The following is a June 25 Facebook post that was reprinted with permission:
I am a bad homosexual.
I won't be attending today's Pride Parade. I haven't attended a Pride Parade in years. I tell everyone that I don't attend because the crowds have become too large, that I don't like being around sloppily drunken people, much less thousands of them, but that's not the real reason.
The real reason is I'm a bad homosexual. And I really don't like myself these days.
For years, I used to play the game. The game of the gay clone. I went to the bars, cruised the web sites, hit the gyms, avoided the carbs, wore the tank tops and slept around. I won't lie and say it wasn't fun, but when all was said and done, the game didn't fulfill me. It left me feeling extremely empty and unsure of why I played it in the first place.
Partly because I've always felt like an outsider. Always. Always felt like the Ugly Person looking through the window at the party with all the Pretty People. And for the few years where my body allowed me access into the party, I still never felt like I belonged. Never truly belonged. I felt like an imposter. A hollow imposter. So much so that, at a gay party late one night, when the very handsome narcissist standing beside me whispered into my ear, "There sure are a lot fat, ugly here tonight," I replied ( in my own riff off of Steve Martin in THE JERK ), "Sir! You are TALKING to a FAT, UGLY PERSON!!!"
So, I stopped. All of it. I stopped playing the game of the Gay Clone. And with the lack of gym attendance worship and carb counting came weight, the weight my body actually wants to be. I've joked for years that my body wants to be Dom Deluise and it does. The problem is, nobody wants to sleep with Dom Deluise. Or date him. Nobody in the Gay Community, anyway.
And I unfortunately stopped playing the Gay Game and started gaining weight as I entered my 40s. And if there's one thing the LGBT Community has perfected, its Ageism. So, I moved out of Boys Town. Literally and figuratively. My joke is that, as soon as I hit 40, there were twinks at the Gates of Boys Town saying, "Sir. This way, Sir. The exit is HERE, SIR!!!" And there's always truth in a joke, isn't there?
And on top of being a gay man who is middle-aged and over-weight, I'm also inherently the thing every gay man loves to laugh at and detests to sleep with or bring home: a sissy. When I was being called a fag in school, when I was deep in a closet I didn't even know I was in, I always thought that when I came out and into my own community, I could finally be myself. What a supreme shock it continues to be that I have to avoid being my true Faggot Self among my "straight-acting, straight-appearing" gay brothers. They are far worse in their treatment of me than any school bully ever thought about being.
So here I am, at 47 years of age, and I'm everything the gay community hisses at and shuns with its "No Fats, No Fems, No Trolls" attitude. A good friend of mine called me yesterday and asked if I was going to the Parade and I replied, "No, I can hate myself just as hard at home alone, thank you very much."
That's why I'm bad homosexual. I've bought in to the idea of what I'm supposed to be. And what I so clearly am not.
So, I will not be attending the Pride Parade today. I will be here. At home. Alone. Where I've been relegated. Where I belong.
Stephen Rader ( former co-host of Windy City Queercast ) is a three-time After Dark Award-winning actor, singer and activist working in Chicago.
