Seeking “straight”: as many gay men know, “straight” men can be had. But straight-chasers warn that novelty isn’t likely to lead to a stable relationship.
Frankie Edozien
Bill Roundy is a handsome guy with a shaved head. Quite the masculine ideal, the 32-year-old New York City cartoonist wears dark fingernail polish and is described by friends as “rather goth.” He is secure in being gay, but that doesn’t mean he’s dating other gay guys.
“Straight guys are more nonchalant about things,” Roundy says. “When you are in an all-gay environment there is sexual tension. People are wondering if you are looking at them. But if I’m in a room with 10 guys and one is straight, that’s the one I would go for. I think that’s my cosmic pattern.”
What were once isolated incidents of sex with “straight” men in Roundy’s life have become regular liaisons. “It’s like I’ve got this invisible sign on my head that says EXPERIMENTAL ZONE. I’ve been with a ton of guys who are straight,” he says.
One man became a close long-term friend and is now happily married to a woman. Before his wedding there were years of hookups with Roundy each time the man–who identifies as straight, not bisexual–was between girlfriends. “We were really good friends,” Roundy says. “I had a huge crush on him, and one night I asked him out. He said, ‘Thank you, but no.’”
They remained friends, and months later Roundy was at his house when things evolved. “I put my arm around him, and I wound up going down on him,” he says. “We didn’t talk about it a lot. His thing was that I loved him, and he loved me, and I wanted to go down on him. And it felt really good. He made it clear that he was not going to reciprocate.”
Their relationship continued. “He was like a passive participant,” Roundy says. “It was like, ‘Hey, I’m going down on you,’ and he would say, ‘OK.’”
In 2006 you might think gay guys going for straight men would be a thing of the past. As gays and lesbians are more widely accepted in the mainstream, forming same-sex relationships has become a lot easier. But the longstanding phenomenon of “gay seeking straight” is as strong as ever, if for different reasons than in the past.
These days there are numerous Web sites such as www.straightcollegemen.com that sell the straight-boy fantasy to gay men. There are pages of postings on the “men seeking men” section of Web sites like Craigslist containing the words “straight-acting” or “seeking straight.”
Falling for straight men used to be-and for some still is–all about internalized homophobia, says Danny Garza, a psychiatrist and founder of the Open Door Clinic, an LGBT mental health facility in New York City. “They are attracted to more masculine men than they are themselves,” he says. “They dislike how they see themselves as gay feminine people.”
But in today’s more tolerant society a lot of gay men simply may be exploring a fantasy, and a lot of “straight” men seem to be playing along, Garza adds. “There is greater acceptance of pansexual behavior among straight men,” he says. “Men who are self-identified as straight are more willing to explore their homosexual side. It’s less of a taboo today. Sexuality is more accepted in all of its forms.”
“James Clover,” who asked The Advocate not to use his real name, spent years going to gay bars and searching among openly gay men to form a relationship. But he didn’t like the types of people he was meeting, so the 46-yearold public relations professional from Miami started dating “straight” men. His last boyfriend was married with two children. Their trysts consisted of early morning meetings, lunches, and occasional weekends away. Like many a mistress waiting for their lovers to leave their wives, Clover was crushed when his boyfriend announced to him the impending birth of a new addition to his family.
The two met online, and at first Clover didn’t know his man was married. “He was such a breath of fresh air compared to the kind of game players I knew and was so disenchanted with,” Clover says. “He was something different, and I projected my hopes and desires that this was going to work out better than with people I had met on the [gay] scene.”
Blinded by love, Clover believed his boyfriend when he promised he would eventually leave his wife and come to live with him. “As time went on, it became even more apparent that it wasn’t going to happen,” Clover says. “I wanted to believe it was going to happen. I realized it wasn’t, so I stopped it.”
Michel Ng, a 33-year-old health care administrator in New York, says he has pursued and slept with many “straight” men. “It began as a fantasy because it was a challenge,” he says. “You want something unique, something different. You want something that’s not gay because you feel there is something more.”
Ng is originally from Hong Kong and grew up in Hawaii. He describes himself as an “androgyne,” a gender-nonconformist gay boy who enjoys dressing up in ladies’ attire. “There was a time when I pursued tranny chasers,” Ng says. “I went soliciting men by dressing up. They assume you are submissive and vulnerable because you’re Asian.”
But one experience went terribly wrong. Ng chatted online with a man who made it clear that he was straight but wanted to get to know him. “He was nice. We talked about my dressing up, but he was very comfortable,” Ng says. “Very few straight guys are comfortable and say, ‘Let me take you out.’ Then he said, ‘I’ve got something to tell you–I haven’t really been out much; in fact, I’ve been in jail.’”
Despite learning that the adorable young Greek guy had served time on kidnapping and drug charges, Ng says he pursued a friendship even though the guy said he still had female companions in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, N.Y., where he lived. “We ended up spending a lot of time together and then dating,” Ng says. “He realized that his feelings got more intense.”
What followed was jealousy and possessiveness unlike anything from his former boyfriends. Straight guys “treat you like women: ‘Where are you?’ ‘What are you doing?’ It’s that straight-boy thing where you are like an object,” Ng recalls. “It’s hot in the beginning. Then it’s annoying. It got too intense in the end.”
When he tried to break it off, the man threatened violence. Fortunately, Ng soon took a job in Thailand and that put some distance between them. He only recently returned to the United States.
“No more. I’ve had it,” says Ng. “Gay boys that want straight convict boys, beware. That’s my advice. That’s the meat of it. I don’t want to end up as some tranny statistic.”
Clover also says he’s done with straight guys: “People say they love you, and the next week they don’t return your calls or acknowledge you on the street. Who needs that?”
Edozien is a New York City-based journalist.
COPYRIGHT 2006 Liberation Publications, Inc.
