He's Not Gay After All

         Let me tell you about the day I found out my friend, Chase, was not gay, just a fashionable dresser.

I met Chase freshman year in college, at a university sponsored speed dating session, actually. Then I found out he was in one of my classes. After two days, I was positive he was gay. I was super upset, because this always happens to me. I get a crush on a cute guy, but then he ends up being gay. Chase wore these really expensive, trendy jeans with leather shoes all the time, talked with a lisp, and would say, “Oh my god” with deep-seated emotion. Nevertheless, somehow over the four year span of college, we became friends.

Channing Tatum

It was a Saturday evening when Chase was at my apartment. We were planning to make dinner and then go see a movie at the nearby cinema. As we talked about celebrities we thought were really hot, I mentioned Channing Tatum.

            “I mean, don’t you just want to snuggle up in his manly arms and have him hold you and never let go?” I said, while chopping celery.

            Chase eyed me, a look of scorn on his face.

            “Um, no.”
            “No?” I said. “How can you say no? Channing Tatum is so hot. I thought manly and buff was your type.”

            And okay, maybe before I said this I should have asked Chase straight out if he was gay, because he never actually has admitted it to me, I had just assumed. I was 99 percent positive.

            “Dude. Joie, it’s not like I’m gay.”

            I stopped chopping the celery and looked at Chase square in the eyes.

“What do you mean you’re not gay?” I said in an accusing tone, like how a wife might accost her husband of cheating.

“Wait, did you really think I liked guys?” he asked.

Oh shit.

“But…but…” I thought of his entire wardrobe, which consisted of shirts from Abercrombie and jeans from Express. Those Italian leather shoes. His shopping addiction. “But you have a lisp.”

Because you know, all people who have lisps bat for the other team.

“I was in speech therapy when I was a kid. It’s the S’s and R’s that give me trouble.”

            I really started to panic. Chase is one of my best friends. How could I have thought all this time that he was gay when he really wasn’t?

            “But you’ve never been in a relationship.”

            This is totally true. All the time that I have known Chase, he’s never had a girlfriend. He’d been on two dates and when those happened, I was sure it was a ploy to throw his close friends’ suspicions of his sexual orientation. But seriously. He’d never been in a relationship.

“Either have you,” Chase said flatly.

Oh, god. He’s right. I’ve never dated anybody, and probably never will, because they all think I like women or something.

 “But my Facebook profile clearly states that I am interested in Men, while yours is left blank, which makes people wonder.”

“Joie, all of that top part of my Facebook profile is blank. It’s stupid stuff. People who know me already know the answers to that info.”

Or they don’t. Clearly!

            “Chase, you can be 100 percent honest with me. I won’t judge. Are you gay? Tell me the truth.”

            Chase pulled my hands into his and looked at me, straight in the eyes.

            “Joie. I would not lie to you. I am being completely honest. I like women. I am not gay.”

            It was just hard for me to accept. If this really was true, it was going to change our friendship completely. Like, I would have to stop answering my apartment door in just a towel.

            “But what about Shia LeBeouf?” I asked. Because Chase had fully dragged me to see Transformers 2 in theaters. “You’re telling me that all those times we watched Transformers—in theater and on DVD—you’re telling me that you didn’t have a crush on Shia LeBeouf?”

            “Are you kidding me? It’s Megan Fox I was watching.”

            Oh. My. God.

“Seriously, Chase? Seriously! Megan Fox is such a whore,” I started to scream. “She’s so artificial. You like Megan Fox? For reals?”

            This proved it. He really couldn’t be gay. Not if he thought Megan Fox wasn’t a whore.

            “I think you need to calm down, Joie. I mean, is it really that upsetting? Is that why you’re friends with me? Because you thought I was gay?”

            “NO, Chase, no,” I say in exasperation. But I mean, I wouldn’t have told you all those things about the guys that I like if I had known you were straight. And when we went to the bars, I wouldn’t have pointed out to you all those guys that I thought were hot. Because I wasn’t interested in them. They were for you. And I wouldn’t have told all of my friends that you were gay. And I sure as hell wouldn’t have gone swimming in the river last summer in my underwear if I knew you were straight!”

            I was going to throw up, I really was.

            “It’s fine now, okay? Now you know,” he told me.

            And alright, maybe he should have been the one who was pissed off, instead of me. I had assumed something about him that was kind of a big deal. He was taking this really well. I shouldn’t be upset.

            “Can we just finish making dinner?” Chase asked in a soothing voice. I could actually hear a hint of chuckle behind it.

            I took a deep breath.

            “Yeah, okay. I just need to do one thing first.” I took out my phone and texted Just found out Chase is NOT gay. Then I sent it to all my friends.

            

*Just so we’re clear, this is a fictional story.