Single, and Married

Single, and Married

Welcome to heartbreak hotel. Actually, it's not completely fair to say that. There are possibly thousands of people the world over, categorized as the 'other woman'. When you're gay, you're just 'the other man'. Same role, different gender, possibly more dramatic.

Case 1: You see tall, dark and handsome specimen stalking the room, and you amble over to introduce yourself. A couple of drinks and some seductive comments later, you find yourself smitten. A couple of nights later, you realize that the plain gold band on his finger has a deeper, darker significance: Welcome to the family, honey!

Case 2: You know he's married. But, what the hell, he's gay! If you can do it with a guy who's in a 'relationship', you can very well do it with a guy who's married. So, you ignore the picture of the little woman at home, and just have a mindless screw. Surprise, surprise: he's actually pretty good at what he does! ;-)

Case 3: You fall in love. You tell yourself that's not the way it should go, but you decide to live dangerously, anyway. You decide: (a) you'll make him realize his inner 'gay' self, so that he'll leave the wife and live forever with you, or (b) you're quite comfortable being the 'main man' in his life, and you can share him with the wife. You're one big, happy family, and it doesn't really matter that that the third leg of the triangle (namely, the wife) doesn't know that you exist.

Of course, all of the above cases are valid, only if you actually let yourself get involved, sexually or otherwise, with a married guy. In India, that happens all the time, since a number of men get married very early and very frequently. An acquaintance of mine has been in a 'relationship' with a married guy for the last three years. Hubby visits Acquaintance three days in the week, he goes back to his wife for three other days in the week, and then Hubby spends the last day of the week with a new gay boy: Fuck-of-the-Month. How's that for romance? While some of us may be tempted to sigh in despair and urge Acquaintance to get out of this tangle, he himself is very satisfied with the arrangement: it gives him the 'stability' of a relationship, he says, and time for his own pursuits, recreational or otherwise.

There's the other extreme, of people who can't visualize even a wham-bam with a guy once they learn he's married. Take my friend the Decorator/Designer, for instance. Some weeks back, I'd met this 37-year old married guy (gorgeous!) with a five-year old kid, and while I had no qualms in making it a one-night thingy, Decorator/Designer found the whole affair quite scandalous. This is how the thing looked to me: 1) he's hot, 2) he's going to cheat around anyway, 3) this little one-night thingy is hardly going to break up a marriage, and 4) did I mention he's hot?

Of course, the thing that seems most ludicrous to me in all these cases of single/married men is how on earth their women (wives or girl friends, as the case may be) don't catch on, when (a) boy waxes body religiously, (b) boy is a drama queen straight out of Alice in Wonderland, (c) boy loves buying trinkets for his hands and various neckpieces from Colaba Causeway, (d) boy has too many out-of-town conferences on the weekends... I mean, how dumb can these women be, not catch on?!

Or, are they merely ignoring the 'single' part of the job description, while we gay lovers choose to ignore the 'married' part...?