Robert Peake knows he is straight. Why would that be hard to accept?
I must have been born straight. For as long as I can remember, I have been attracted to the opposite sex. I can’t explain why this is. It is visceral, a part of me. I could no more convince myself to stop being straight than I could will my lungs into gills.
Still, many people these days think being straight is unnatural.
Gay friends have tried to “help” me with my “problem.” And I know they mean well. Sometimes they quote the words of holy people who have said that heterosexuality is wrong. “Man was made for man and woman for woman,” they recite from books written thousands of years ago, calling it a perennial truth. But back then, all men were treated like property, and people lived brutal, tribal lives. We select and interpret constantly from the past. I’d like to think that what’s everlasting, even spiritual, is based more on love than condemnation.
People sometimes insinuate that my two dads were unsuitable role models, not gay enough to be “real” men. Or they suspect some woman must have come along and “corrupted” me in my youth. Some people think being straight is a club you can be “recruited” into (and therefore leave). It is not just about sex, or shock value. I am not rebelling against anything or anyone. I am trying, in fact, to be most fully who I already am.
I would like my marriage to my lovely wife to be recognised as legitimate, and for people to see past our different genders, to us as a family. I never wanted to stand out. Not like this. My wife and I hold hands in public, not because we are looking for a fight, but because we want to hold hands. In some countries, I could be violently killed for being straight. It is law. Sometimes it frightens me to be who I am in this world. And yet the alternative–to pretend to be gay just to fit in for awhile–is a worse kind of death on the inside.
Who I am is straight. Except that as soon as I write this, I know it is not true. Who I love and how is only part of who I am. Isn’t variety good for the world? And aren’t my straight wife and I good for it, too? We contribute to our community just as much as two men, or two women, would. We are kind and friendly and productive. We even recycle. Yet constantly, this feeling that some people will never accept us as we are. I am not sorry for who I am, for who we are together, but I’m sorry that not everyone will see past us being two people of the opposite gender who are in love.
I am straight. I am myself. And, like you, I am trying to be happy.
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this post first appeared on http://www.robertpeake.com
image: isaacmao / flickr
About Robert Peake
Reverse gay psychology? RLMAO!! You’d have to be one confused mofo to fall for that mess.
if I didn’t know any better, I’d say that this “straight” guy sounds like a transvestite trying to convince himself that he is something he really Ain’t. Sounds like he,she,whatever,,thinks a good majority of the men population’s gay and they’re the minority> What in the hell is Really going on here?
A good Swiftian flip of the lens and kick in the rear, Robert. Hold the thing up to the light twisting and turning and sparkling in its (and our own) dumbfounded lunkheadedness. Nice job.
it is a struggle. straight. as opposed to crooked. straight as opposed to curvy. straight as an arrow.
straight up my alley. set me straight. perhaps straight but a broken line. straight to hell one could say.
straight rhymes with gait, late, eight, plate, negate, masturbate, gesticulate, hate. let’s not debate
straight. straight laced with opium. i am going straight to bed. to think straight.
lovely weather in ojai.
This reminds me a little bit of “The Forever War” by Joe Haldeman where the main character who is straight encounters a completely different earth culture by the end of the novel (due to space/time/travel), where heterosexuality is considered barbaric and silly. Thanks for existing in that space. Makes me think about how certain rhetoric sounds so familiar, too… when reading I was thinking about phrases I’d heard before.
Loved!
Nothing like being the other to feel like. Wonderful!
I hope one day you will come to your senses and see the light, Robert. There is a guy out there who was meant for you.
In all seriousness, this is a point I never considered. Most people of our culture are more than willing to question whether gays are born that way, or if something happened to make them gay, thereby making non-straight sexuality “abnormal.” But because they are themselves sexually “normal,” they don’t see why this line of reasoning is absurd. Good job.
Good to put the shoe on the other foot sometimes. Glad it provoked you, Mike.
Why do you all look alike? Why can’t you do a simple flower arrangement? I suppose you’ll want special privileges now that you’ve “come out”. I don’t care what you people do, but why do you have to tell the world about it?
Sheesh.
Heterophobia! Hey this is fun, I can get my way by accusing anyone of heterophobia on the slightest pretext. I feel strangely powerful. How about that.
empathy – the great connector. Thanks Robert for this little bit of mind candy – probably Turkish Delight.
I encourage all to go back and read Frank Bidart’s Curse – his response to the 9/11 attack.