Here in LGBTQ+ Town, we get to party until we’re in our mid-sixties, at which point we’re held up as community icons. We get to wear leather without looking try-hard, we get to watch unhinged drag queens fall over in dive bars, and we get to holiday in homes in Tangier owned by “interior decoration gays.” We’re statistically more likely to be chic and fashionable (although some gay men seem to want to actively exclude themselves from this one) and people—literally, like, everyone—are desperate for our approval. We have more sex than our straight counterparts, we are better at everything than our heterosexual peers (there are no stats on this, but it’s true), and we get to say things like “J’adore” and mean it both ironically and unironically.
We have the best literature, from Giovanni’s Room to Detransition, Baby. The best film and theater, from Pink Flamingos to A Strange Loop. The best fashion, from Thierry Mugler to Telfar. The best art too, from the Sistine Chapel to Leigh Bowery. What do the straights have? Chinos and golf tournaments? Marriage and a Volvo? Yep, you got it—being gay is better. It’s chicer. It’s hotter. So what are you waiting for?
A note on how you’re likely to be viewed after doing so. The people around you are no longer strangers, commuters, or fellow diners at Chinese Tuxedo. No. As part of the LGBTQ+ community, you will be forced into visibility. Sometimes you’ll like it, sometimes you’ll hate it. A healthy way to deal with this, though—which my therapist has strongly advised against—is to start calling those around you your “audience.” “Fans” also works, but the truth is that audience implies a much more generous, symbiotic, artistic relationship between you and this woman who is staring at you at the crosswalk.
It’s also time to get really good at sex. Alas, I don’t make the rules. But if there is one thing that unites every LGBTQ+ person I know, it’s that we are good at sex. You don’t have to be kinky—although you can also be as kinky as they come—but we are frankly superior in bed. After all, why go through all of the boring drama of coming out and detailing exactly how you’re going to have sex to your own mother if you’re not going to actually be good at it? It’s time to transcend the dynamic of the jackrabbit and the wet flannel. You are a sex phoenix, and you’re rising from the ashes.
