i'm not masculine. let's get that out of the way right now. if you're looking for a dominant leather top or a bald-headed, harley davidson-riding heathen, you're looking in the wrong place. then again, i'm not a drag queen (well, full-time anyway). i fall somewhere between those two extremes, like most of my friends. i'm "gay acting" enough for anyone at the mall to know i'm gay. let's put it that way.

it's taken a long time for me to come to terms with this reality. no matter how loudly i shout that labelling someone as butch or femme is bullshit, that discriminating against femme guys is bullshit, there's still that nagging voice in the back of my head that tells me, robert, the reason you're defending them is because they are you. and you hate it. it's true, in a way; something in me early on decided that i was too gay to ever fit into normal society. i could blame it on growing up as the only queer i knew in ponca city, oklahoma, or i could blame it on being called a fag before i even knew what it meant. i've been told that when second graders call each other faggots they're just mimicking what they hear other people say; even so, as an eight year old being prank called by amy, her last words to me before she hung up the phone were "that's ok; you're probably a faggot anyway." i knew enough to know that being a faggot was bad. when my mother asked me what amy had said to me i told her that i couldn't understand her. "so they just could've been speaking russian, for all you know. is that it?" "yes," i told her, even at nine years old knowing that when she heard that her effeminate son's peers were calling him a faggot she'd figure something out. i didn't know what a faggot was, but i had an idea; and i knew that the longer that i kept my being one a secret, the better.

whatever the reason, a post on my friend kel's blog this week set off something of a firestorm among the group of online writers i'm part of. he works on a study of behavior of guys online, specifically their unsafe behavior, and has discovered that one of the deciding factors in whether or not someone will agree to meet you is whether or not you're "masc." it's not even "masculine." it's so prevalent that people don't even have to bother typing the entire word. somehow, peoples' online conversations seem to have been distilled to "sup. r u top or bttm. masc or fem?" it's hard to believe that something as intimate as sex, and the deciding whether or not two people are compatible enough to have it, can be determined so easily. i'm a fem bottom and you're a masc top, so we're a match made in heaven.

unlike a lot of people, kel refused to tell people online what they wanted to hear. since he's just cruising as part of his job, he's got nothing to lose, which i'm sure is liberating. when guys ask him if he's "masc," he asks, "what do you mean?" inevitiably, they reply "you know what i mean. are you masc or fem." kel gives the same answer i would, if i were posed the question: "well, i'm neither, really. i work out five times a week, i can change a tire, but i'm also artistic and creative." this answer drives people away, without fail. i suppose it's better just to say something like "yeah, bro, i'm masc. sup?" sadly, i can't pull this off without sounding too much like kayan from queer eye for the straight guy. so, i'll just have to stick with the truth.

after reading my friends' writings on the subject, i started thinking about myself and my own sticky relationship with my identity, be it straight-acting, gay-acting, whatever. why is it that i'm the first person to jump to the defense of the queerest person in the room, the guy who decides to wear lip gloss to wal mart? because somewhere, not so deeply buried underneath the body that i've worked out within an inch of its life, i am that person. or at least, i grew up thinking, having been surrounded by no other queers, that i was. the problem is--and here's where all my good intentions start to crumble--i find myself drawn sexually to masculine men. nothing pisses me off more than when people tell me "if i wanted to date a woman, i'd date a woman. i want a man who knows how to act like one." yet i lust after the same straight-acting abercrombie model that everyone else does. and it makes me feel like a poseur. here i am, pretending to be a bastion for everyone's right to express their gender or sexuality the way they feel, yet i won't date someone who isn't at least as "masculine" as i am. if i really believed in the things i say--that everyone should be treated equally, whether they build motorcycles for a living or do makeup--wouldn't i put my money where my mouth is, and at least be sexually attracted to all ends of the spectrum?

maybe that's asking too much, of myself and of others. but you'll never find me asking you if you're masc.