Selected excerpts from Reddit thread titled "Straight guys, what are the strangest things you have gotten called gay for doing?"
Marc Cid
Eating salad Eating soup Using umbrellas Putting on sunscreen Liking cats Liking butterflies Liking avocado Washing your butthole Drinking through a straw Drinking cocktails Drinking wine Drinking coffee with cream and/or sugar in it Drinking strawberry milkshakes Washing your butthole Eating ice cream in a cone Eating ice cream with a spoon Using the word terrific Listening to music when the singer is female Listening to music when the singer is male Washing your butthole Running without keeping your hands clenched into fists the whole time Wearing protective equipment while doing construction jobs Using cruise control while driving a semi-truck Scraping ice off your windshield in the winter Finding a short-haired woman attractive Washing your butthole Getting breakfast with another man Getting coffee with a man Watching a movie in theaters with another man Driving around with a man in a convertible if the top is down Examining your nails with your fingers stretched out instead of curled up Crossing your legs, unless your ankle is resting on your other knee Using moisturizer Using the word cute Kissing and hugging your son Carrying spare hair ties on your wrist for your daughter Washing your butthole I cannot stress how often washing your butthole came up. One commenter recalled how his stepdad would towel dry after a shower, and instead of washing his butthole, he used the towel like ass floss, which always left poop streaks on the towel. The commenter’s mother mentioned this as one of many reasons for divorcing the poop-floss towel man. Whenever queer people ask Are The Straights Okay? No. I want to scream, to yell, to howl, to ejaculate No, clearly we are not. And this is just the tip of the iceberg shitshow that is heteronormativity, because this isn’t just toxic masculinity we’re dealing with now. This is septic masculinity. This is biohazardous masculinity. This is a generations-spanning cascade failure of enculturated domestic sanitation crises endemic to whatever synonym for shitshow we use to adjective the form of masculinity behind this. After browsing this reddit thread, every time I hear a woman say that men ain’t shit–I’ll still know what she means and where the sentiment comes from, but I’ll also be thinking of this– Because if this is how men teach boys to treat their own butts, if these are the disgusting habits they expect the women in their lives to clean up after, if their sheer fear over getting in touch with the most sensitive, interior parts of their being clearly predicts a rash of irritable toxic assholes out there in the world, well isn’t this the definition of a public health crisis? And if we needed a symbol for the lowest, grossest, skidmark-ridden corners of what being a man is purportedly about, we need look nor smell no further than the dude-bro manly man’s poop-floss towel. While contemplating whether or not I should say poop-portedly instead of purportedly in that last line, I am interrupted by the specter of some sunburnt, rain-soaked, salad and cat-hating guy, who will call me gay for criticizing the festering cesspool of the only worldview he acknowledges as valid, then drive off laughing while listening to music where the singer is whatever gender doesn’t shatter his straightness, run his car into the ditch he didn’t see due to the frosted-over windshield he was too masculine to clear out, run the rest of the cold way home without unclenching his hands until he hits the front door, chug a beer, eat ice cream out of a bowl–with his hands I guess, even though he’s shivering, because a hot bowl of soup is a hot bowl of homosexuality to his chattering mouth– so he hops into the shower, cleans every part of his body except for one so that no one whose opinion he cares about calls him gay, and then flosses his unwashed butthole with a towel. We should light a candle every year for those towels. We should pour one out for the towels. Towels can’t divorce those guys, unfortunately. They can’t pack up and leave in the middle of night, taking the face towels, hand towels, paper towels, toilet paper, napkins and drapes with them, but they would if they could.
Marc Cid is a Filipino-American poet from Downey, CA, and has featured, taught workshops, hosted open mics, and occasionally competed in slams across the greater Los Angeles area. He is currently working on his first manuscript, _Your Funeral Sucked, By The Way_, a collection of poems about mental health, grief, family and religious trauma, and working through all of the above.