For the last few days, I’ve been thinking about asterisks.

(This is going to be a little circuitous, I hope you don’t mind. Indulge me. These days I find myself attracted to ideas with branches, curlicues and such. The southern writer in me, perhaps.)

A few years ago, I went out on a date with a guy named Jason. Nice guy, a teacher, funny, wit like a steel trap, and we had one of those terrific “dinner and a movie” dates, and there was connection, the “Capital C” kind of connection, the kind you envy in others, and I liked the guy. A lot.

I have a tendency to project when I come across one of those “Capital C” connections, so somewhere around the last handful of popcorn during the movie, I started to mentally dress Jason up in various husband guises, outfitting him with the ring, the kid, the kid backpack carrier thing, the adoring look at me – all the important stuff. There was possibility in the air, and I liked the feel of it.

He stayed the night (no judgment, alright? Like you’ve never done it.), and the next morning, while he was getting dressed to head home, he said, “Hey, can I ask you something?”

Interior monologue: he’s going to ask me out again, fantastic!, I wasn’t wrong, there was a connection, it was capitalized, and I might as well go and buy the baby backpack carrier thing this afternoon!

“It’s about last night, and I don’t want to offend you or anything, but are you always that gay in public?”

I can’t verify it, but I swear that record player scratch noise rang out in my apartment.

Apparently, Jason liked me*. (*except when you’re obviously gay when other people are around.)

I’m, for the record, not that gay in public. My homosexuality has been a source of surprise for many people in my life (like the fake snake in the peanut brittle cans, Woosh! I’m gay! Haha!), and I’ve been told on more than a few occasions that I possess that elusive superpower called “passing” (we’re fond of people who “pass” down here, it’s sort of a southern tradition, we put great stock in our passers).

So, apart from destroying my plans for his married future with me, Jason’s question rattled me a little. What the hell was I doing on our date that seemed so “gay?” I was so comfortable with him, and we were connecting, and I was enjoying myself so much that I wasn’t even trying to be anything, really, I wasn’t doing anything other that being totally and completely myself and –

Oh. Of course. That’s it.

I’m a jeans and a t-shirt kind of guy who like showtunes. I’m a baseball cap kind of guy who can also summon a drag alter ego he likes to call Stella Divine. I can be bitchy with the best of them, and I can also be so withdrawn you’d barely know I’m around. I’m all that at once most days, and for the fifteen years I’ve been out, I’ve gotten so comfortable being all of those thing at once, that I forget sometimes that “the gay stuff” makes some people uncomfortable.

Yesterday, I got smacked with the gay asterisk again, and I felt just as sideswiped as I did when Jason laid it on me years before. This time, the context wasn’t personal, but the charge was the basically the same: are you always this gay in public? This time, the gay asterisk wasn’t just about me but about how I relate and connect to the community I write about (the arts and culture one, not the gay one), and it questioned my ability to separate the two.

Apparently, I’m liked*. (*as long as you keep the gay thing in perspective).

That’s hard. Because the gay thing isn’t an asterisk to me, and it isn’t an asterisk to my community or any other one, for that matter. Just as the ability to flawlessly ape Ethel Merman’s performance of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” on the original cast album of Gypsy is just as much a part of me as my penchant for ratty tennis shoes, gay men and women exist, they exist everywhere, and they’re just as much a part of the fabric of a community as anyone else.

To put an asterisk beside them is to diminish them. To put an asterisk beside them is to deny them.

And I don’t know about you, but I’ve worked hard to not be diminished or denied. I like to think we make our communities more interesting places to call home (like our drag queens, for instance. They’re hysterical. God love ‘em, they try, but some of them are tragic, I mean how many times can you quiver your lip and do a kickback and spin in one Rhianna song? Seriously.).

Our drag queens might make some folks here uncomfortable, but dammit, those girls are here, and they’re working it (or trying to) and they’re every bit as important to who we are as a community as the people who sit on the city council. They’re a fact, not an asterisk. All of us are.

Somewhere in the last fifteen years, I’ve built a life where “the gay stuff” isn’t an exception to who I am. It’s just another part of it, a section of the foundation, and when you try to move it or hide it or slide it into the background, you run the risk of damaging the whole.

And isn’t that how it should be? For each of us? For our communities?

I’m not an asterisk. I may be a run-on sentence with too many phrases, but I’m certainly no asterisk. None of us are.

We have to continue reminding people. No matter where were are, and especially in those places where it’s difficult to be heard or seen, we need to make it clear that we exist, we are valid, we are necessary, we are not a problem to be hidden, glossed over, denied.