While in college I had the opportunity to listen to a speaker from Washington, DC. He spoke on a theory surrounding sexuality, breaking it down into three components: sexual orientation; sexual behavior; and sexual attitude. He defined them as such:

1)  Sexual orientation is what a person is born, whether heterosexual or homosexual. This is part of the genetic makeup and cannot be changed.

2)  Sexual behavior is how the person chooses to act out. A person can have a homosexual orientation but behave and live as a heterosexual. Prime examples would be the large number of bisexuals who have relationships, to include sexual intimacy, with members of both genders. It also might explain the rise in visibility of men and women who come out later in life after living in long-term heterosexual relationships, sometimes even marriages producing children.

3)  Sexual attitude is what a person thinks about their sexuality and how they want to be perceived. A person can be heterosexual and embrace homosexuality as a supportive ally or homosexual and staunchly anti-gay. An example would be a gay man who identifies as “straight-acting” and does not participate in an active gay lifestyle (such as going out to gay bars or participating in gay social and/or political events). In extreme cases some of these men are closeted and pass for straight, working hard to not disclose their true nature. In some cases they may not have gay friends or be a part of a gay social network. It can possibly explain the internal component of self-hatred and internalized homophobia, not barring external influences from life experience (i.e. religious beliefs, deep-rooted cultural traditions, family and environment, etc).

With this understanding one can then hypothesize that sexuality is not a definite but a continuum with many people floating across very blurry lines, a topic much examined and studied by researchers like Kinsey and Masters and Johnson. The drunken experiment in college, the bi-curious looking for a hook-up and other examples illustrate how this can play out. But my question is: if someone is truly repulsed by the sexual act, how, then, does a few cans of beer suddenly make it okay? I wonder if the truth is that the desire is always there, that it is a part of a person’s makeup, and that various societal and cultural pressures don’t allow for open self-discovery and evaluation. After all, there are a vast number of heterosexuals who choose not to marry or have long-term relationships, or even abstain altogether from sexual activity. Who’s to say that the same thing wouldn’t be true for some homosexuals as well?

There are some DL men who are exclusive in their sexual lives, rarely or never engaging in relationships or sex with women, yet they still claim to not be gay. There is a difference with being in the closet versus claiming to not be gay. In my neighborhood there are men who watch me walk, who scope me up and down when I get on the bus. Am I flattered? Yes. Do I sometimes fear for my life? Most certainly. But there are so many DL brothers I see riding the subways, walking down the street, hanging out on the stoops of their apartment buildings, not to mention trolling the internet for sex that it’s ridiculous this notion that they are not a part of a gay albeit closeted lifestyle.

In the DL online personal ad the usual requests include: hangin’, chillin’, play station, and smokin’ some trees. Is getting high the beer equivalent for the DL man to have permission to explore without guilt or responsibility? It continues, “No fats, no fems, only real niccas”. Some even go so far as to advertise that they, themselves, are thugs or very thuggish, and the accompanying pictures, if not of body parts, usually explicit, show them in baggy pants, baseball caps and doo-rags, and team jerseys. (I often wonder for those who are brave enough to post their private parts online for the whole universe to see who: is their photographer? I can’t imagine them asking their girlfriends or wives, and I would think it would be an odd request to ask of a good friend or relative without having to first answer a litany of questions.)

But what is more to the point, they almost always select the “not out” option and go on to say in their blurb that they are on the DL with a girlfriend who doesn’t know or something similar. And I’ve even read ads where it was specifically stated that the seeker, because they aren’t gay, did not want to be pursued by those “faggot asses” and other such deprecating terminology. Hmm, faggot asses? Then why do you advertise a huge endowment and disclose your knowledge on certain sexual acts if you are so ignorant and opposed to the “lifestyle”?