FAGHAG is an ugly word, describing a heterosexual woman who spends a large proportion of her leisure time in the company of gay men. It may surprise many people to learn that there is quite a degree of misogyny among gay men, for all their supposed ‘identification’ or ‘association’ with the feminine.

It is a myth that all gay men are politically correct because of their experiences of coming out. I have known gay men who cannot stand women, never socialise with them, and treat them with icy disdain in the workplace; they can be heard muttering about fish when a woman comes into a gay bar, with prissy little moues of distaste on their tight and hardened and oh-so-fragrant faces.

But of course the woman concerned will not hear them, for she is probably surrounded by a flutter of queens making a great fuss over her, getting her a stool and standing in rapt attention while she holds court. Usually the stronger the personality of the woman, the more she is adored by queers – perhaps a woman who is not docile or ‘feminine’ in the classic sense of the word shares a lot of the opprobrium that gay men do, for simply being different from the norm.

Generally, in the company of gay men, a woman is not judged on her sex appeal – her personality counts, the sort of person she is, and not how much she conforms to what is deemed attractive to heterosexual men. Time and time again I’ve been told that this is like a breath of fresh air to most women, who appreciate it being taken for granted that they have a brain and have opinions of their own, which is anathema to most heterosexual men of their acquaintance.

I was working with a woman once, young, good-looking, very stylish, and great fun, and we quickly fell into good-humoured banter, while we were working. We were mock-flirting with each other, and I decided that I should let her know I was gay as soon as possible. But she beat me to it, when she dropped the name of her girlfriend into the conversation.

I have to confess that I was nonplussed by her and I didn’t know what to say. It was as if I had become sexless, that I had suddenly become aware how much I had been unconsciously using my debonair charm and sex appeal (who are you to know different?) on a woman whom I believed could find me attractive. Now, the reason this makes me uncomfortable is that I had believed myself to be totally homosexual, and innocent of any charges of such heterosexual flirtatiousness. I felt caught out, the old certainties not so secure.

Receiving End

It reminded me of the first time I told anyone that I was gay. It was my best friend at the time, the girl I was going out with at the tender age of fifteen. She was (and is) beautiful, intelligent and funny, and it broke my heart when, having told her (sitting on a bed in a bed shop in Dun Laoghaire Shopping Centre) she ran all the way down to the pier, and then all the way down to the end.

When I finally caught up with her, she was greatly distressed, and angry – she felt as if I had been using her, experimenting with her to see what a woman ‘felt’ like, and then discarded her when it didn’t feel right to be with her. A woman of strong passions, she has never really forgiven me.

From my point of view, I genuinely loved her, but not in the sexual sense. Her sense of betrayal was rooted in her presumption (and possibly my own hope) that I was heterosexual – for my love of her was genuine enough, she could sense that. So, ever since then, I have made it my business to tell a woman when we start an acquaintance that I am gay as soon as is comfortable. To do otherwise, I believe, is unfair.

I used to wear a badge, in my badge-wearing days (have I grown out of that too?) which said ‘How dare you presume I am heterosexual!’ It made a political statement, which, perhaps, in certain metropolitan milieu, is redundant now. But the vast majority of people do presume heterosexuality at first meetings, and I’m all for dealing with the real world. Because this world is full of lonely people looking for partners, and when you get invited out by a woman who doesn’t know you’re gay, you’re in a very tight spot, morally.

Usually I turn the offer down politely, and put up with her reaction, however miffed it may be, and then a few weeks later start chatting to her about my previous boyfriend’s cat. Once the ice has been broken, and the truth has come out, then the way is open for a friendship to develop, based on honesty. Some of my best friends are dynamic, funny, powerful, heterosexual women, without whom my life would be infinitely colder.

The lesson that I learnt from my unexpectedly lesbian workmate was that even I am subject to preconceptions about people, and that it is human to be so. But I also learnt for the first time what it felt like to meet someone and find out later that they are not heterosexual. It is unsettling, to be on the receiving end of coming out. And what’s also interesting is that I began to see that if you do befriend someone, male or female, gay or not, however platonic, sex does come into the relationship, in subtle and not easily discernible ways.

Surely it’s better that it’s talked about. It’s so easy for a gay man and a heterosexual woman to use a friendship as a basis for a sort of safe marriage, or live-in relationship, and for the trust and mutual dependency to become so strong that sex goes underground – neither friend wishes to upset the applecart, and they both set themselves up to fail in a search for a relationship of real depth.

He goes ‘jogging’ late at night, and the vodka bottle in the cistern becomes her comforter. I know marriages like this. I’ve ‘jogged’ with the husbands. They chose each other for the security. But it’s the last thing you get if you ignore sex, if you try and make a friendship into something it cannot be.