Three Ex Presidents and James Franco (6 page)

              Jake and myself were watching him charm a young kid who was wearing a red and polka dot scarf from his back pocket. Meaning he was prepared to give head. Zach had a different colour scarf, green and orange, meaning he was willing to receive head. It was a match made in the heavens, or the gay hells.

              The Hankie Code. It was the Grindr of the 70's. Show what you're into by the type of scarf hanging from your pocket.

              It was a Thursday night and there was a theme in Coxx. The Hankie Code had faded to the point of extinction. Thus it could now be passed off as retro kitsch, it was ripe for renewal. Most people took it in the fun spirit it was intended. They acted as excellent ice breakers. And an excuse to be lewd and honest too.

              Jake took the black scarf, to denote the passive role in straightforward anal sex. Feeling him hovering on my shoulder, I selected the yellow, the active role. He smiled, but acknowledged my choice no further. It was only play, not reality.

              With the scarf came a little cardboard symbol key, denoting the meanings of the different colour codes. Taking them to a ledge with a good view, we busily took to figuring out who was wearing what.

26.
The next morning we woke up together in Jake's bed. I must have zeroed in on it out of a sense of habit. There was a strange taste in my mouth.

              We were woken by Jake's phone. He took the call with a groggy 'Hello?'. By the time he hung up he was live awake. A dynamo, leaping out of bed.

              "Get packed," he said "We're leaving in half an hour."

              "Huh?" I was as bleary eyed as he'd been moments earlier. I was wondering how I'd ended up in his bed, I was sure I'd arrived back with someone else. I said
,“
Where we going?"

              "I'll drive. The trip is a day each way. It will take us maybe four days."

              "Where we going?"

              "To pick up James from prison."

27.
So we drove. Jake was energetically smoking, was all purpose and resolve, as he constantly folded and unfolded a map, planning the route. For my part I wondered what we would talk about. The trip was nine hours each way. The longest period we'd spend awake together without booze, without drugs.

              Jake had an idea for a conversation starter: "How long have you been in love with Brandon?"

              Had I been driving we would have been swerving off the road due to my shock. It was the first time I had heard my relationship put like that. The directness offended me. After a while I responded, "Long enough. Too long." An admission, which would avoid a long-winded interrogation. But short enough to demonstrate I didn't want to discuss it.

              "The thing about straight guys is its all about cognitive dissonance," Jake decided to take it in the abstract. "I
t’
s a psychological term."

              I was aware of it. It’s one of the first things they teach in psychology. Because you can use it to explain nearly anything.

              At the risk of boring you, it just means that humans need their opinion of who they are and the actions they actually do to be in sync. If you think you're a good person, you will convince yourself that the things you do are good. Or, you realise your actions are bad, and accept you're not really a good person.

              It was always assumed that we do things because we want to do them. We kiss someone because we like them. Fairly straightforward. But cognitive dissonance says it can work in the other direction as well. We kiss someone so we start to like them. We've all been there.

              It's not just about attraction. It happens on nights out all the time, all over the world. Say, your friend does something you object to. But you think, though you're thinking it in parts of the brain that don't tell you tha
t’
s what you are thinking, he's my friend. And am I really the type of guy who is friends with assholes? So, you change your opinion, you decide your friend did
n’
t act like an asshole. Or, you think, I'm the type of guy who accepts that some of  my mates are assholes. And you're happy again. Because there's no contradiction.

              All that having been said, Jake was explaining it using the example of a straight man. The straight man who takes a walk on the other side of the fence. On the down low. Straight guys who are drunk, lonely or a bit curious.

              When a straight guy is with another guy the cognitive tension rises. The mechanisms and little men inside his brain work overtime trying to relieve the tension. Is he the type of guy who likes sleeping with other men? Is he gay? He just slept with a man, so if he isn't gay, we need some sort of explanation here. Usually his brain decides he slept with another man because he was drunk, lonely or a bit curious. And most times i
t’
s the truth. So the guy functions again. The little men in his brain relax.

              "Problems only start when the guy actually starts thinking about it," Jake was saying. "The problem happens when the little men and their mechanisms just can't handle the amount and number of times this straight guy is sleeping with men. I
t’
s a contradiction tha
t’
s getting too big. So they send the problem to the top dog, to the brain, with an ultimatum. We've run out of reasons to explain your behaviour in line with your self concept. So either stop sleeping with men or say you're gay. I
t’
s that simple.

              "And tha
t’
s what you have to keep giving these guys. Excuses. Just keep the little men inside his head happy. I
t’
s not that difficult. Once they do it the first time, they convince themselves of why they did it. Maybe they really like the guy, and wha
t’
s the harm in sex? Once they've come to terms with that, there's only a tiny step to wha
t’
s wrong with lots of sex.

              "But eventually it will hit a crisis point, when the other things get in the way. He can handle sleeping with you, but can't handle the weird feeling inside he gets when his friends make gay jokes. The feeling of embarrassment, the shame. He won't be able to justify the excuses he makes to his girlfriend to see the other man. Eventually he'll feel himself on the verge of going out with the other man, and at that point the alarm bells ring so loud the problem is sent to the top floor. At that point he needs to decide if he's gay or straight. And they always pick being straight.

              "It can't last forever. The only thing to do is not to fuck up. Don't make a big deal out of it. Don't let him think too much about what he's doing."

              I resented him then. Even if I could recognise a lot of what he was saying.

              "Did you fuck up?" He asked. "Did you tell him you love him?"

              I didn't answer. Though my silence and angry, glowing eyes answered for me. As my frustration rose I wondered how the cogs and little men in my head were rationalising this.

              I was traveling for four days with a guy who treats me more like a sex object than a friend. We're on our way to meet another guy who he desperately wants to fuck. Why was I doing this? Is this rational? I could almost feel the cogs in my brain begin to move and the little workers in there begin to mutter amongst themselves.

28.
My suspicion that Jake couldn't survive nine hours without stimulation was correct. We must have added another hour to the journey, searching for an inconspicuous spot to park, to facilitate cramped and brief sex.

              Back on the freeway, back behind the wheel, Jake was talking again. He was doing his gay power routine. "You know, they find it really hard to explain why gays exist. We should have bred ourselves out of the world long ago. Back in Greek times. And you Celts were all the same. Man on man was no problem.

              "Why are we here? How are we here? Why weren't we bred out of existence?"

              I knew his answer. I kept quiet. Kept my eye on the road, because he was paying it no attention.

              "The reason is we're genetically superior. Tha
t’
s how we survived. Tha
t’
s why we're still here. Women are programmed. I suppose we're all programmed, but women are programmed to seek out a type of man, the perfect mate. Men just want to get their seed out of themselves or they'll explode, their cocks will actually erupt. Women need to be choosy.

              "So they go for good looks, intelligence, cleanliness, success. Tha
t’
s what they're after. And then they have slightly better kids then they would have otherwise. And when this goes on for centuries, kids start cropping up who have too much intelligence and beauty. They have so much of it they aren't normal, they're gay. Tha
t’
s why gay men are always so clean. Perhaps i
t’
s why the stereotype of the successful gay guy is true. And i
t’
s why gays will never go away. The genes are in men, all men. Gays are just the necessary and ultimate result of evolution."

              "You know I've read that book you're talking about." I interrupted his tirades at last, sure he was quoting one of those books on his shelf I'd leafed through. It had a very pseudo scientific look to it, that book. "It says having a lot of the things which women want makes you gay. No further explanation than that. No explanation as to why being successful or clean, any of those stereotypes, makes you gay. I know lots of smart straight men. And lots of gay underachievers. Zach only washes once a week. And to tell you the truth I don't even know what he does. Is he still even enrolled in college?"

              "Exceptions, exceptions, exceptions. They make for bad rules." Jake waved my objections aside but was delighted I was taking the bait. "Generally i
t’
s true. Why else would nature have given us the homosexual gene? I
t’
s against the way evolution works. Nature would never have given us this gene unless there's some good in it."

              "But tha
t’
s the point. Is there much good in it?" I startled myself with that question. "If there's such good in it, in the gayness, why did nature make it so that it can't reproduce? It makes no sense to say the gay man is the ultimate in evolution if evolution seems to want to get rid of him."

              "Evolution doesn't want to get rid of the gay. The gay. The you, the me. We'll always be here because everyone has a bit of the gay in them. A bit of the perfection. And when a couple comes together with the right combination, you get the perfect. The you, the me. And now I can only find other perfect people attractive." He was being half sarcastic, and getting playful now, smiling at me and rubbing my leg.

              But I wouldn't let it drop: "Do you want another explanation of why gay people exist? Why I exist and am gay?"

             
“
To make me happy?" More smiles from Jake.

              "No, because maybe it is genetic. I'll admit that. But that doesn't mean it hasn't been inherited. Oscar Wilde had kids. My uncle Tom, who everyone except his wife accepts must be gay, has had kids. And even his kids are pretty sure he's queer. There is no problem explaining homosexuality through genes, history shows us gay men had children."

              "So you're saying gays exist because they have kids, and tha
t’
s why they'll always be here?"

              "No, I'm not saying they'll always be here at all." I was more animated than I should have been, more irritated with Jake than I should have been, for this pointless road trip that I wasn't forced to come on. "Have a look around you. Look at the world. If there is a gay gene i
t’
s disappearing very fast.