I’ve finally found my way back into the dating scene. And in my quest for that ultimate super-hero husband man, I seem to have stumbled across some ‘in-betweens.’
The campish straight man.
Really nice guy, very deep thinker, and I get a vibe that we could possibly get along on several different levels. He’s sweet, in touch with his feelings (no surprise there) and has all the extravagant hand-gestures you would expect of a gay man. His favourite colour? Pink. Everything about him leads me to believe that it’s not me that he’s interested in, but the dude at the next table. Yet, there’s talk of a second date between us.
What’s going on?
In Asia, especially Malaysia, there definitely is a sense of repression. Labels are very quickly put onto people, and if you don’t fit into the norm, you’re either gay or closet or just weird. On a recent trip to Australia, I spoke to a friend who had come out and was very happy and open about his sexual tendencies to the same sex. He pointed out, if he were back home in Asia, living under his parents roof – he’d probably end up marrying a girl just because it was the expected thing to do, and more so - so he wouldn’t cause any grief to his parents.
On the one hand with Mr In-Between, there definitely seems to be some sort of a repression built up. He gets along great with guys, but not in the same way that most men do. It’s like a bunch of little boys in a play-pen together and there’s a sense of uninhibited ness and closeness in their male-friendships. Sort of like what you would imagine girls to have. And on the other side, there seems to also be a genuine confusion and anger towards society labeling him as gay (obviously I’m not the first to think so), just because he doesn’t fall into the viewpoint of what it means to be a man in today’s world.
As I sat through dinner with him, I kept wondering “Is he genuinely straight, or is this guy just fooling himself?”
I have straight friends who are slightly effeminate, and who a lot of gay guys find attractive. But with Mr In Between, the campness is so dominant, that it had never crossed my mind for one second that there was a possibility he was even 1% straight.
He’s had girlfriends. But exactly how truly attracted he is to the female gender remains to be told. (Is he attracted to me because I’m quite a ‘strong’ unfeminine female?) It seems like he will potentially end up getting married to a woman, but would his wife always have some sort of niggling doubt that maybe her husband isn’t quite really into her? Just like the rest of society, I’m probably trying to shove him into one of my little storage cupboards in my head and label him something so that my world is organized again. Perhaps I should just celebrate him and his campness and go on that second date with him.
