Two gentlemen sharing the billing on this week's Guardian Blind Date. On the left in the red is Josh, a 26-year-old (it says here) admin assistant and on the right in black is Freddie, 22, a freelance photographer.
Here they are from top to tail:
Untold riches at our disposal here. Read the full account of how they got on during dinner, before I bring the highlights on the dessert trolley. Spoiler: it's a custard pie and it's going in someone's face.
Josh on Freddie | Freddie on Josh
What an opener. Straight-acting and sexy - surely this is tautologous? There's nothing sexier than a straight-acting gay guy is there? Nothing. Hmm. Perhaps this statement has made you angry, especially if you're a gay man who's been taught to suppress his more "visible" characteristics for a quiet life. Did it feel, for a moment, like all this was behind us? I have some bad news.
What Josh has said doesn't anger me, but it does sadden me, in a way.
It's sad because it prioritises and prizes traditional masculinity over everything else when, all things considered, the world could do with less of it.
It's sad because it automatically excludes swathes of bright, eligible, charming young men, and speaks to a sense of "other" and suggests, however stealthily, there is a right and a wrong way to be an attractive gay man.
It's sad because saying something like this usually comes from a place of insecurity or internalised homophobia. Statements like this are a product of a person's environment - and that doesn't sound like a good place to be.
It's sad because it reinforces the inescapable feeling that if you're not like the straight boys you'll never be good enough.
It's sad because it's a weird, arbitrary term that contradicts itself. Straight acting is just that: acting. While not every man who fucks men is gay, by its definition, a "straight-acting" man would not do what gay men consider the norm - be it brunch, decent conversation, or having gay sex.
It's sad because it assumes there's no light and shade to any of us, that we don't each have masc or fem moments all the time, that we're either all or nothing, with "all" being masculine and "nothing" the feminine - because masculinity is the desirable default.
It's sad because it suggests being effeminate, camp, or screamingly homosexual is embarrassing, shameful, unwanted, attention-seeking, and unnecessary.
It's sad because it's highly likely there are men out there who would also say Josh is far too fem, and not straight-acting enough for them, but Josh has either yet to realise this (he totally has btw, judging from later answers) or even acknowledge the harm these preconceptions can do, and how he perpetuates them.
We all have our instant attractions, our clichéd turn-ons or physical preferences that either make us pay attention or draw us in that very first time. Tall boys, big blue eyes, money. But these are superficial, cosmetic, temporary kicks. Traditionally, I'm predisposed to paying more attention to dark haired men. Not all dark haired men are the same, however, and after about ten minutes (seconds) of talking I could always judge whether my myopic focus on their hair colour was justified. You can't lump people together based on some arbitrary characteristic - people are people. I've dated men with wildly different features, physiques, personalities, and levels of masculinity and femininity - they only had one thing in common. Me. They brought something out in me, and I them, and we charmed each other enough to overlook our narrow, superficial criteria and go beyond them, because we had a connection.
I have seen that flicker of despair in a man's face when I arrive and he sees I'm not the hulking, mass brute he was hoping for - despite all evidence to the contrary in my photos - and I've also seen the ripple of relief from other guys who were grateful I wasn't as camp as they were dreading. I can honestly say neither of those reactions made me feel particularly good about myself - they just made me edgy. So which am I? Masc or fem? And when? What was the magic ingredient? Should I be sad Guy A thought me too effeminate? And was I allowed to be proud Guy B thought I was just masc enough? Where does all that come from? Hint: it is a huge lake of slurry within and all around you.
You fancy who you fancy, I get that, but we're being conditioned to doubt ourselves at every turn and it's not doing us any good. How can we be comfortable in our own skin if we're preoccupied with not being too "gay"? Fear of attack and ridicule already has many of us living half-lives in public. Is this what we really want, this hierarchy?
We are different things to different people at any given time - we can never truly be the men we think we are because we forget we're not the only ones doing the watching, the judging, the deciding. Labels are not just something we give ourselves to empower us - they are assigned to us, at every moment, by lovers, strangers, and friends. We cannot change things overnight but we can at least get our own houses in order. It starts with the individual. Time is fleeting, it's later than you think; what seems vital today will one day be dust. You may as well be yourself - and if they don't like it, fuck it. But if you don't like it... well, there's some work to do.
Whatever you think of Josh, his attitudes and his phrasing, yes, it's a shame he expressed them here, like this, but he's not unusual or original among gay men in 2019. Far from it. Be sad for him, yes, and hope his mind opens up to new, "scary" ideas in the future - but dragging him online isn't the antidote to this pervasive toxicity. It won't change his mind, nor will it make us feel any better either - if anything, it risks making us feel even more alone.
I'm so glad we could have this little chat.
Again, I have some bad news.
I wouldn't normally do this, but if you look at Josh's shirt in the photo, it looks like he's had a puppy writhing on him all afternoon. Imagine turning up to a photo shoot - there is an iron in that studio, I have been in it - looking like you were driven there in the back of a getaway car, only to slag off your date's appearance.
Also: "hadn't shaved, hadn't done his hair" - this isn't just straight-acting, Josh, this is method straight-acting. Celebrate! Your heteronormative prince has come!
The rule is when you are disappointed with your date is to hide it. Josh did not come here to play, however.
So what Josh is doing here, as far as I can tell, is trying to tell us that Freddie is a little bit basic and overexcited by this admittedly tenuous link to the outer peripheries of what you might generously call the world of celebrity. But then when you take a few moments to process this, you realise that Josh has actually brought this up in the first place in an effort to... I don't know, impress Freddie?
I mean, is that all you've got? You holiday every year at the same Portuguese report - which is borderline pensioner behaviour, can we please see your birth certificate because the FBI are twitching - and see Duncan Bannatyne and thought this was worth bringing up with a 22-year-old? I wonder how many times Josh had to say the name again and again before Freddie twigged. "You know, off Dragons' Den? The Scottish one? Owns... I think it's health clubs? Kind of leathery, looks like he'd be nasty in an argument. No, that's Alan Sugar, he's not on Dragons' Den."
Honestly. You're gay, 26, and live in London (I assume), and the closest to celebrity you've got is being seven sun loungers away (three on one side of the large perimeter fence, four on the other) from Duncan Bannatyne? You've never even stood next to that guy from S Club Juniors in a gay bar? Or seen Gok Wan round London Bridge? Everyone else has.
I don't think I have anything to say here.
Nor here.
I went on my first ever date at 34, so it's not beyond the realms of possibility that Josh had to wait a while before his first one. Maybe he was late coming out - for every enthusiastic, liberated teenager who announces his sexuality at 14 on social media, there are three guys scared, puzzled, and unsure who are worried how people might react, how it might change their life, and what it will mean to them in the future. I don't know if this is the case for Josh - maybe his dating app patter is absolutely terrible - but if he was late to the party, this might explain the "straight-acting" thing because one of the very first things many men embrace upon coming out is a large serving of internalised homophobia. I wrote about this once, but can't find it. I will publish it again when I do.
OK, steady on, Hyacinth.
Rictus grin, probably.
I have always thought "weird" was just another way of saying someone was rather hard work and a little... boring, so this reflects badly on both, tbh.
No, but it was fun to spend time with someone different.
I know people are going to almost choke to death at this casual "feminine" here, hammering home as it does Josh's first point and why he seems to be approaching this date with a lack of enthusiasm that would make a teenager trying to avoid doing homework on a Sunday go, "wow". But we must get away from this idea that "feminine" is bad. It isn't. He means "effeminate", anyway, I think, but well, all those summers sipping Mateus Rosé in his Portuguese resort must've fried his lexicon slightly.
Gay men react against being called feminine because we're taught that to be like a woman - the traditional definition of femininity there, of course - is bad and makes us less in the eyes of... GUESSSSS WHOOOOOOOO... straight men, and the other gay men desperate to ape them. It's all tangled up in sexism, misogyny, fear, and self-loathing and our best reaction here is "so what?" rather than running to grab our nuclear warheads. I have written about this loads and loads and am working all this weekend, so don't have time to chew your steak for you - please do go and do some reading around this and think about what your reaction is saying to the wider world.
Freddie, were he old enough, could well be describing the twins from Pat Sharp's Fun House here, but he's not.
OK.
Well, he didn't say he didn't. You may well get a day or two at his Portuguese timeshare yet!
Yeah, we get it.
No, I didn't fancy him.
I think these answers speak for themselves.
As do these. Let's not be sad that it's over... let's be ecstatic.
I hope whatever happens to them next, it's an improvement on this evening.
Freddie and Josh ate at The Soak, London SW1. Fancy a blind date? Email [email protected] If you're looking to meet someone like-minded, visit soulmates.theguardian.com NOTE: Did you like this? Consider buying my book, or reviewing it on Amazon. Thank you.
The comments I make are based on the answers given by the participants. The Guardian chooses what to publish and usually edits answers to make the column work better on the page, but get in touch if you want to give me your side of the story; I'll happily publish whatever you say. Though perhaps you have said more than enough.
