"I Fuck Guys, But I'm Not Gay"

I was chatting with somebody on gay.com the other day when he informed me he wasn't "gay," he simply slept with men. Sort of like the Roy Cohn character in "Angels In America" -- the true-life right-wing, anti-communist lawyer who died of AIDS in 1986, apparently insisting to the end that he wasn't queer. Now, let's be clear: These guys don't claim to be bisexual. They just claim not to be "gay." Why? I'm guessing because they buy into all the silly -- and often sordid -- stereotypes, ranging from the extreme (limp-wristed, flamboyant perverts) to the more benign (guys more adept at making creme brulee than changing a tire). In truth, gays span the spectrum: some are indeed flamboyant, others are as "mainstream" as a Peyton Manning spiral, others are beautifully metrosexual. But what makes them "gay" isn't that they get hoarse at Madonna concerts or that they wear tight, low-rise jeans or that they scheduled their lives around "Sex and the City." It's that they have sex with men. Simple as that.