Sex and the Married Man

If many wives out there get annoyed sometimes by their husbands, I also get annoyed – by the gay ones!


Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, who apparently hasn't met a public bathroom he didn't like, is writing a book to be released next year. Apparently, there will be a "little" of the infamous airport bathroom sex sting scandal that led to his not seeking re-election. But he will concentrate more on his dismay at the "dysfunctional and hyperpartisan Senate."

Okay, now that I'm done laughing, I'll concentrate on how Craig is sadly one of those married men who tricks his mind into thinking his tip-toe forays into gay life and gay sex don't count and he's as straight as an arrow (yeah, like the one Steve Martin wore on his head in the 70s).

Now some of you may caution that, technically, we don't know for sure he's gay or bi or DL or whatever. But I'm pretty sure he's done this before as not even Homer Simpson would be so accident-prone as to give the whole list of signs for anonymous sex while taking off toilet paper from his shoe. From my viewpoint, the incident reinforced what the believers and the deniers already thought beforehand.

I know about this married man thing, and not quite in the way you may think. I've been propositioned many times, mostly online, from these men but I never took the bait. One guy I had a moment of weakness for and planned a meeting with eventually stood me up – perhaps wifey came home earlier than expected. Another guy went so far as to declare the love for his wife and his intention of not wanting her to get hurt, as if to assure me he was being not just a regular adulterer but a conscientious one.

But many others saw it as a side trip that has nothing to do with their "real" orientation. And that's where the interesting – and sad – part comes in. I've resisted because I don't like that idea of being enjoyed for my sexuality, than having the other person deny it once it's over. I become something to do or to be messed around with and not acknowledged, even in his own mind, for the physicality that just happened. He's not gay like me, because that's gross. I'm just something to past the time, or so he thinks.

So when Craig made the interview rounds last year and declared he was not gay, I believed him insofar as that's what he's likely been telling himself all these years. I'm confident Craig cruised and dallied but I'm sure he rationalized it as an occasional impetuous hobby. For him, having sex with his own gender was not gay even though the main definition of gay is having sex with your own gender.

It didn't "count" because eventually he went home to his wife and three children, and he loved his wife and had sex with her and he went to church and he condemned the "lifestyle." So how could he be gay? Besides, he never saw "Sex and the City" (the movie or the series) and he doesn't know Marc Jacobs from Marc Anthony.

Craig and many others can somehow step outside of their gay sex and see that as different than what they supposedly are. And the consequence is that they demean and trivialize gayness even as they gain pleasure from it. It's amazing that Craig hasn't even been pushed to answer how this entrapment – as he likes to declare from his shaky tower of so-called innocence – may be unfair to real gays who seek consensual sex in a public place but find themselves posing for a police station camera instead.

I thought it was interesting that soon after the news hit, Dina McGreevey, soon-to-be-ex wife of former Gov. John McGreevey, also a married man who liked men, released a statement about this trend of husbands sneaking out. She knows a rat when she smells one. And she knows that pretending to be someone you're not hurts everyone involved.

For me, the jury's still out on the complicity of Craig's wife. She could be a too-trusting spouse who takes her husband's word as bond. Or she could be one of those wives, just like Dina, who knows in her heart that something is amiss but takes the cue of her husband and turns away from the music. After all, he pays the bills, works hard, and takes the whole family on nice vacations. All that "other stuff" doesn't really matter because he comes home at the end of the day.

People now are guffawing over Craig's book as much as his induction into the Idaho Hall of Fame months after he was arested. He'll likely polish up some talking points for the inevitable Larry King sit-down to sidestep "the other stuff" and talk about the life he wants people to believe he lives.

It's too bad there's a "wide stance" between who he says he is and what he really is.