Another Half-Baked Theory for Monday Morning.

You often hear the hypothesis that homosexual men are caught in eternal adolescence. Because of homophobia, because of our fear of persecution, and because we grow up isolated in a heterosexual world, we are deprived-- at least until recently -- of a natural sexual coming of age, so we're stuck in that experimental stage all our lives. That's why we're promiscuous and turn everything into sexual innuendo. That's the theory, anyway.



At least we made it as far as adolescence. Sometimes I think heterosexual men never make it past kindergarten. Fatherhood only seems to exacerbate it. Finally, they have someone around who is developmentally the same age to play with. Have straight men always acted like little boys or is this something new in our culture? If it is not a new phenomenon, I think it is new for men to be so unapologetic about it. Look at how they dress. There's virtually no difference in the wardrobe of 5-year-olds boys and 40-year-old men.

Come to think of it, the dominant gay male "look" right now is a total appropriation of the straight cargo shorts and baseball cap thing. But it's not because we want to be little boys. It's because we want to be straight men, or have straight boyfriends, or something like that.

Culture sure is complicated.