Have a gay day

I’ve wondered how the word “gay” historically changed meanings from lighthearted and carefree to homosexual. I don’t think my gay peeps are necessarily more lighthearted and carefree than their straight counterparts — in fact we have higher incidences of homelessness, alcoholism, drug addiction and suicide.

But there must be some connection.

In the 17th century, the word gay had described being uninhibited and loving pleasure. Now we’re getting somewhere — if you’re having sex with someone of the same gender, you must be uninhibited; people will say that’s not natural, no matter how good it feels. Why can’t you just be normal and inhibited like everyone else?

But much later on it went from a way of feeling to a way of being. I’d like to think my Sapphic sister Gertrude Stein had something to do with it:

“They were …gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay…they were quite regularly gay.”  — Gertrude Stein, Miss Furr & Miss Skeene, 1922

Ms. Stein said it right there — it’s being gay, not feeling gay. That’s how it might come to mean homosexual: people who allow themselves to be gay must be having a good time, right? If more gay people would allow themselves to live their gay lives, the happier more people would be.

They say one in 10 people are gay, but if only a third of them are accepting themselves it means the other two thirds are living an unfulfilled life. Even if they’ve found a way to make a happy life of what’s available to them, there will always be a part of them (a large part I say) that simply never gets fulfilled. How sad.

I figure the people who really started using the word for carefree and lighthearted to mean homosexual must be those other two thirds. Of course they’d see being homosexual as being lighthearted — their hearts are heavy with the burden of their own denial.

By standing up, singing our gay little songs, wearing our gay little outfits and living our gay little lives, we create a new possibility for people who somehow feel they have to wear the shackles of heterosexuality.

You can be gay and be yourself. As one of my favorite characters on film in recent years said:

“Because now I know that being gay doesn’t mean a guy has to be effeminate or flamboyant or sensitive. I’m no sissy.”  — Roger Bannister, Stepford Husband, Stepford Wives, 2004

I am not saying that we must be flamboyantly gay, but I’m saying we don’t have to hide our light under a bushel or a Brooks Brothers suit. I’m saying you don’t have to hide, period.

So, being gay really still means lighthearted and carefree, an uninhibited seeker of fulfillment, because every day that you get up from your gay bed, put on your gay clothes, drive your gay car and live your gay life, you are living an uninhibited life of the pleasure of being yourself. Have a gay day!