It’s my birthday weekend and S has come to Bloomington for the occasion. After dinner at La Charreada – a glorious Mexican restaurant with delicious fish bowl margaritas – I and a small group of friends enjoyed some drinks back at my apartment. As the night started to wind down, my roommate pulls me aside and explains that he would be staying the night at a friend’s place because he didn’t want to hear any late night noises. By that point in the night I had already consumed enough alcohol to not give a shit about where he was going to sleep that night, or why, so I let the exchange slide not fully processing what had just occurred. At the time I lived with a female and a male, both of whom slept together if the other wasn’t tangling sheets with some other warm body, and the sounds that came from that room definitely never went unnoticed.
From the start of our lease, I was aware my male roommate had never lived with a gay guy before, so who knows what the sounds coming from my room did to his masculinity the one time a week my boyfriend was in town. I never brought up what was said to me that night, and continued to live as an out gay man; never pressing my sexuality onto any individual. In the past I had lived with straight couples, and never thought once that I should tell my roommates “hey, I’m going to go so I don’t hear you having sex.” My personality is one that doesn’t regard how a person feels, especially if I sense the feeling could be a result of common ignorance.
A couple months had passed since my birthday, and my roommates were now an item. He asked me one day if I could be absent for a night so he could do something special for her birthday. I got the hint, respected his wishes, and told him to clean anything their bare asses touched. When he first asked I was a little resistant because I understood that his goal was to fuck like a rabbit without having to worry about who was in the next room. I returned home at the end of the weekend to find his bed mattress in the middle of the living room floor, complete with balloons, and empty champagne bottles. Seeing the mattress in the living room was enough for me to know what took place while I was away, but I sat on the couch and joined the end of the birthday celebration anyway.
Three weeks had gone by and the mattress was still in the living room. I really didn’t mind where they slept, but coming home to condom packets sitting in the living room, or receiving text messages asking “when are you gonna be home tonight” was enough to make the blood boil. Reaching a breaking point, I eventually said something and we discussed the situation. Knowing how he felt about “gay things,” I had to put him in my shoes; the gay being sexhiled by his straight, coupled roommates. “If S and I were sitting on a mattress in this living room with condoms sitting out, you would have a problem with it; knowing we had just fucked in your living room.” This was enough to get my point across.
Any opportunity to enlighten an unfamiliar – with my version of what it is to be a gay male in today’s world – is welcomed. Very rarely do you hear gay men shunning straight sex, or running away from it; the gays just want everyone to get some ass on a regular basis so people can be happy and leave us alone. At the end of the day we are all human. We live, we make mistakes, we learn, and we have sex.
And for the record, S and I were never as loud as my roommates. If the future-sex-love-sounds of two humans in hot, stoned, heat can be heard through a fully turned up iPod, and through a wall… Yep, you win.
