Commentary (The Receipt)
If you’re here, you’ve probably already read Gay Old Time (I Used To Be Cool)… and had at least one of these thoughts:
“Oh, I know that 90s TV vibe…”
“Wow, that’s a lot of masc chaos in one lifetime.”
“Not me seeing my own weird experiments in here.”
Good. That’s the point. This one isn’t about a grand romance or some perfect, polished dynamic. It’s about the way queerness, curiosity, and ego bump into each other while you’re trying to figure out where your body actually points when nobody’s watching.
This commentary is here to say what the piece is really doing under the jokes — and who I had in mind while I was writing it.
What this piece is really about
On the surface, this reads like:
- 90s TV stereotypes
- school slurs
- awkward locker-room moment
- cursed sexting side quests
- one very persistent stalker
Underneath that, it’s about a few specific tensions:
- What the culture said “gay” meant vs what your own nervous system is actually doing.
- What other people project onto you vs what you actually want.
- How masculinity and queerness collide in ways that can feel funny and unsettling at the same time.
When I open with:
“It didn’t feel like, ‘oh hey, I’m discovering my sexuality.’
It felt like I was committing the worst possible thought-crime.”
that’s not drama for effect. That’s how a lot of people from that era learned to map pleasure:
- If it’s straight, it’s “normal.”
- If it deviates, it’s “evidence.”
- If anyone else finds out, it’s a verdict.
So even when nothing “happened,” the idea of being a male and wanting another male’s body anywhere near you could feel like signing a confession.
This piece is me unpacking that — not in therapy voice, but in “here’s how ridiculous and human it looked from the inside” voice.
90s queerness through a warped TV screen
The early part of the piece is basically a media autopsy.
I grew up with a narrow script for what “gay” meant:
- balding, fussy, tragic
- constantly dying of AIDS
- punchline, side character, or Very Special Episode
- occasionally glamorized, but never quite… human
So when I list:
“Tom Hanks pretending to be gay.
Robin Williams pretending to be gay.
George Michael pretending… well, actually gay.”
that’s me anchoring this in a real media landscape, not a fake one. Those were the images on loop. They bleed together and form a weird composite:
- “Gay” is either noble suffering, high camp, or a joke.
- It’s rarely just… some guy at the grocery store,
- or the kid in your class,
- or you, quietly jerking off in your room.
The piece isn’t a media studies essay. But it is saying:
“Hey, if you learned what queer was from 90s cable and locker rooms, no wonder your sexuality felt like a crime scene for a while.”
Being “the gay one” before you’re anything
The school section is doing something pretty specific.
It’s not:
“Look how cruel everyone was; feel bad for me.”
It’s more:
“Look how easily a crowd will pick one person to carry every label no one else wants to risk.”
Most of the boys who later came out didn’t get the daily slur soundtrack — at least not in front of me. The loudest “gay,” “faggot,” “fudge packer” commentary landed on the kid who was:
- slightly flamboyant,
- slightly off-script,
- or just easy to single out.
That’s why I call myself:
“the gay Jesus of my school system.”
It’s a joke, but it’s also the mechanism: one person absorbs all the projected gayness so everyone else can pass unbothered.
The commentary version of that is:
- Some people knew they were queer early.
- Some people didn’t have language yet.
- Some people weren’t queer at all and still got crucified for the vibe.
None of those experiences cancel each other out. This piece is just one angle on that triangle.
The locker-room moment: masculinity, care, and panic
The stretch-mark story is small and quiet, but it’s one of the emotional anchors.
On the page, it moves like this:
- Another boy points out marks on my body.
- My “good ol’ boy” training slams the panic button: “Why are you looking at my body?!”
- He calmly says he thought I might be getting hurt.
- I keep doing macho deflection anyway.
- Later, without an audience, the sadness hits.
That little arc is about:
- how quickly masculinity can hijack a moment of possible care,
- how much fear there is under “performing straight”,
- and how often we only process the real feeling when no one else is there to see it.
The follow-up:
“So… you watch Just Shoot Me?”
…is my teenage attempt to repair, using the only tool I had: shared TV. It’s clumsy, but it’s genuine. That’s the energy of this whole piece: clumsy, genuine, trying to connect even when the scripts can be trash.
The masc chaos: side quests, boundaries, and comedy as armor
The three “Queer Side Quests” are not there to drag gay men as a category.
They’re there to:
- show how boundary crossing can hide inside “I’m just horny,”
- show how fantasy and reality can mismatch hard,
- and show how much absurdity lives in early sexting culture — for everyone.
We get:
- Quest 1: Dick-as-jumpscare + “you owe me a pic now” entitlement.
- Quest 2: Cottagecore LARP when you were just trying to nut.
- Quest 3: Masc dude hating on Stargate Atlantis to a guy literally watching Stargate Atlantis.
All three are different flavors of:
“This doesn’t fit me, even if I thought it might.”
They also serve a second purpose:
- They explain, without hand-wringing, why someone might end up more drawn to feminine energy.
- They don’t say “masc is bad.”
- They say “these particular dynamics with these particular men were… a lot.”
Humor is the spoonful of sugar. Behind it is:
- “Boundaries matter, even when everyone’s horny.”
- “You can be curious and still realize ‘oh, this isn’t it.’”
“Home” as the real orientation
The closing section is doing the most important work.
After all the slurs, crushes, misfires, and memes, it lands here:
“When nobody’s looking, when you’re not performing for anyone,
whose energy actually feels like home in your body?”
That’s the thesis.
Not:
- “You must pick a fixed letter in LGBTQIA+ and stay there forever.”
- “You owe everyone a detailed label.”
- “You are what the worst person you’ve ever sexted with thinks you are.”
Instead:
- Orientation, kink, dynamic preferences — all of it — make the most sense when you start from what feels like home, not from what you’re trying to prove about yourself.
The Kevin-Kline–Phoebe-Cates joke at the end is there to keep it light, but the real takeaway is:
Curiosity doesn’t have to be a trial. It can just be part of the way you learn where “home” actually is.
Who this piece is for (and not for)
This piece is for you if:
- you grew up in the 80s/90s/early 2000s with garbage scripts about gayness,
- you got called “gay” before you knew what you wanted,
- you’ve had messy or absurd online experiences that still live rent-free in your memory,
- or you’re just trying to make sense of attraction that doesn’t line up neatly with how you’re “supposed” to be.
It’s not meant to:
- speak for all queer people,
- erase the realities of people whose stories are more violent or less humorous,
- or turn “masc guys are chaotic” into a universal rule.
This is one person’s slice, held up like, “Here, does this help translate any of your weirdness back to you?”
On the companion track: “I Used To Be Cool” – Bright Light Bright Light
The song choice isn’t random.
“I Used To Be Cool” lives in that nostalgic, slightly campy, slightly melancholy lane. It’s about:
- who you thought you were,
- who the world thought you were,
- and who you actually turned into.
Pairing it with this piece does a few things:
- It underlines the 90s/2000s nostalgia — TV, MySpace, Vista, all of it.
- It nods at the way queerness and “coolness” were performed vs actually felt.
- It matches the tone: glittery, self-aware, but with a little bruise under the eyeliner.
The track is the sonic version of the essay:
- dancing through old shame,
- laughing at the chaos,
- and quietly admitting, “Yeah, that shaped me.”
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