One of my best friends at college is gay. I’m a straight female with my own boyfriend. We’re going to be sophomores in the fall, and I feel like this is about the age where coming out to one’s parents is in order. However, my friend’s parents are conservative. His older brother is also gay—and when he came out, his parents cut off all funding for college and excommunicated him from the family, so my friend is understandably terrified.
When his parents come to visit, I tag along on “dates” with him to “meet the parents.” It’s a free meal, but it feels a little dirty to lie to his mom and dad about how “in love” we are. Moreover, my friend is coming to my house in California this summer. I had said I would love for him to come visit—as a friend. But his parents think he’s going to be staying with his girlfriend, and they’re thinking of tagging along so they can finally meet their future in-laws, i.e., MY PARENTS. I feel like this is getting way out of hand. How far should we take this act?
I Should Win An Oscar
When you feel bad about lying, ISWAO, remind yourself that you’re doing a good deed—you’re doing God’s work—every time you pass yourself off as this boy’s girlfriend. Yes, you’re lying to his mean-spirited, emotionally abusive parents, two complete shits who deserve so much worse than simply being misled. And he only lies to them because—for the time being—he must.
You should ask him to do three things to secure your continued cooperation in this deception. First, he has to make a solemn promise that he will come out to his parents the day after he graduates. Second, he has to reach out to his excommunicated brother and, if his brother can be trusted to keep his secret, he has to come out to his brother. Third, he has to break up with you at the end of the school year.
The course of true love never did run smooth, as someone or other once said, so a painfully messy June breakup with his college girlfriend—right before summer break!—not only makes your friend’s Potemkin heterosexuality that much more credible, it also gets you off the hook for this ill-advised summer visit. Then when September rolls around, ISWAO, you two crazy kids get back together. Repeat as necessary, i.e., be “on again” when his parents are in town, be “off again” when your parents are in town, over summer breaks, holidays, etc.
And help him look around for his next girlfriend—perhaps a lesbian student with similarly batshit parents—because he can’t expect you to be his beard for your entire college career.
I am a gay male teenager. I have not yet come out to my parents (I plan to soon), but my friends know. I’m curious why I relate more easily to my straight friends and am increasingly uncomfortable with my gay friends. Specifically, I have a lesbian friend who often makes jokes about “how gay I am.” In your opinion, are statements like that offensive (even considering the source)? Or am I still uncomfortable with myself? Your opinion on this matter would mean a lot to me.
Lost And Disillusioned
It’s good to have a sense of humor about yourself, LAD, whether you’re gay or straight or bi or whatever. Shrug off your lesbian friend’s comments if they’re not funny, laugh along with her if they are.
As for your preference for your straight friends: Right now there are a lot more openly straight kids in your life than there are openly gay kids. That means you’re drawing your straight friends from a much larger pool, and you’re able to be more selective about the straight people you hang out with. You can’t afford to be as selective when it comes to gay friends because (1) most gay kids your age aren’t out and (2) gays and lesbians are a tiny percentage of the population and you won’t meet lots of us until you get to one of those places where gays and lesbians clump up, i.e., large universities and big cities. Then you’ll be able to forge friendships with gays and lesbians whom you have something in common with besides your sexuality.
In the meantime, LAD, don’t write off all gays and lesbians everywhere as potential friends just because the few you had to choose from as a teenager weren’t among your best friends.
I need your help. I have entered into a period of my life where I am devoting all my mental resources toward my academics—grad school—and am not interested in dating. Thus, I bought a Real Doll so that I may enjoy fantastic masturbation during this loveless period. Unfortunately, while my parents were visiting, my mom discovered it and she reacted very, very badly.
You see, my dear mother is a feminist.
She is very upset by the doll and believes that it is an indication that I have lost all respect for women. I do not feel this is true. I view myself as a feminist, and I realize this society sexually objectifies women. But I also believe that I can masturbate with a rubber woman and have wild fantasies and then come back to reality and respect everyone—men, women, others. My mother, however, is extremely upset, and we haven’t been able to have a civil conversation since. I am hoping you can possibly give me some perspective.
Dolled Up
My perspective: Your masturbatory routines—including your masturbatory aids/aides—are none of your mother’s fucking business. And if your mother wants to be shocked by something, DU, it ought to be that her son-the-grad-
student had $5K to plunk down on a sex toy.
Your options at this stage are pretty limited. You can apologize to your mother and tell her what she wants to hear (“You’re right, Mom, I’m making an appointment with a therapist and donating my Real Doll to sex-starved grad students in Africa…”). Or you can tell your mother to fuck off and butt out (“It’s my dick, Mom, and I’ll stick it in whatever I want. You remember that ‘my body, my choice’ stuff, right?”).
That said, DU, your claim that you bought a Real Doll so you could “enjoy fantastic masturbation during this loveless period” doesn’t quite pass the smell-of-day-old-spunk-moldering-in-the-lifeless-orifice-of-a-silicone-dummy test. Most guys manage to tough out their loveless periods with the help of the porn industry and their own right hands. And most guys who opt for insanely expensive, life-size, hard-to-hide sex dolls do have issues with women—most are plagued by feelings of inadequacy, not superiority—so you may want to entertain the possibility that your mother might be right.
But even if you do have issues with women—still an if—they’re still none of your mother’s fucking business.
Want more? Dan Savage will be in Questionland Friday, May 21, from 1-3 pm to answer as many of your questions about love, sex, and relationships as he can in two hours! Ask Dan Savage a question now!
101: Perfect advice and the best I have read here.
101: Bravo!
BEard dates back to the forties at least and serves two purposes. 1) a pretend girlfriend for a gay man. 2) pretend boyfriend for the mistress of a cheating married man so they can be at functions. The cheat is there with his wife and the mistress shows up with the beard ( a friend or subordinate ) as a date . Then the two can chat and be at the event and even get the dangerous thrill of being in the presence of the unsuspecting wife so they can have hot monkey love later and cum real hard!
I totally agree with Dan on the guy with the Real Doll. I’m also a time and money-poor graduate student, and I can’t even afford to buy new shoes to replace the ones I’ve worn holes through walking to the library. What’s he going to grad school for if he can already afford to buy a luxury item like that?
Something was left out of one of the letters not sure why.
The one from I should win an oscar his advice went
The consequences of telling the truth would be severe. What IS printed is so he lies to them because for the time being he must.
@101: BRAVO!!! I couldn’t have made a better suggestion myself!
ISWAO’s “boyfriend” situation with his Bush-warped parents is definitely fucked up. So is that of anybody who is ruthlessly pressured by his or her clergyman / parents/ whoever to be straight, get married and have truckloads of kids simply because their religion says so.
I hope it works out for the better, ISWAO.
ISWAO’s comments make it sound like she is starting to feel used. Dan’s ideas provide a way for the man to continue his charade while proving less of a burden to ISWAO, but if the deception is just all too much for ISWAO, she should insist on the breakup now. After all, she did not sign up for all of this, and she can be supportive in other ways.
And Dolled Up, for your claim for being a feminist, your hatred of feminists and women is written all over your post. You go from sarcastically claiming your “dear mother” is a feminist to claiming you yourself are one two sentences later. That word is not an epithet one second and a proud badge the next. Dan was right when he gently suggested your mother was onto something. Despite a feminist upbringing, you have ended up with a woman problem. Now go figure it out.
I am ISWAO, but I have never registered on the site so this’ll probably show up as unregistered. Oh well.
1. Thanks for all the advice in the comments, as well as to Dan for his. We are taking a combination of the two. We are going to “break up” for the summer, and he is going to find a new (lesbian) friend to be his beard in the fall. He will not be coming out until after college.
2. Our university is VERY expensive. It is a top-20 uni known for being exceedingly stingy with aid, and he could not afford to stay here on his own. period. It is just not possible. He has looked into it many times, because he -wants- to come out, but for that same reason he has decided not to until after college. That is his choice to make, not mine, and I respect it.
3. To those of you who say we “lack integrity”– yeah, I would have agreed with you if I were an objective poster reading this on some forum. But all I can say is that it’s really, really easy to make a judgement like that when you’re not the one in the situation, and very difficult when you are. This guy is my good friend, he’s not just using me, and we have a strong friendship outside that, so it’s not like I’m trying to get rid of him.
4. My real boyfriend and I are extremely happy together, and he is cool with what is going on. He is gay-friendly and understands how hard it is. I do not have any feelings for my gay friend whatsoever. So nix that out. :p
Again, thanks guys for all the help and info and advice!
-ISWAO
I was looking for info about a topic (thanks I felt so stupid when I read the answer!) & now I’m combing through this column. Dan you’re great!
Dan is totally wrong in his answer to ISWAO, and in fact, he is contradicting his own past advice.
If the parents threatened to hurt or kill him if he were gay, that’s one thing. But to lie to his parents in order to get tuition money is immoral. They may be fucked up homophobes, but it’s their money and he doesn’t somehow magically deserve thousands of dollars in tuition.
It won’t hurt him to go to community college or take an extra year to graduate. In fact, it’ll help him grow a pair of balls and stop the “I Love Lucy” shenanigans.
Oh, and my understanding is that “beard” comes from “crossover beard,” which was worn by actors in small traveling companies that didn’t have a backstage. When they exited Stage Left, but then had to enter Stage Right later, they would don a “crossover beard” and walk across the stage and everyone would pretend they were invisible.
Now that I write this, I’m not really sure how gays started using it, but I could make something up, like:
Around 1950, perennial Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, who had a background in vaudeville and summer stock (mostly small towns in Ohio and Western Pennsylvania), was spotted at Brooke Astor’s “Founder’s Day” ball with Rose Kennedy on his arm. When Astor raised a quizzical eye at the noted, not to say notorious heterosexual squiring a noted lesbian, he said, “Oh, Brooke, honey, I’m her crossover beard.” Turns out Art Buchwald overheard the comment, shortened it, reported it, and, Voila, coined a phrase that would go on to rival “smaller elephant sibling” in the Euphemism Hall of Fame.
@111: Did you ever try to read the rest of this thread at all? “Deserve” is a dead horse here.
Dear Gloria,
I was following the thread, thanks.
I considered 111 to be voting in favor of not lying in case someone was tallying up the pro and con. And I added some comments for the hell of it because I felt moved to because I had a boyfriend who lied for exactly the same reasons. And guess what? He had big issues because of the lying.
Ouch, I didn’t know the comments section had such strict discipline.
Anyone on here who thinks that honesty is the best policy when it comes to parents answer me this: Do your parents know what you like in bed? To take it in the ass, have your pussy wipped, enjoy golden showers? Blah blah blah etc etc. Why in the world is it ANY of their business? The same goes for homosexuality. If a childs education is contingent on being straight well then fuck them. Lie, cheat, steal I say. No I didn’t have to pay my own way at Uni but I was raised by some seriously fucked up bigots who attached strings to everything they supplied from the time I was an toddler until I told them to go fuck themselves. When you are honest with narrow-minded twats it only comes back to bite you in the ass.
Wow. I am so lucky.
As an out, bi girl who has two fantastic, supportive parents who love her unconditionally I would like to thank everyone who came before me who made coming out and being out so painless. I hope someday everybody can have a family like mine.
For parents to turn against their own children because of some moldy Old Testament — that is a crime against nature.
Having responded to the brother’s honesty with nothing but cruelty, they have given up the right to the truth. Any guidance the child gives them now is a matter of Christian charity; lest they find one day that they are alien to all, and have nothing but hatred and pride to guide them through the outer darkness.
in response to DU: as a female graduate student who is equally focused on academics, i wonder why the hell someone would be dropping cash on masturbatory toys when clearly a fuckbuddy situation is both warranted, and likely to be highly available. if you have the misfortune of being in a male dominated technology dept, perhaps it’s time to make a trip over to the vet school or sociology dept. we don’t all want to marry you and have your babies. jeez.
Is it bad if I can see myself looking at these Real Dolls all night and only laughing my ass off? I mean…you can have them painted, elf ears put on, etc. I am fairly certain that this site really could provide more than a single night’s entertainment…
It is true that lying to your parents about your sexuality can impact your self worth, but is it worth the pain that will come from being honest: Being cut off financially and losing out on the college education? Which when incomplete will not get him any more than a minimum wage job (if WA has minimum wage laws – if that’s where the letter-writers friend is from). It’s all well and good to pontificate and say that its immoral to not be honest, but you need to be realistic. If keeping his parents in the dark about his S.O. will allow him to become a college graduate, then so be it, but he should only use the dirty money with conditions attached for what is absolutely necessary. He should get a job at least part time for evenings/weekends and try to pay for the extras and some of the room and board costs, and he should graduate with an undergrad degree A.S.A.P and get a full time job and start living on his own.
I liked the idea someone had about making it seem like the parents coming to meet the “future” inlaws was moving way too fast. It makes a good inroad to a way for her to publicly break off the fake relationship, and a reason for him to stay single throughout the rest of his college career: Whenever they bring it up, he can say:
“Do you really want to go there, you guys ruined my chances with someone who was very very special to me, who I loved very much, blah blah” and then the issue can be dropped and left.
Once he’s through with College/Uni and he no longer needs their dirty money, then he should drop them like a rock (by telling them publicly, preferably at the graduation ceremony, so that if they react badly, the public can see how horrible his parents truly are); and being ICY COLD to them in the future if they were to ever try and re-establish contact.