about to begin.
“Did you need me to reheat it?” Susan asked.
Clark looked up and said, “No, thanks, dear, I like it cold.”
