You have to ask questions when your straight mates are turning gayer than you are. I ran into a lapsed friend yesterday, well I say ‘ran’, but nothing so manly as that, rather I caught sight of him walking down the street in little girly steps, swinging his hips in the minciest of ways and looking gayer than sodomy – but Adam is a fully paid up member of the straight boys club and has a girlfriend to prove it. He was always camp, but now seems even camper.

I first met Adam through work a couple of years ago and initially assumed he was gay – fortunately I never tried anything, deciding he was a wee bit too feminine for my taste. Even when he came out of the closet, it took me ages to believe he could ever be man enough to pin a girl down and give her a good seeing to (actually, I suspect he never gets far off his back, while they do all the work).

Adam is a really lovely guy; funny; kind; sincere; good looking too, and, okay, I have thought about it, but aren’t we supposed to be the sensitive ones who spend more money on our hair than we do on bills? I always feel sorry for Adam because he has real trouble convincing girls he isn’t gay – as far as I can tell, it’s a myth that women like a man to be in touch with his feminine side, preferring a good old-fashioned chauvinist shit. Sometimes they go for it and he’s been with his current girlfriend a while now, although I really do have trouble imagining Adam having sex with anything girlier than himself – maybe he compensates by having a huge cock.

So what makes Adam so ‘gay’? Well he doesn’t have a hair on him below the neck, which he claims is natural; his clothes are carefully considered to create a very specific look; his elaborate hairstyle looks like it requires a can of hairspray a day and never moves an inch; he has very effete mannerisms and a kind of shy, reserved quality – when we’ve been out together in the past, I actually look like the straight one, not even his boyfriend.

It would be interesting to know how Adam sees himself and if he’s had to grow up facing the same prejudice that a gay person faces. There’s certainly the argument that if Adam were gay he might as well just be honest, because it would be no great surprise. It also raises the question: is the common conception of what is ‘gay’ more about how you look than who you fook and can I label Adam as gay, even though he’s heterosexual, because if something looks, acts and sounds like a kettle, then surely it is a kettle?