By Mark Marchillo Odd Man Out
True. Men do cheat, not all, but, well, yeah... men cheat. In our community, it’s THE thing to do. Sometimes not even behind your lover’s back. I recently looked up the term “GAY” in Webster’s. It read: “A quest for fun, at all cost”. How fun-ny.
Ever wonder why the half life of 90 percent of gay relationships between two men average a week and a half? Call that a relationship and I’ll call you a cab.
The thought makes you want to sink your teeth into your new boyfriend’s left arm and let lock jaw set in. Notice, I said the left arm. The gay fate of the serial three week relationship makes us out to be more like late teens on a wild and crazy college campus than adults in a lonely (not to mention disease-infested) society.
But hey,when you’re gay,college never ends. That statement is more true than I can say. I think it’s safe to assume most of us have experienced or at least witnessed that old cliché of homo-circuitry: the parties, the boys, the pool parties, the naked boys, the bedrooms, the drugs, the used-up boys... It does kinda sound like college to me. Ahh, how I long for those carefree fraternity days. But recalling old frivolities of the past and living them when you’re 30…40…55… (need I go on?) is more like our own communal exploration for the Holy Grail.
To a gay, giving up the search is like giving up on life. Some do it, but they grow old and die. We need to be immortal, isn’t that right?
To live forever, James Dean. And to look good doing it. Nothing makes you feel more alive than doing something you shouldn’t.Sneaking around. Finding the new. That rush of adrenaline. The new… that’s what drives us, I think.
As the young and hung, everything was new. A new adventure leapt from every nook and cranny. Oh to believe it makes us young again.
Because it’s such a gay thing to feel 70 when you’re 25; and you spend the rest of your days trying to recapture that youth. How much we miss. While we’re off gallivanting, life is marching by.
The gay cheat has become like one of those viral videos online. A boy just gets passed around, and around (and around) until one day he’s been seen by the thousands.
Now he’s gotta either find another circle to get passed around in or be done for good; trapped in the destiny of most viral anything — the bottom of the recycle bin. But, like viral videos, it does seem like the thing to do. We’re so flippant about it, so easy on our peers when they confess their indiscretions to us. And why not? Everybody cheats! There’s nothing different about it. There’s nothing even scandalous about it. The norm. And yet, it’s a virus more costly than any of the others our world faces today.
So my take? Be yourself. Why conform to the norm? If everybody’s doing it, it has been done.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 21, 2007. Read the original PDF.