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1997
Gay dress
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Bert wrote in reply to an e-message from me, "What do you mean by gay
dress?" Oh dear, I was afraid of that. It's one of those things most of us
recognise when we see it, but would be hard put to define. And since it is
constantly evolving, any definition would be out of date by the time we're done
debating it.
I was inclined, as you would imagine, to let it rest, but it bugged me that to do so would be a cop-out. I set up this thing 'Yawning Bread', people write in response, and ask what really is a good question. I should not duck it. So there I was in Thailand, enjoying a brief holiday, and every twenty minutes or so, Bert's question came to mind. Thanks a lot, Bert! Over those few days, some views took shape and by the afternoon that had The Obelisks sauna on my agenda, I was ready to test my theory. The sauna is on a soi (a side road) about 300 metres from the main Sukhumvit Road. Near the junction with the main road is a Pizza Hut, which was convenient for a late lunch before proceeding to The Obelisks. About seven or eight tables were occupied, of which one immediately caught my attention. Here was seated a lone male, of slender build, mid-twenties, resting his chin on his palm with elbows propped on the table, and looking out of the window. He was dressed in a tight-fitting black shirt with chrome-plated buttons. A bit over the top. He somehow sensed that I was looking at him, and shifted his gaze towards me. It was just a turning of the head through no more than 60 degrees, with a slight repositioning of the forearm and the sitting posture, but it was so balletic, it screamed, "sister!" Almost at once, I was distracted by a young man coming in through the door. He looked no more than 20, medium small, with a white T-shirt, jeans and keds. He chose the table next to mine and took his time removing his knapsack. Now this knapsack was a complicated thing with straps this way and that, and in peeling them off, he had to stretch each shoulder in turn, like a striptease artist pulling a sleeve off with emphasis. I told myself, this one's gay. For sure. While waiting for his order, he patted his short but immaculately gelled hair a few times. It was unnecessary and more a self-conscious reflex, because the gel was obviously doing its job well enough. Still it drew my attention to the fact that he had a good hair stylist, not just any streetside barber. Between stroking his hair, he pulled to smoothen his T-shirt, all the while sitting ramrod straight. No sloucher, he. He didn't eat much, just a quick snack and a drink, and then he was ready to go. And the whole knapsack act had to be performed again, this time in reverse. It had these cross braces front and back, like a bandolier, and looked fiendishly inconvenient to put on, but when done properly, it looked good on him, creating an illusion of broad shoulders. The cross braces helped define his pectorals and latissimus dorsi, and was on the whole, anatomically flattering. He then smoothened his T-shirt one last time, making sure that not a single crease was caught under the straps, stroked his temple and sailed out into the street. Which direction? I watched carefully. Towards the sauna. Of course! While Cross-braces was eating, two men, probably in their thirties, came in to the restaurant too. One was an absolute dump, overweight with shirt-tails hanging out and flopping around in sandals (the feet, not the shirt-tails). I wouldn't have looked at him again except that his friend was rather good looking. More than that, something told me he could be example number 3. But was this hope over observation? He had a printed T-shirt with horizontal zigzag stripes in muted purple, green and ochre. A very tasteful design and a good quality T-shirt too, one that certainly kept its form and collar despite a number of washings. Like Cross-braces, he had a good quality haircut. He obviously cared about such things. But he was completely straight-acting, and with a friend like that, I told myself, this one's 50/50, at best. A few minutes later however, his dumpy friend went to the salad bar and Zigzag was free to look around the restaurant. He eyes immediately hooked onto young Cross-braces and then shifted over to me, one table away. I didn't look away and he held my gaze for longer than a straight person would. Naw, it's not 50/50, it's 75/25. I left before Zigzag did and went to buy some groceries before proceeding to the sauna, but what a surprise it was when I arrived at The Obelisks. There just paying his admission was Zigzag, but somehow minus Dumpy. He turned around and saw me. I was already grinning from ear to ear, because (a) my 75/25 had become 100/0, (b) in testing my theory, I had three right out of three and (c) most important of all, he was "my type". In my experience, fewer than a quarter of gay men would have anything to do with gay dress. Some of us - including a very sweet amorous Thai friend of mine - look more dumpy than Dumpy. So what we have to say about gay dress must not be taken as generalisation for all gay men. That being said, at the Pizza Hut, the clues I was looking for were:
What motivates the gay fellow to invest the effort? Primarily sex, but secondarily his sense of aesthetic. He dresses to enhance his sexual appeal, and to get attention, but he also has to observe certain conventions to communicate that he belongs to the gay set, not the straight-stud-looking-for-swooning-girls set. This herd instinct creates what we know as gay fashion. He is also driven by his sense of aesthetic; it just offends him to dress unthinkingly, or to have untidy hair. This is a better explanation for my noticing Zigzag. He didn't exude sexual appeal; he just looked as if he had good taste in choosing his T-shirt and his cool haircut. It was precisely because he didn't exude sex that I couldn't be sure at once that he was gay, after all, -- well, let's grant it to them - some straights have good taste too! This sense of aesthetic drives the fashion. Young straight guys tend to copy the gay ones, and soon the communicative aspect of gay dress is diluted. So the community keeps on inventing new ways of looking gay. But underlying them are the same permanent features: look for the effort involved in creating sexual and physical appeal, look for the sense of aesthetic, and the herd instinct. Yet my little experiment at Pizza Hut showed something else: that while I started off looking for clues in dressing, in all cases I also looked for other indicators, like posture, self-consciousness, the company around, and above all, the eyes. Considering that the majority of gay men do not make any effort to dress differently from the straight crowd, and the steady osmosis of fashion from gay to straight, you would do well to use indicators other than dress. With a bit of experience, you'd be making pretty good deductions based on a combination of observations and you'd be doing it so effortlessly, others might call it intuition. In my opinion, the most telling clue is in the eyes. But to check this one out, you would need to be able to control your own eye movements. You'd have to be able to keep your own reflexes in check, to be able to be to choreograph the half turns of your head, to hold a gaze with a precise degree of emphasis, to be able to flick your eyes to express interest, disinterest, recognition, oops error, come on, or go away. But wouldn't that be coming close to cruising?
Why yes, it does, doesn't it. But then why would you want so much to know about
gay dress, if the prospect of cruising were not on your mind? © Yawning Bread
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Footnotes None Addenda None
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