GAYDAR – Fail

A few months ago a friend of mine wound up with an extra ticket to the GLAD Spirit of Justice awards banquet and asked me to go with him. While we were in the prefunction area drinking cocktails, one of the guys who participates in my Abs class at the campus gym walked up to me. It was a bit of surprise to see him there as I had never thought he was gay. Obviously my GAYDAR is completely inoperative. In my defense, though, he had come up to me after class to make a comment about “Call On Me” by Eric Prydz, one of the tracks on the workout mix I use in the class. He said something to the effect that the video was a real motivator. If you haven’t seen the video a short description would be it’s basically a hetero male fantasy aerobics class. Lots of tall blonds, very skimpy workout clothes, throbbing music, and said blonds writhing all over the floor. I deflected his comment by saying it probably wouldn’t be very motivating to the majority of the gym members taking my class (most of them are straight(?) women). Now, I think he may have been unobtrusively trying to determine if I was on the team myself.

Bumping into him at the dinner was at first awkward as surprises like that, I assume, tend to be awkward. However, I had nothing to hide and actually thought it was neat to see a familiar face. After seeing him there, I started to recognize a few more faces from the gym. That was actually exhilarating as I am not OUT at the gym. It isn’t that I am hiding anything; it’s just that I haven’t felt compelled to announce to anyone there that I am gay. It seems the right way to go about living my life. I do what I want and if people figure it out, good for them.

So last night was a Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus social gathering. The Caucus is the umbrella organization for all the different LGBTQ groups on campus. The law school organization was hosting this event and had invited HGLC members to join. As I am usually a social wallflower at these things I thought I would just drop by and see if there was anyone I knew. The guy from my abs class was a kind of organizer and gave me a drink ticket and pointed out where people were. The gathering was in a public bar in which not all the people participating were LGBTQ. How’s that for an added thrill?

While I was waiting at the bar to get a beer, I just was looking over the crowd trying to figure out who was part of the HGLC crowd and who wasn’t. That is when I saw two guys enter the bar, one of whom I knew was gay. We had gone out on an introductory meet and greet at a coffee shop. The guy is quite handsome and very nice; however, he is quite involved with his church. When he mentioned (and kept mentioning) how important church was to him, that pretty much sealed the deal that we would just be friends and nothing more. The interesting thing was the other guy who was with him.

The previous semester, I had been a Teaching Fellow (that’s Harvard speak for TA) for a class in which the other guy had been a student. Another GAYDAR fail! (The student is a fellow graduate student at one of the professional schools. He just happened to take the undergraduate class because it was useful for his research.) This was amazing! First of all, he was cute as hell! Second, I had no idea he was gay! Now I think of how bad that could have been had I known at the time he was gay.

So I went over to the two guys. I figured if they were together then it would be a pleasant but brief conversation and then I could be on my merry way home. As the bar was very crowded, it took a little while to navigate over to them. We had just found a not too crowded area where the three of us could chat when I caught the eye of this other guy who boldly stepped forward to claim my attention. The guy was kind enough, but started on the wrong foot when he basically monopolized my time and prevented me from talking to the guys with whom I wanted to talk. Still, I didn’t want to be rude so I listened to him.

His second mistake was to take the strong Harvard approach as opposed to the soft sell. Much like a bull making a display of his strength and prowess or perhaps more like a peacock flaunting his showy tail, the Harvard strong approach is to make a bold announcement of your brilliance and how impressive your resume is. I have always found that approach off-putting, especially at Harvard where you can expect everyone to have something impressive in their background. It is the case of a lot of really big fish in a teeny, tiny pond. So the guy announces that he can do any translation work I might need in several different languages. He earned the equivalent of a PhD in Law from a university in Germany. I was also informed that he earned several different masters degrees. At this point, I get the feeling that he is trying to network so he can make a few extra bucks. I didn’t come to the social gathering to be hustled for penny-ante service crap. He was a bit deflated when I told him I worked on American politics and thus had no need for having any documents interpreted. I felt bad for the guy as it takes a lot of nerve to approach a total stranger and strike up a conversation. Still, he wasn’t my type. After a while, the former student started to hover on the edge of my conversation with Mr. Big Man on Campus.

Eventually, I was able to switch my conversation from BMOC to my former student. Because I am a bit thick, I was still uncertain as to why the guy was there. Sure he had shown up in the company of guy I knew to be gay. However, it was not a purely gay function. So he may have been there in a different capacity. So I tried to think of a subtle way to ascertain why he was there. “I didn’t know you were on the team,” was my subtle entre into conversation. I then proceeded to spend the next hour and half chatting with the guy. I found out he too was not into our mutual acquaintance’s heavy religion. I think they might have shown up together, but they were not together…

Yay!

There was the mutual exchange of numbers and email addresses. I am not sure if anything more will come of it. I might be a bit too freaky for him. But still, it was a fun evening. This surprise was definitely a good thing.