Posts Tagged ‘Gay-Face
QUESTION: What is gay-face and is it real?
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We always like it when those of you out there chime in and let us know that a term we use is alien to you. We’re more than happy to clarify it, because here in Boystown we take for granted that you know what we’re talking about most of the time, even though a lot of our friends are go-go boys, drag queens, motorcycle-riding lesbians, circus people, failed sitcom stars, washed up musicians, and the like.
So, when we say someone like Lindsey Graham, Mark Kirk, Aaron Schock, or others have “gay-face”, we assume you know what we mean.
Here’s the Urban Dictionary’s (the very first place we always go when we don’t know a slang term someone is using) definition of “gay-face”:
We think gay-face (or gayface, depending on how you spell it), is nature’s way of warning observant women so that they don’t become Katie Holmes or Kelly Preston. We don’t think there’s a lesbian equivalent of this, but then again, we don’t know of many lesbians who try to trick straight men into marrying them, or who go around town with straight men pretending these are their boyfriends. In our experience, only gay men use beards, and we’re not talking the kind that qualify you for discounts at Touche or other leather bars.
Gay-face, we believe, is a guy’s soul betraying him through his eyes, mainly. He’s working so hard to fool the world, and in many cases is trying to keep his voice low in register, his hands from flipping about when he talks, all the while stifling the FABULOUSSSSSSS! that’s just bursting inside him, desperate to come out.
Gay-face is that pained look in a guy’s eyes that tells you he’d rather be talking about the Golden Girls or Buffy instead of pretending to enjoy whatever baseball game is on the television.
Gay-face is the betraying “something” just behind the eyes that says this guy would rather be having a St. Germaine on the rocks at Sidetrack in a tank top instead of attending whatever the heck function he’s stuck at over in the Cubby Bear, wearing a jacket and button-up shirt, pretending he’s a straight, confirmed-bachelor, Republican from Peoria.
Gay-face is so obvious to all of us, and to other gay guys in Boystown, that it’s second-nature to spot it. And, no, it’s not limited to just Republicans hiding in the closet like Graham, Kirk, and Schock. Rahm Emanuel has serious gay-face. So does the current “president”, Dr. Utopia. There’s a host of young male celebrities starting their careers in Gay-Face, following in the footsteps of older stars like Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Robin Williams, and Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue, Rock Hudson, James Dean, and others before that.
We can look at old sepia-toned photos from the Victorian era and detect Gay-Face. A lot of oil paintings from the days before photography have clear Gay-Face in them too. Perhaps Gay-Face is even present in tomb carvings and cave scribblings, for someone discerning enough to spot it.
As long as there have been gay dudes trying to pretend to be something they are not, and trying to trick people (especially women) into believing they are gung-ho, He-Men, heterosexuals there has probably been Gay-Face to even the odds and spare these women from heartache.
Some women, of course, choose to ignore the Gay-Face and marry these guys anyway (usually because they get some sort of a big pay day out of it, like becoming the First Lady of Florida…or the United States). Some, unbelievably, can’t even spot it, which tells us someone in the universe must hate them, because they end up as Ariana Huffington.
Can you spot Gay-Face, now that we’ve explained it?
Do you have any other good examples of this phenom?
