Am I Gay?
If you’ve ever had to Google this question, you already have your answer.
I’m joking, but there’s something to be said about needing to ask the question in the first place. I first sought Google’s wisdom on the subject sometime late in middle school. You’ve really got to add “quiz” to your search to get the full effect. BuzzFeed will be right there to answer all your questions.
Although, if you’re like me and know exactly how to answer questions so that you get the answer you want...it completely defeats the purpose. But when your sexuality is determined by deciding if you love Lady Gaga or Gigi Hadid more, it’s a shallow take in the first place.
I asked myself “Am I gay?” in the same way every kid on a road trip asks, “Are we there yet?”—earnest to know, yet dreading the answer.
The way I saw it there were two answers to the question.
If no, then what was going on? Why did I feel different than other guys? Why did I often feel more at ease with a group of girls? Why did I think boobs were best left to babies?
If yes, then what was wrong with me? Was I a bad person? How could I fix it? Could other people tell?
Either answer produced its own set of questions that I felt equally unequipped to answer. A third, more humble, honest, and healthier answer (not motivated by fear) would have been a simple “I don’t know.”
However, my journey was completely motivated by fear. There was something going on and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I was also completely certain that I couldn’t talk with anyone else about it. No one had ever explicitly talked to me about gay people but I’d picked up enough to know that it was not okay to be gay.
I had no education on the topic of sexuality, which I think is one of the reasons it was so hard to process. My mom gave my brother and me the sex talk when I was in fifth grade. (All I remember is something about periods. Inapplicable to my life then and now.)
I also had one day of “sex education” at school that year. I remember receiving deodorant, watching a cartoon male frog impregnate a female frog, and a kid calling an erection “an eruption.” This was before I knew I needed glasses, so the men’s diagrams ended up looking like some kind of blurry rocketship.
A blurry rocketship encapsulated my view of sex. I didn’t quite know what was going on but I was curious and scared at the same time. If I knew next to nothing about sex, then sexuality existed in a black hole.
I had no language to describe what I was feeling. On some level, I didn’t even associate the word gay with sexuality. It was mainly a very flexible filler word for everything bad. Annoying teacher—they’re so gay. Too much homework—that’s so gay. Someone said something dumb—GAAAAY.
I don’t think I had the full picture of what the word gay meant until well into middle school. Being gay seemed like any other kind of identifier that people slapped on themselves. Gay. Catholic. Democrat. All of whom my young Baptist mind told me were going to hell.
But the actual concept of two men being in love? An orientation that felt as natural as breathing? Never.
All in all, I was uneducated. And what do uneducated kids do? They turn to their friends, or, less embarrassing, the Internet.
By keeping sex and sexuality a secret, my parents and most adults in my community thought that they were saving us from the perils and evils of the world. Instead, they left us in the dark and we clumsily sought answers wherever we could find a tiny bit of light.
Restricting knowledge doesn’t help your child grow, it creates a hunger for the forbidden knowledge. Something natural and beautiful is turned into a taboo—only suitable to be talked of in locker rooms and whispered about during sleepovers.
Besides “Am I gay?” quizzes and the confirmation that yes, I liked men in underwear, the Internet didn’t reveal too many secrets. Quite possibly because I was trying to sneak my searches in when my parents weren’t around. The Internet also seemed to contradict everything I’d been told. It spoke of acceptance and gave advice on how and when to come out. All of which I was not even in the realm of being open to.
A mixture of religion and the culture of a small town made it impossible to think I could be gay. That I could be one of those people.
The only gay person that I “knew” was our art teacher, and that was mostly used as a punchline or as an explanation for why he had nipple piercings (yes, they were visible through his shirt and yes, it was talked about.)
Figuring out my sexuality felt like trying to enter a secret society. The wild rumors. The heated accusations about the downfall of America. The way people’s voices held equal parts fear and anger whenever the topic came up.
There was also the ever-present threat of being found out as different. Different is exactly what you don’t want to be in middle school.
Kids are very good at spotting differences. Nowhere is this better on display than at school. It feels like all eyes are watching to call someone out on being different. Everyone tries so hard to fit in.
No one more than a gay kid. People smell gayness like sharks smell blood in the water. There can be no moment of weakness or there’s little chance at recovery.
This starts a toxic habit of shame and concealing. I cannot tell you how many things I pretended not to like, only to obsess over in private
(Hi, Britney Spears 👋).
While I think the question “Am I gay?” serves as an essential question, the question “Are you gay?” can jump off a cliff. While I dreaded answering the question “Am I gay?”—it was nothing in comparison to the fear that came over me when someone asked if I was gay.
Gay kids are used to exerting an enormous amount of energy trying to give the “right” answer when it comes to concealing their sexuality. I wasn’t really doing that great a job at hiding my sexuality. Really, the only thing I had going for me is that I had convinced myself that I wasn’t gay.
Have you ever had a gay test conducted on you? Traps were frequently laid for me throughout my middle school and high school years.
“How do you look at your nails?” a jock asked in computer class.
“What?” I asked, sensing the coming trap.
“How do you look at your nails?”
“Why?” I asked, panicking. Oh lord, which way is the non-gay way? I took a deep breath and curled my fingers to check out my nails.
“Huh,” he said, turning back to his computer.
The funny thing is that I overheard that he hadn’t passed the “test” himself. (Sidebar: many of the men most obsessed with masculinity policing are the most insecure in their own identity.)
Eventually, it’s not even other people that police how you express yourself. The external pressures quickly turn internal. Instead of looking inside myself and asking the important questions, I was consumed with asking what other people thought of me and then conforming to what I saw people like in me.
Should I do this? How will this look? Should I stand like this? Is it weird if I say that?
“When did you know you were gay?” is a popular question to ask gay people. And for some, that’s a straightforward answer.
Looking back, did I ever have a crush on a girl? Yes. (But it was always about liking them as a person and friend. If I liked a girl, obviously that could only be in a romantic sense.) Did I have crushes on guys? Yes and no. Sure, I felt the attraction, but to acknowledge that attraction was incompatible with my view of myself and the world around me.
When I look back there are so many signs that pointed my gayness even at a young age: my love of the pink Power Ranger, the fact that my family referred to me as “the poser” because I struck a pose any time the camera came out, the elaborate floor routines I’d show off in the living room, the way I’d “casually” stroll through the men’s underwear aisle (frequently). But even with all of those signs, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, it’s impossible to find it. To people outside my family, I think it was most glaringly obvious. But then again people have a way of organizing reality in ways that fit their worldview.
The older I got, the more I heard about the culture war taking place for the “soul of America.” While an external battle raged in the background, my internal battle intensified as I tried to decide if I was stuck with my attraction to men. My justifications for my attraction to men cycled through famous phrases such as:
“It’s just a phase.”
“I haven’t met the right girl yet.”
“I want to be them, not be with them.”
I clung to any stock answer that allowed me to dismiss the question without looking too long at the issue. But this resulted in carrying a constant weight and tension in my body from an unresolved, unexamined question. If you can’t allow for a different answer than the one you want to hear, you’re not asking a question. You’ve cut off the search before it even began.
We often ask questions not to find an answer, but to confirm what we believe, or rather what we want to believe. I had to ask myself questions out of a genuine desire to know myself better.
One of the hardest things for me to accept was that just because I asked the question, didn’t mean I’d have an immediate answer. Even if I had grown up in the most liberal household in the most progressive school district, I don’t think I would have instantly identified as gay. Like any other relationship, it took time to get to know myself.
It’s okay to not have your sexuality completely figured out. I think a lot more people would be something other than straight if society allowed judgment-free exploration. Unfortunately, that’s not usually the case.
However, what you are doing is brave. It is brave to question tradition and societal expectations. Even holding space to ask the question of yourself is a brave act.
But being brave does not mean being fearless. It’s when we act while fear is stealing the breath from our lungs that we become brave.
Whether you are just starting your journey or are far along the winding road, you owe it to yourself to look inside and explore your emotions, identity, and beliefs with open arms, ready to receive whatever you may find.
In the end, no person, internet quiz, or psychological trick can answer the question, “Am I gay?” You are the only one who can answer that question. And at some point, you must answer honestly, deliberately, and without shame.
