Gay-Bi-Dar Before You Yourself Know

A short note, before I get to a longer post later on (probably tomorrow or over the weekend). When I was in college, I was in the marching band. In high school, being in band was a cause for scorn. But in college, the band was cool. And since it was cool, it was clique-ish, and I didn't fit in.

Like most my age, in a bass-ackwards place like Oklahoma, I associated accusations of homosexuality with insults and disdain. So, when I found myself regarding certain key members of the band (all male, all high in the pyramid of power) as most likely gay, I chided myself for falling into such a clichéd cycle. It's not like I would have known, anyway, straight and inexperienced as I was at the time.

Years later, I had a brief relationship with someone who had been in the band a few years before myself (she was six years older than I, and she may be the subject of an upcoming post). She knew all of these people when they themselves were freshmen first coming in. Now, I didn't ask her about their orientation... it wouldn't have come up, except that she had married someone she started dating in band, and they'd divorced fairly recently when he came out of the closet. Through him, she learned that there had been a sizable "gay underground" within the band (though, why gays would feel the need to be underground in this group puzzled me, as even though we may have been in Oklahoma this ensemble was fierce in its support of the out gay/lesbian/bi members). And wouldn't you know it, almost everyone I'd mentally labeled as gay was in fact.

Did I actually exhibit gaydar that many years before I'd start exploring my bi side?

-D