They love opera, ripped biceps,
fabulous shoes...and women!

By CAROL LLOYD | Illustration by Charlie Powell

"It's a nice party," my friend Cheryl drawled politely. "I didn't realize you knew so many gay men." "But they're all straight," I said. "Oh come on now," she snorted. "Straight men don't act like that." My eyes flitted over the candle-lit crowd. Randall with his delicate features and scholarly lisp. Hal with his feverish affection for gossip and ripped biceps. Sinewy Peter sporting a fabulous array of jeweled earrings. Mike and Gregory and Stan vociferously arguing about the opera they saw the previous night. Suddenly, I saw them from her point of view. How could I explain? "They're straight fairies," I announced. I like theories. Cheryl, a practical Montanan who just moved to the big city, has more affection for facts. Sometimes this leads our conversations into strange territory. "Is that some kinda new California trend?" "Haven't you been reading your Cosmo? There's a whole new generation of male heterosexuals on the loose," I said. "Compared to your average Missoula cowboy, they may look gay but, believe me, these guys love women." "Straight fairies," she mused, studying the room with renewed interest. "Sounds a little oxymoronic." As Cheryl sauntered off to freshen her drink, I searched for a way to define what, for me, has become a familiar species. Almost all the men I know fall into the category of straight fairies -- adamantly hetero but seemingly gay. Being married to a prototypical straight fairy, I scoff at the kneejerk assumption that they're all just queers in denial. These guys have had every opportunity to come out of the closet, and still they persist in chasing women. What's the essential nature of the straight fairy? It's Paul wearing a button that reads "straight but not narrow" -- his sheepish apology for confounding gay men. Michael's monologue performances dealing with gay marriage, nipple play and homosexuals in the military. It's Nathan relaying a compliment paid to him by a lesbian friend: "Hey, Joanie said I look like a faggot. Do I really look that good?" Far from seeing gayness as a threat to their manhood, straight fairies feel a kinship with gays that extends beyond enlightened multiculturalism. In many ways, these men have more in common with their queer neighbors up the street than their macho brothers back home. Their feminine qualities often subject them to the same kinds of ridicule and harassment that gay men endure. An appalled silence fell over the dinner table when my husband announced to his family that he was going to sew my wedding dress. They'd sighed with relief when we announced our engagement, but now they were gasping in dread. Sleeping with a woman isn't enough: they want him to quit sewing and talking swishy, and start taking charge of his wife. Some straight fairies have even been gay bashed. Any place where a gay or lesbian scene flourishes, you'll find this new breed of breeders, gay culture's gift to the hetero world. In towns and cities with an in-your-face gay population, straight fairies feel free to act however they please. Unconsciously guided by the uneasy impression that Main Street, USA will never really feel like home, the unconventionally gendered hetero-man naturally migrates to urban pockets of queer-positivity. Soon Cheryl reentered, stuffing a slip of paper in her pocket. "That William's so friendly -- we're going to meet for coffee." "Coffee? He asked you out?" William, the rosy-cheeked Adonis, never failed to turn women's heads but he was notoriously picky. "Oh, it's not a date. Really, Carol, he's too chatty to be straight. We just did a lot of girl talk. He asked me where I got my shoes." "He was flirting!" Cheryl looked doubtful and demurely smoothed her skirt. "Do you think he'll be angry that I got Stan, Michael and Hal's numbers, too?" "My, you have been busy." "It's mighty easy. These -- whattaya call 'em -- straight fairies -- they're nothing like the men in Montana," she blushed as red as her wine. "So, do they have an association or something?" "Uh, not exactly. . . they're, um. . . grassroots." "What's their demographics?" She looked at me, pupils dilated, hungry for facts. Who was I to let her down? "They came of age around ACT UP, queer literary theory and Madonna. A lot of their early girlfriends later turned out to be lesbians who are now their best friend. But they never, ever participated in the men's movement: they're not SNAGs." "SNAGs?" "Sensitive New Age Guys -- those baby boomers who try to mask their traditional macho hostilities with therapeutic gentle-speak. You know: drumming circles, Robert Bly, the guys who are always pressing their hands together like they're praying and say stuff like, 'I honor your boundaries.'" "I don't think we have those in Montana either. Do they have an association?" Cheryl was starting to look dazed, but I was on a roll. "SNAGs are kind but never wicked -- you know, the cool kind of 'wicked.' Straight fairies are wicked because they understand irony. SNAGs tend towards Buddhism and Eastern stuff, but Straight Fairies are either secular or pagan. SNAGs may be a necessary step in the disintegration of macho consciousness, but they're so uncomfortable with their masculinity that they're obsessed with it. The straight fairies, in contrast, are more interested in a good gossip session than in worshipping the sacred phallus or moaning about their fathers. They mix up feminine and masculine qualities in a more fluid, irreverent way. We say all this makes them 'seem gay.' But such statements only attest to the fact that 'straight males' still describes a veritable prison of personality. "Straight Fairies have broken free from the shackles of playing the straight men to embrace the contradictions inherent in the fiction of gender." My voice rose in hectic enthusiasm. I rarely get to use all the jargon I learned in college. "Oh," Cheryl muttered, daunted. "And they seem so nice." At that moment I was interrupted by William, who wanted to ask Cheryl out for a drink. She looked relieved as they hustled away, spared further exposure to my rantings. A few days later Cheryl called me up, breathless. "Last night William and I rented 'Babe,' and we cried so hard we went through a whole box of Kleenex. Then we had sex and I had the biggest orgasm of my life." "You see?" I cried, vindicated. "Straight fairies are the men of the next millennium!" "That's what you say, but when I asked William about his involvement in the movement, he had no idea what I was talking about. So I asked the others about the Straight Fairies, and none of them had ever even heard of it. What's going on? I thought this was a real thing." "It is real. It's an emerging cultural episteme!" "Yeah, well, they all reacted totally differently. Michael said he didn't appreciate being categorized. Peter said he wanted to join up. Stan said it was unfair to gays to appropriate their terminology. He says that there's disco fairies, earth fairies and radical queer fairies, and none of them apply to straight men. Gregory just rolled his eyes and said he was going to name his new band 'Straight Fairy and the Mushroom.' I wasn't sure if he was serious or not." "One of their primary traits is un-rugged individualism." "Oh honestly, hon. You've got some explaining to do." As I hung up in silence, I assured myself that it doesn't really matter whether you called these new men fairies, elves or trolls. I know they exist -- even if they don't. Carol Lloyd is a writer based in San Francisco. Do you know any Straight Fairies? Out them in Table Talk.