I begin this story with a little piece of advice: If you're a homosexual Democrat who is acquainted with a homosexual Republican, waste no time in getting into bed with him. If not because you like him, then at least because it's something totally different. If for some bizarre reason you don't know any gay guys with the moral compass of Rand Paul and a pair of neatly pressed Eddie Bauer slacks just begging to be flung onto an Ikea bedpost, well, they're out there. But they aren't easy to find in the gay community, and for good reason—if you voted for McCain and would answer honestly if asked about your political leanings, gay Seattleites would be pleased to have your balls for breakfast and keep the rest of your corpse in the freezer for later.

But these men do exist, and I fucked one. They often exist in Bellevue. Actually, it's a tad unfair to call what we did fucking. The kind of sex we had was brand new to me at the time. The intercourse I experienced in that Bellevue condo was slow, deliberate, Meryl Streep–ish. This wasn't carnival-ride gay sex with a tattooed hipster, or scary sex with a bear in the old sling at the Eagle—nothing like that. This guy seemed so... gentle. And sweet. And for the life of me, I couldn't muss up his hair no matter how hard I ran my hands through it.

Something about him, about his air of slight neediness and sincere Hardy Boy coif, evinced a personality I'd never seduced before. But until I wandered into his living room post-coitus, I hadn't quite put it together. Among the other stuff—Ikea, Eddie Bauer—was a set of children's blocks on top of his entertainment center spelling W-W-J-D. Then I discovered a photograph of him, my one-night stand, at a McCain rally. Hanging on the wall. Framed. I hadn't found a guy who simply put on the airs of a dude. This guy was a dude. A sappy, conservative dude. Wow, I thought. I fucked a... well, at that point I made a grand assumption and guessed "Republican."

Not all Republicans, near as I can figure, are truck-stop lurkers, celibate, or men with two sides like a coin (one side that grabs your hair while he bends you over the couch he's had since his fraternity days, the other side that throws you out with a look of repulsion and hidden shame). The rare species I enjoyed in that condo in Bellevue had a slow-simmering kind of repression inside of him. The kind that looks you in the eyes during sex and mutters, half-embarrassed, "You're so special," like he did. I knew he didn't totally mean it—we'd been acquainted for all of an hour—but awwww that he didn't know any better. This particular homosexual, isolated by his own views on abortion and taxation, was as emotionally undeveloped as a teenager, and the novelty of it was a bit exciting.

What a thrill it was, all of a sudden, to imagine a life of watching Fox News on his-and-his elliptical machines (though I didn't picture any wedding vows, as he probably wasn't too hot on gay marriage). I imagined us having breakfast at IHOP and then poking around Men's Wearhouse. What a brief and wonderful thought I had, naked in his condo, that tender sex might make up for baffling politics.

And then I began to panic. I stood there in his apartment, listening to him whistle in the shower, and looked back at the children's spelling blocks.

What would Jesus do?

Jesus fucked a whore. He had the opposite problem.

Like a liberal coward with his rocks off, I grabbed my clothes and got the hell out of Dodge. recommended

Patrick Tesh is a screenwriter and stand-up comic.