Stuff Gay People Like: Apologizing about the state of their apartments

Your first visit to your gay friend’s home can tell any story. You might learn is a reclusive intellectual, whose wall of classic novels spills out onto the tables and chairs. He could be a tortured artist, who has covered his home in homemade paintings and novelty objects arranged poignantly – if chaotically – like a tribute to the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.

You may finally appreciate his obsessive bodybuilding when you find a room packed with workout equipment and shelves bearing a wider variety of powdered supplements than you knew existed, or recoil in fear to find a vintage porn set: cheetah skin and zebra stripes.

Most commonly, he is a neat freak whose sterile, pristine abode reminds you of a hotel lobby. Yet even (and perhaps especially) in this case, his first words are always the same damn line.

“Sorry about the mess in here! I’ve just been so busy with work this week.”

You are immediately transported to your own cluttered apartment, where a pile of dirty dishes putrefies in the sink.

“Uh, what mess?” you ask.

You imagine he’s probably judging you now; he’s visualizing the half-eaten pizza in its box on the floor of your bedroom, where he has not yet been. But standing, as you both are now, in his kitchen, he awkwardly gestures at a lone, half-filled glass of water in the middle of the counter.

It’s time for you to confess. “If you only saw my place,” you tell him. “It’s a disaster right now.”

He is relieved; the biggest fear of any obsessively-clean person is that you are a bigger one than he. A gay man whose home is a trainwreck will use the same line, with probably the exact same degree of insecurity, and get over it just as quickly when you say you’ve seen worse.

Those ones often add a twist: “ugh, roommates. You know?” But when their own bedrooms are the absolute dirtiest rooms in the house, you know he’s either just been robbed or lying.

There are a number of excuses available to gay men who bring first-time guests to a home that is less-than-spotless. “I just moved here a couple months ago,” or “I had a couple of friends here earlier last weekend” are popular. There’s also “I basically just come home to eat and sleep” and “I’m in the middle of some reorganizing.”

Some will simply try to distract you from looking around the apartment. This kind gay man will immediately move to put on some music or a movie, toss you a beer or pounce on you to make out. He’ll take you to the one clean room (which is supposed to be a second bedroom, but is totally empty except for a guitar he doesn’t play, a chair and a table). Or he’ll walk straight to the dead houseplant on the living room windowsill, fondle its crunchy leaves, sigh and try to look forlorn, as if he’s now first seeing it fully-dead after compassionate attempts to save it and it hasn’t been sitting there bone-dry for the last six months.

The worst kind of gay man will take a quick look at the mess and start cussing at the dog. If you encounter this, you must leave as soon as possible and under no circumstances should you accept any drink he offers. His cocker spaniel pulled out a bunch of balled socks out of the bedroom and left a stack unpaid bills on the kitchen table? Okay…

Meanwhile the most honest reaction when bringing guests to a messy home is a non-dramatic shrug – if you get that, he’s a keeper.

Stuff Gay People Like (SGPL) is a satirical/cultural column featured in Out Front Colorado. Visit the Facebook Page or view the whole list.

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