JUST ARSON AROUND

If being gay really was a choice, it probably would have been mine.

Speaking in stereotypes, I’m pretty goddamn gay anyway, apart from the fact that I’m a fan of neither rugby nor penises (apart from my own, which I rate as ‘highly recommended’). But as a teenager I had two framed posters of Marilyn Monroe on my bedroom wall (if that doesn’t activate your gaydar, it’s broken), and yes, I love musicals (I’m still the proud owner of The Sound of Music original soundtrack on vinyl).

My parents must have heaved a sigh of relief when they finally found my hardcore porno stash.

Depending on her mood, my girlfriend describes me as either the gayest straight man she’s ever met, or a lesbian trapped in a man’s body. I could argue these points, but I won’t, because they make me seem way cooler than I actually am. Honestly, I’m kind of pissed off that I’m not at least bisexual. Or maybe a transvestite who’s into leather-clad women with oversized strap-ons. That would be cool too. But nope, I’m just a boring, run-of-the-mill straight white guy. Nothing can cure me.

The reason for my disappointment is, of course, totally self-centred. You see, I feel that I missed out on the opportunity to come out of the closet. Us poor straight guys don’t get a closet. We get the entire stupid planet. A straight guy stepping out onto the street is the equivalent of a lesbian stepping out of a Porta-Potty at Lilith Fair.

Every day is a veritable straight pride march. Heterosexual awareness is the cover story of every lifestyle magazine, every issue. There’s barely a song, movie or advert that isn’t a celebration of breeder-style sexy times, and if that isn’t enough to convince you to get straight or get hate, there’s always those dipshit religious leaders and our homophobic toad of a president to hammer the message home.

“There’s something undeniably sexy about the fuck-you attitude of a pride march…”

But I see all that as a challenge – and I love challenges. Not most, but many of my queer friends say that coming out of the closet was a painful, emotional experience, fraught with alienation, family conflict, social ostracism, etc, etc, blah blah etc…

Pfft, I say. Come on, people! Since when was being gay an excuse for being a total faggot? That shit’s for homophobes. Coming out of the closet has awesome written all over it. You get to freak out your friends, get invited to the crunkest parties in the solar system, you have a perfect excuse to ditch all that boring church and children nonsense. If you have a conservative family, tell them you bat for the other side and grandchildren is the last thing they’ll want from you.

But as anyone who has been exposed to a gay pride march already knows, for every reticent LGBTIQ (that’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Questioning) Milquetoast, there’s at least one bespangled Dionysus more than willing to give a huge shout-out for the love that dare not speak its name from on top of anything with four wheels and a sunroof.

There’s something undeniably sexy about the fuck-you attitude of a pride march. Rather than trying to win frenemies and influence bigots, marches draw a palimpsestic trace over the line in the sand between queers and straights, originally carved by bigots and later whitewashed over by allodoxaphobic liberals. In this way, gay pride is equivalent to black consciousness, which is also pretty damn sexy, by the way.

The world needs continuous, aggressive reminders that inequality and prejudice is ubiquitous, and if you doubt that for a second, check out the pink closet at UCT, erected (ha ha… ‘erected’…) recently to highlight prejudice against queers. The next day, it was burnt to the ground, no doubt by disgusted moral guardians who from now on will forever be known as The Arson Bandits.

A victory for the homophobes? Not quite. The charred remains of the closet was left exactly where it is, and at the time of writing, it’s still there, serving as an intentional, embarrassing reminder as to why those pesky queers put it there in the first place.

The closet accomplished what I try to do with this column. It incited narrow-minded morons to express themselves in the most self-defeating way possible. Not only is this way more fun than it should be, but it also serves society by exposing complacent libtards to an ugly reality that might one day wake them from their smug suburban comas.