We’ll Marry Your Girlfriends

Well… YouTube. I don’t ordinarily bother with it, but this time, the title got me. And I watched.

These three college age men are attractive and funny and what they have to say is worth listening to, and not just for the humor.

The reasons gay men make good husbands for women, they claim, is because “We’re ripped. We got to the gym. We dress better than you do—not cargo shorts. We fix quiche for her breakfast, not burned scrambled eggs. And we like to dance and go to costume parties and Broadway shows.”

Finally, “We’re the shoulder your girlfriend cries on when she’s complaining about… you.”

All makes perfect sense to me.

They even tackle the forbidden topic—sex—although with few details, other than a willingness to listen to women’s fantasies and set up threesomes.

My closest friends now are a handful of straight and gay women, and a handful of gay men.

Well, with one exception.

So I do understand that this humorous skit has something to say, although its real message is “Support gay marriage or we’ll marry your girlfriends.”

What do I love about my gay men friends? First of all, their individuality. They can’t be summed up or generalized about—no one can.

Beyond that, though, they do share some engaging characteristics:

• Warmth
• Quick understanding on an emotional level, even without words
• Fearlessness—after all, these older gay men went through decades of real threat
• Often the ability to tell the truth and even to tell the truth about difficult topics
• And I do love the way they dress
  • For example, a tartan shirt, red and white, over a lime green t-shirt
  • A blazing red close-fitting jersey
• And they are never fat

Our streets here in Santa Fe are now thronging with the couples who seem to dominate travel, at least in the southwest. I notice that, along our narrow sidewalks, the men always lead, the women trailing behind. And these men carry drab and dull to an extreme: greys, browns, tans—and yes, those hideous shorts…

Am I prejudiced? Probably. My heart has been broken so many times it is more crack than substance—but never by a gay man. The former lovers who did me harm—and of course I did them harm, too—were men who if they could be honest would admit that they were much closer to their male pals than to any women—sister, mother, wife, girlfriend. Men who live on the fringe of heterosexual life, unable to support attraction to a woman because their deeply hidden attraction is to other men.

Nothing wrong with that, except it can fool us, since these fringe-dwellers are often the most charming of the gender. And we do all fall for charm.

Well, there you have it.

But there is a further note: we women have failed completely and utterly to form an answer to the perennial question: what is a man?

A long time ago, some feminists complained that the man of their dreams—a man who believes in equality, gentleness, honesty and so forth—seemed, somehow, lacking…

Passive, maybe.

Without much sexual initiative.

Just, well, not masculine.

The inhabitant of the White House shows us that the ancient answer to the question—what is a man?—is some kind of violence, verbal or physical, a willingness, even an eagerness, to goad, taunt and retaliate.

Does it sometimes seem that this is the man we really want?

“A proven sire,” as my uncle, when drunk, used to proclaim.

I wish I could fall back on biology as an excuse: we want to mate with men who seem as though they are capable of producing sperm.

A pretty feeble excuse, it seems to me, especially since the indications are so superficial and misleading.

Does shouting mean a man is good in bed?

Do violent words mean energetic sex?

I don’t know, but it seems unlikely.

Until we women begin to reject violent men as lovers, partners, husbands and fathers, we are in deep trouble.

Maybe the answer is gay marriage—that is, marriage between a straight woman and a gay man.

In Politics