Try some of this pie

"Those two are gay," I said, indicating two guys at a table about 3 metres away.

"How do you know?", my friend was a little amazed. "I don't get it, this gaydar thing."

"It's not gaydar. I just noticed them exchanging food from their plates."

"So?"

"Haven't you ever observed that? Gay men think nothing of pushing food to each other. Straight guys don't do that, except to their girlfriends."

Here's a disclaimer: I don't really know that for a proven fact. No controlled quantifiable study has been done. All I have are personal observations over a few years. Nor am I suggesting that there is a clear split between what the gay ones do and what the straight ones do. It's more like a continuum with some men pushing food to their male friends without a second thought, and some men never ever doing it. But I have observed a correlation between sexuality and exchanging food with friends of the same sex.

Assume my observation is valid: that is that gay men more readily exchange food with their gay friends from their own plates, compared with the straight ones. They also more readily share the same glass of drink -- "You don’t know what a Blue Hawaii is? Here, try mine."

The question will then be why? Why is this phenomenon associated with gayness?

It's got to do with keeping up one's guard against intimacy. To share food or drink is an act of some intimacy, especially food that has been sitting for a while on your half-finished plate. Gay men generally have no problems with lowering their guard viz-a-viz other gay men, especially if they are close friends, even if platonic. You can see that from their openness to discussing pretty intimate sexual details and experiences with each other.

Of course I risk overgeneralisation in saying that. Gay men come in a wide spectrum, some are as reserved as any, but if you take those who are relatively out in the gay scene, I think my statement is true.

Food is an intimate thing. You put it in your mouth, your saliva goes over it, your tongue caresses it. To share half-eaten food is kissing at one remove. Just think of the clichéd image: boy and girl drinking soda from the same glass with two straws.

So straight lovers share food too, but straight men don't share food with platonic women friends. Their situation is not symmetrical with gay men. Straight men remain guarded with straight women who are their platonic friends, whereas gay men let down their guard a lot more easily. (Some might say gay men drop their trousers a lot more easily too, and draw certain parallels from there, but I find that highly debatable).

All my personal observations have been made in Singapore and around Asian countries. I sometimes wonder if this practice is also rooted in Asian tradition, especially the Chinese tradition, where food is equated with love and concern. Is my conclusion -- this intimacy thing -- valid for Asian gay cultures only, and that maybe the sharing of food between gay friends is far less frequent in the West? If any reader out there knows, tell me, please.

It is a fact that Westerners (even Indians) are much more fastidious about minimising contact between the personal cutlery and plate, and the common stock of food. The prominent serving spoon is the only allowed intermediary between the two domains. I have seen some westerners react with not a little shock when Asians dig into the common dish with their chopsticks. In East Asia, that's how it's done. This "Lo Hei" season (it's Chinese New Year now) brings this practice to celebratory heights. Everyone at the table is supposed to dig into the "Yu Sheng" dish with their chopsticks, stir, toss and scramble.

When our culture is not paranoid anyway about keeping the personal utensils and servings distinct from the common, it's only a small step to pushing food from my plate to yours.

But I am drifting away from the whole point of this essay. It is that if you watch very carefully, in little ways here and there, you'll see that gay men do things differently. It's not just that they fall in love with other men, or that their sexual practices are different, but in a whole host of other areas, quite removed from sex and the heart, the little behaviours, preferences and sensibilities, there are these unique nuances. Exchanging food is just one of them.

© Yawning Bread 

Footnotes

None

Addenda

1. Nov 1999:  Just recently I was having dinner with a friend. Yes, a gay one. He ordered  fettuccine, which when it came turned out to be nothing more than just that, cheese and some parsley. I had a more complex seafood pasta. Halfway through the meal, he pushed his dish away, and said, "I'm bored with this, I want yours." It was fine with me; the serving was anyway too large for me. So I exchanged plates with him, and we carried on. What cultures or subcultures permit this between two men with narry a thought?