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On "Straight Acting"

Back in 2001, I took a very edgy 7-day personal growth workshop that often had me standing in front of, at an arm's length away, dozens of straight men - one at a time - gazing into their eyes, being coached into how to direct my attention into a person's heart and into both giving and receiving all kinds of intuitive feedback. I was terrified of those guys. Utterly terrified. All my horrific experiences with straight boys and men, growing up in Oklahoma, completely took me over on the inside though I tried to look as cool and collected as possible on the outside.

Then, at one point, I began to notice something. The more I listened to the coaching of the workshop leaders and began to "feel through" my debilitating fear, the more I felt a place in them that, no matter how neurotic or robotic the guy's personality may have been (and many were) - inside, there was a place in them that was so much more RELAXED than how I felt myself being. It was so natural for them; I could tell it had just always been that way for them. And I'm very sure they were completely unaware of it in themselves. At that time, though, I had virtually NO straight male friends so I was VERY aware of it in them. It was so different at some basic level than how I experienced most of my gay friends and myself.

In comparison, I felt some kind of internal "tension" bleeding though my own personality and the personalities of most every gay man I knew. That really intrigued me and I found myself drawn to it. I wanted to know what that core relaxation was. I liked it. It was attractive. AND I wanted that relaxation for myself. Since then, I've come to realize that that relaxed "place" I felt in them was their sexual self identity - which is ANY human's primary self identity - that had NEVER been questioned or threatened as children so it had never "tightened up" in recoil and self-protection like it does for most all gay children and, later on, gay adults. I've also come to realize that much of the mostly unconscious "affectations" of all kinds that many of us possess ourselves and experience in each other - from that kind of tight, somewhat uncomfortable personality behavior many gay men often produce to some degree, to false "masculine" or affected "feminine" mannerisms - are, I'm discovering, bi-products, coping mechanisms, of that primary, fear-caused contraction of "who I basically am". They are behaviors taken on most often as children while learning to protect ourselves, while identifying, as best we could, with whomever we felt we were most "like" or, in the case of "false masculine" behaviors, taken on in our later years while trying be become what we think will make us more sexually attractive to other men or more acceptable to those around us. And that, when given the chance (and the direction HOW) to relax that fearfullness, a FAR more free and real and authentic personality emerges. And THAT personality is WAY more attractive and relaxing to be around and SEXY to, frankly, everyone - gay or straight. A truly free heart is a damn sexy thing.

I think what many gay men are finding they are attracted to these days - though they term it "straight acting" - is actually that down-to-the-core relaxed, unafraid, unaffected (at least in the way GAY men can be), way of "being" that they intuitively feel in many straight men (even underneath said straight man's own false "behaviors") that they don't feel in the core of many gay men. I don't at ALL feel that most gay men are simply trying to assimilate or "cover up" their "gayness" with this "straight-acting" thing. I DO feel that many gay men are feeling a mostly unconscious desire to find in themselves - and are discovering that they are more and more attracted to in other men - a freer, more relaxed, easy-in-their-skin kind of behavior (said "straight-acting") that emanates from a freed-up heart and a far more relaxed sexual self-identity. I've heard so many gay men say, "Why would you be attracted to or want to behave like a "straight guy"? Most straight guys I know act like assholes". It's not, I'm finding, the superficial personality traits (the straight "affectations") that gay men are finding themselves drawn to. It's the unconscious, internal freedom that lots of straight men naturally radiate and walk through the world with that is attractive - a freedom that even emanates from underneath a personality that can seem dull or insensitive. And we, as gay men, want to know THAT naturally generated freedom in ourselves - and feel it in our lovers - as well.

Kaidan Erwin
San Francisco, Calif.
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