Modern gay culture

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CDarklock

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I'm writing a screenplay which has a gay supporting character, whom I'm intending to portray as someone looking for true love but unable to find it. Sort of a tragic hero figure. I need to have a frank and honest discussion with someone knowledgeable about how gay men try to find true love, how it typically fails, and how the gay community typically regards these efforts.
 

Maryn

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I'm straight, but I've had gay friends, and now our kids have some gay friends. The gay guys I've known seek love the same way straight girls and women do. They spend too much time on appearance, because that initial attraction is vital. They put themselves 'out there' at places where potential soulmates might be, so they can meet people. (Gay bars and clubs, certainly, hanging with gay friends who have other gay friends, attending parties, working in gay-owned or gay-friendly businesses, etc.) Sadly, they get their hearts stomped on by guys who were not as great as they first seemed--often after sexual intimacy, too, so it smarts even more.

Just like girls do. But when they find true love, it's worth it.

Maryn, not seeing a lot of differences
 

aliajohnson

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I've two gay siblings and, as far as I can tell, their search for love progressed the same way as my straight brother's. Whether someone looks for a soulmate at work, bars, online, through a match-maker, etc, has less to do with sexual orientation and more to do with personal preference and/or level of comfort with each of those avenues.
 

Barber

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Pssst, sweetie....gay guys aren't looking for love.

Naw, I'm only teasing. You have to figure out what kind of a gay character you're designing. Will he be into the gay scene? Because I once had two roommates living in the gay culture, and to be frank, they were quite a mess in the love department. Um, tragically so. And so were there oodles and oodles of pretty, twenty-something-year-old friends.

My advice would be to make him a character who just happens to be gay rather than a gay character if that makes sense. There are gay males who have only (or mostly) straight friends and a better grip on family values, commitment, etc. I've actually written a gay character who really resists the gay culture (I've based him on what I learned through having those roommates), and it's easier than writing a strictly gay character because I didn't have to pull in the seedier side of that community. Nor did I have to get too political. If you want to hear more of my findings / experiences, PM me. :)

As for having him find true love, I don't know where the story's set, but positive relationships (for adults) often come out of the office (though the employment's sure to crumble shortly thereafter).
 

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I think that there are more similarities than differences between any person's quest to find love with someone of any gender. Now, someone looking for love with someone of the same gender does have, in most contexts, the added issue of societal barriers and disapproval.

Read The Search for Love in Manhattan if you want the self-described "Gayest Gay Man in America"'s story about the search for, you know, love.


Which he found.
 

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Both sexes with same or opposite attraction look for meaningful one-night stands, true love, and everything in between. The 'gay culture' is more a media effect rather than protraying individuals and their goals. Much has been made of revolving door relationships between gay men but that's also true for straight men & straight or gay women--it's the person who chooses. Many times the hype and the expectations are so plastic, nothing will work.
Repeating the pattern of looking for a certain good type while chosing another who isn't is doomed to failure.
 

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'How it typically fails'? I hesitate to say this but the gay man futiley seeking love in a venal subculture is fast become... tired as a characterisation. In terms of how this would work culturally, it would depend on the culture, a gay King Country sheep farmer is going to have rather a different experience to a gay African cell phone company CEO.
 

CDarklock

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'How it typically fails'?

Yes. Given that a gay relationship has failed (which, by definition, all of this character's have - no assumptions about other people are intended), what are the likely reasons it failed?

In hetero relationships, failures are typically because of gender differences. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. But when both people are from Mars... that's probably not the problem.

I'm tempted to theorise the problem is usually infidelity. "Queer as Folk" supports this interpretation, but watching Logo on cable is probably a bad primary source for the reality of gay culture. Much of what I see there is heavily propagandised, when I contrast it with my own experiences.

Yeah, I know, I should just go out to a gay bar. The problem is that the questions are by nature threatening; the gay community has been extensively victimised by people who say they want to "help", but have an awfully peculiar idea of what "help" means.

I hesitate to say this but the gay man futiley seeking love in a venal subculture is fast become... tired as a characterisation.

Really depends on where you put it. Make it your MC, yes. Drop it in the middle of a bunch of straight people, yes. Drop it into a group of gay people who aren't seeking love, remove the "futility" angle (which is inaccurate anyway; if gay people never found love, they wouldn't want to get married), and don't pass judgement on the subculture as "venal" - I think it's rather less tired. Surround this character with a gay couple that has found love, a young college student still discovering what being gay means, and one (only one) raging flamboyant queen... you have a spectrum. You don't hit every corner of the community, but you hit enough of it not to stereotype unfairly.

The catch is that I have enough experience being around gays to understand the other four - they're a lot like me, strangely enough - but not the one looking for love in gay culture. The easiest solution to the problem is to remove this character, but I think he represents the particular subset of the gay community with which straight men can most productively relate. I'm not looking to appeal primarily to a gay audience, but I'd be really disappointed if a gay audience found my characters totally unbelievable.
 

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In hetero relationships, failures are typically because of gender differences.

What?

No.

No, that's really not the case.

The main reason cited by heterosexual couples who are getting divorced is tension over money. The second most common reason cited is that the partners have differing sex drives (and that seems to be relatively evenly split between "man wants more/woman wants less" and "woman wants more/man wants less"). And number three is communication--that might be where your "different gender styles" would come in.

You seem to have some preconceptions about relationships in general that are a bit outdated and overly simplistic. In any case, people are not statistical samples. If you make the relationships believable to you, they'll be believable to others.

Surround this character {gay man looking for love} with a gay couple that has found love, a young college student still discovering what being gay means, and one (only one) raging flamboyant queen... you have a spectrum.

Wow, that sounds almost exactly like Paul Rudnick's play (and film) Jeffrey.
 
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veinglory

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A spectrum, or a series of what might sympathetically be called modern archetypes. In scanning gay fiction these days I look for characters that seem more like real people. That's just something that's bugging me right now having watched Jeffrey, read Jeffrey, Jeffrey-lite and Jeffrey with grit, black Jeffrey, Jeffrey with sex scene etc etc. Time for some Bob, Barry and Hone in my opinion.
 
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CDarklock

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heterosexual couples who are getting divorced

...are married, which is a different animal than looking for love. Married is after you've found love, when you want to keep it.

Wow, that sounds almost exactly like Paul Rudnick's play (and film) Jeffrey.

Yeah, particularly the part where it's not in Manhattan and nobody's sworn off sex to avoid AIDS.

You know what? It's really more like La Cage aux Folles. Because, you know, any story with gay characters must be one or the other.

In scanning gay fiction these days I look for characters that seem more like real people.

I think I've done okay in that regard with the rest of the gay characters. It's not a gay coming-of-age or coming-out story, it's more about how a group of straight men with little understanding of what being gay is and means can come to terms with themselves as straight men by increasing that understanding.

Most of the gay fiction I see is ruthlessly focused on how difficult it is to be gay. (To clarify, I mean fiction about gays, not necessarily by gays... hmm, is "gay" as a noun offensive?) This isn't, in my experience, normal - most of the gay people I meet are perfectly happy to be gay, encounter few difficulties being gay, and generally enjoy their lives. I want to see those people on the screen. I'm tired of the screen being dominated by angst-ridden gay people who can't figure out who they are or where they fit. I want to see the generally content and well-adjusted gay people I actually meet in the Real World, and all the angst and confusion shoved over there with the straight people - because I think that's where it really is, most of the time.

After all, there aren't any gay people with their shorts in a bunch over whether straight people can get married.
 

Ravenlocks

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It sounds to me like you're having the problem because you're defining the character based solely on his sexuality. Presumably his relationships fail because of an emotional flaw inherent in him as an individual, probably the same flaw he'll have to overcome in order to find true love (and there's the internal story right there).

Off the top of my head (and these are probably cliches): Maybe he has trouble trusting anyone, so as soon as they reach a certain level of closeness he pushes them away whether he wants to or not. Maybe he's a control freak and very set in his ways, and he has trouble having someone else around, so after the novelty wears off his relationships devolve into useless bickering and jockeying for control until they finally dissolve completely. Maybe he's an introvert who's perpetually attracted to extroverts, but they tend to bail on him because they can't understand that he needs his alone time. Or anything else. But there's no single reason why gay relationships fail, any more than there's a single reason why hetero relationships fail. They fail because people are people, and people don't always get along or stick around for the long haul.

a gay couple that has found love, a young college student still discovering what being gay means, and one (only one) raging flamboyant queen...
These are stereotypes. I would say, instead of focusing the story around gayness, focus on the protag's flaw, then build characters who reflect it in one way or another.

ETA: Oops, I just noticed the part where he's not the protag. In that case, make his flaw reflect something about the protag and the protag's journey.
 
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Penguin Queen

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<..:>
Most of the gay fiction I see is ruthlessly focused on how difficult it is to be gay. (To clarify, I mean fiction about gays, not necessarily by gays... hmm, is "gay" as a noun offensive?) This isn't, in my experience, normal - most of the gay people I meet are perfectly happy to be gay, encounter few difficulties being gay, and generally enjoy their lives. I want to see those people on the screen. I'm tired of the screen being dominated by angst-ridden gay people who can't figure out who they are or where they fit. I want to see the generally content and well-adjusted gay people I actually meet in the Real World, and all the angst and confusion shoved over there with the straight people - because I think that's where it really is, most of the time.
<..>.

While that is, of course, a laudable intention, I still agree with others here who have said that your defnition of the character as a gay man is too narrow. Thats certainly how it comes across to me. Why does a gay man fail to find love? I dont know. Why does a tall man, a red-haired man, a race-driver, an accountant named Henry fail to find love?
You need to approach your character differently. Having a gay man doing or failing to do whatever is putting the horse before the cart. Poeple fail to find relationships because of who they are. Not because theyre tall or red-haired or of above-avarage IQ or queer. So you may have this bloke who can't find love, and he is incidentally queer. But if you intend to make him so from the outset, I think there is a high likelihood he will remain a cardboard cutout.

There are of course additional stresses on gay relationships that straighs dont have to grapple with: being in a minority, being - esp. if living in small-town and/or conservative areas - regarded as immoral, wrong, mentall ill, damned by the deity of your choice etc.; having one or both partners insist on remaining closeted; having one or both partners forcibly outed... You could have your character be in the military, say, which in the US is something less than tolerant (let alone offering equality) to LGBT poeple.

Maybe you want to avoid the pitfalls of making mistakes out of ignorance when writing about a group to which you dont belong, and again this is laudable. So, read some novels written by gay people (Amistad Maupin springs to mind). There must be a US equivalent of Stonewall (LGBT rights pressure grup in the UK) that put studies & material on their website regarding, say, statistics about relationships & relationship breakdown, domestic violence etc. in LGB relationships.
 

CDarklock

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It sounds to me like you're having the problem because you're defining the character based solely on his sexuality.

Let me explain my process. It seems different from what people expect.

I'm not defining the character yet. I'm defining the problem, which will help define the character.

Take, for example, the problem of "unfamiliar with the city". A person unfamiliar with the city has certain qualities: he's not from the city, lives far enough from the city that travel there is inconvenient, and doesn't travel enough to overcome the inconvenience. You can't make someone who was raised in downtown Chicago "unfamiliar with the city". If you put him in a Chicago suburb, you can't give him a car, and that opens up a whole new set of problems. So the problem, which is important to the plot of the story, drives the definition of the character. And once you identify where your character is from - say, Roosevelt, Utah (population under 5,000) - you know other things about the character. You know what jobs he's likely to have had, and what sort of people he normally sees, and what religion he probably is, and all of that has had an impact on his life.

I know, from the problem "seeking but not finding love in the gay community", that this character is a gay man. That's all I know. This much is required by the problem as I understand it. But since my understanding is incomplete, I could proceed to flesh out the character with qualities that - in an actual gay man - would make it trivial to find love in the gay community. That character is every bit as inauthentic as the Chicago native who is unfamiliar with the city. He needs to be in an emotional Roosevelt, Utah.

You can't apply the "gay" label as an afterthought. Those who do simply don't get it: being gay pervades your existence. It affects you long before you know it's what has been affecting you. It's so integral and essential to your life, that life has no meaning and can't be understood without it. You might just as well define two characters the same way you normally do - Joe went to Harvard Medical and is a pediatrician, while Bob went to MIT and is a particle physicist - and then say "oh yeah, they're also conjoined twins". It simply doesn't work.

You might get away with a character defined as though he were straight, who has just realised he's gay - but that's the only time you can realistically do this, and all the same, that realisation is inevitably the key to a puzzle that everyone around him has seen. Being gay may be new knowledge, but he was always gay.

EDIT: neglected to address this bit.

In that case, make his flaw reflect something about the protag and the protag's journey.

That journey is from homophobia to understanding. That's why there have to be all these gay people.
 
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Ravenlocks

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That journey is from homophobia to understanding. That's why there have to be all these gay people.
I have a feeling the journey should be deeper than that. Why is the character homophobic to begin with? That's the real emotional issue that has to be resolved. It's the true journey. The understanding he develops is just a result of dealing with that issue.

The lovelorn gay character's journey should somehow reflect the deeper reason behind the protag's homophobia.

I'm not defining the character yet. I'm defining the problem, which will help define the character.
So being gay puts certain limitations on how the guy looks for love. For instance, he doesn't look for it with women. And he has to be careful not to hit on straight men. But he's still an individual, and his relationships are still going to fail because of individual things about him. You can't group all gay people together and say their relationships fail for X or Y reason. I think you already have the problem for your character: he's gay and he can't find love. Now it's time to dig deeper and figure out why not.

If the whole point of the story is to show straight men that being gay is okay, I think there may be problems with the story. Because it really is defining people based solely on their sexuality, as I said before. Being a woman I know I hate being defined by my gender, and if someone told me it pervades everything I do and I can't understand life without it, I'd tell them where to go.

What you need is a great external story (strong non-sexuality-related goal for homophobic protag), and then make it impossible for him to achieve that goal without the help of a number of other characters who have important things to contribute but also happen to be gay. So eventually he has to deal with the reasons he's homophobic and work with these people to get what he wants. Your CHARACTER is the one defining them by their sexuality. You shouldn't be.

My $0.02.
 

CDarklock

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I have a feeling the journey should be deeper than that.

Are you aware that many writers don't like to discuss the detailed specifics of work in progress? Because you seem to be prying a bit here.

You can't group all gay people together and say their relationships fail for X or Y reason.

Right, but you can group all the people whose relationships usually fail for a particular reason into one place and pick one of the bigger groups.

That's how you avoid things like having one character after another after another whose wife or girlfriend left him for a younger and better-built man who made more money. That doesn't really happen too often in the real world where the rest of us live, but somehow it seems to have happened to every cop, detective, and private eye character ever written. Especially the angry, violent, loose-cannon ones.

Being a woman I know I hate being defined by my gender

Defined exclusively by your gender, sure. But if I want one of my characters to be pregnant, it has to be a woman. End of discussion. If the only character trait she has is pregnancy, sure, be offended. But if she's more than that, what's the problem?

I'm looking for direction on making this character more than just "gay dude #4". If I don't get enough of it, then he gets written out, because I am not having any "gay dude #4" on the cast list. I would rather not tell his story than do a crap job on it.

What you need is a great external story (strong non-sexuality-related goal for homophobic protag)

There are no sexuality-related goals. The journey is an unintended side effect of another goal entirely.

So eventually he has to deal with the reasons he's homophobic
and work with these people to get what he wants.

More or less, although I've added my own twisted sensibility to it.
 

Ravenlocks

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Are you aware that many writers don't like to discuss the detailed specifics of work in progress? Because you seem to be prying a bit here.
I wasn't intending to pry. You stated what his journey was. I was only posting my thoughts in response.

Right, but you can group all the people whose relationships usually fail for a particular reason into one place and pick one of the bigger groups.

I still feel you should start from who the character is, not what group he belongs to. But maybe that isn't what works for you. In any case, my suggestions are always take 'em or leave 'em.
 

CDarklock

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You stated what his journey was.

In response to your challenge that the supporting characters should take their personality from the protagonist's journey, which is precisely what I'm doing. Moving beyond that just edged a little out of my comfort zone.

I still feel you should start from who the character is, not what group he belongs to.

It seems to me that I am starting from who the character is - or, at least, who the character must be. Every character starts out with a function in the story, and that function dictates some part of his description. I don't have enough to finish the description, so I'm casting about for direction on that front, and the single most common criticism I get is that the description I have is too shallow.

Which feels rather like saying "I wish I could eat a donut" and having people respond "well, you really should eat a donut first, you know". It's frustrating as hell. ;)
 

Deleted member 42

Err...

Why are you starting out with a didactic agenda?

Why make being queer any different than being Swedish? Or Dutch? Or, gawd help us, a Walloon?
 

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Look, your story actually IS a lot like Jeffrey in that it's about a man looking for love surrounded by various gay stereotypes.

You asked for realism, so I gave you a link to the blog of one of my best friends and his search for love amid the red-hot molten core of the mainstream gay scene in Manhattan.

A recent book in the same vein is Fool's Errand by Louis Bayard.


I think that coming to "Expert Advice" and then being hostile and defensive to the people who give you feedback is probably not a wise move, but it's your life and your work.
 

Deleted member 42

Oh, the heck with it; I don't see this actually even approaching resolution.



I know, from the problem "seeking but not finding love in the gay community", that this character is a gay man. That's all I know.

What makes you think that he has to even participate in "the gay community"? (Substitute ghetto there and try that on for size.)

Queer people are everywhere like every other sort of people; at work, at church, at school, at the market, ...

. . . being gay pervades your existence. It affects you long before you know it's what has been affecting you. It's so integral and essential to your life, that life has no meaning and can't be understood without it.

WTF? If being het doesn't define a person's existence why would being queer?

That's absurd.

You might just as well define two characters the same way you normally do - Joe went to Harvard Medical and is a pediatrician, while Bob went to MIT and is a particle physicist - and then say "oh yeah, they're also conjoined twins". It simply doesn't work.

Why the hell not? It absolutely does work. People are a lot more than their sexuality. You probably know and work with queer folk that you don't even realize are queer -- because if you're not directly affected by someone's sexuality, it doesn't matter.

If a person isn't seeking a partner, het or not, or isn't available, het or not, sexual orientation doesn't matter in the ordinary run of things. It's like being Swedish. You might not know that Rachel or Mike are Swedish, until you hear them speaking fluent Swedish with their sisters, or whatever. But it's not like that one fact makes them Other and Alien suddenly. They probably like lutefisk, but well, it's not like there's anything wrong with that...

Look at books by people like Elizabeth Bear, or Joseph Hansen's mysteries, where gay characters aren't primarily important because they're gay--it's just a facet of their characters, like being Swedish, or good at baseball.

Focus on the person, not the plumbing. Take being gay at face value -- he's sexually and romantically attracted to other men. Fine. No big thang . . . but maybe he's looking for the wrong kind of person for the kind of person he is, or the life he wants . . . that's the real issue, not queerness.
 
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poetinahat

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Can't help but wonder: Why does this character need to be gay? Deciding he's gay before understanding his issues and motiviations seems like it might be putting the cart before the horse.

If this character is the only gay one in the cast, as I infer from the way the OP is phrased (otherwise, it'd be "a screenplay with gay characters"), I'd think the first question to ask would be how this character feels being a gay among straights.
 

aliajohnson

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You can't apply the "gay" label as an afterthought. Those who do simply don't get it: being gay pervades your existence. It affects you long before you know it's what has been affecting you. It's so integral and essential to your life, that life has no meaning and can't be understood without it.

Wait, what? My sister doesn't define herself as "a lesbian. . .and some other stuff." Her values and interests outside of the bedroom define her. Her work, her wife, and her children pervade her life. I'm not privy to her every thought, but I'd be willing to bet that when she wakes up in the morning she thinks something along the lines of "I need to fix the boys breakfast and get them to school." Or maybe, if it's a Saturday, she just rolls over and thinks, "my wife is hot." I sincerely doubt she wakes up and thinks, "holy crap! I'm a lesbian!" Likewise for my gay brother (minus the kids, and substitute hot wife for hunky partner.)

When they were first coming to terms with the fact that they were attracted to members of their own sex, then yes, I imagine being gay was the primary focus of their thoughts and energy. But that's a whole different ballgame.
 
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CDarklock

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Why are you starting out with a didactic agenda?

Because the protagonist needs to be taught something. While he will certainly learn it whenever I say he learns it, no matter how he is "taught", I need the audience to find his epiphany believable.

Look, your story actually IS a lot like Jeffrey in that it's about a man looking for love surrounded by various gay stereotypes.

My story is about a homophobic straight man who learns that homosexuality isn't what he thought it was, which is not a damn thing like Jeffrey.

You asked for realism, so I gave you a link to the blog of one of my best friends

...the self-described "gayest gay man in America".

This character is not even the gayest gay man in the script. Your friend is the wrong model. Among other things, Philip would emphatically not sign up for a site called "men4sexnow.com".

This is in no way a judgement about your friend, who is highly entertaining and kind of cute. I wouldn't have sex with him, but I might feel him up and tweak his nipples during a cab ride... if he bought me a few drinks.

coming to "Expert Advice" and then being hostile and defensive to the people who give you feedback

This is not "Expert Advice", it is "Story Research", and feedback is not research. So please, pardon my exasperation at continuing to get all kinds of opinions and criticism about something I've deliberately been reticent about describing (rendering much of this opinion and criticism entirely invalid for reasons you will not be given), when all I really want is the answers to the same three questions I've been asking for a year.
 

Deleted member 42

This is in no way a judgement about your friend, who is highly entertaining and kind of cute. I wouldn't have sex with him, but I might feel him up and tweak his nipples during a cab ride... if he bought me a few drinks.

OK.

That's just simultaneously idiotic and offensive. You've just got a twofer and reminded me of a Winston Churchill joke around the phrase "haggling about the price."

It really really fits.

This is not "Expert Advice", it is "Story Research", and feedback is not research. So please, pardon my exasperation at continuing to get all kinds of opinions and criticism about something I've deliberately been reticent about describing (rendering much of this opinion and criticism entirely invalid for reasons you will not be given), when all I really want is the answers to the same three questions I've been asking for a year.

You know what?

They're stupid questions.

They are, in fact, offensively stupid questions. Lord knows were I a gay male, I'd avoid that cab with fervent devotion.

You don't seem to be listening to a number of really gentle posts pointing out that they're stupid questions and that you're almost willfully digging yourself into a hole by asking the wrong questions .

I'm out of patience, and have the distinct impression that I've managed to get stupid spilled all over me.
 
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