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What is it like to be a gay man today? When I first considered writing about the subject, I felt only fear and disassociation. I don't know anything about being an average gay man. Why should anybody care anyway? And therein lies the whole point: Why should anybody care about the experience of one gay man? Really, what you're probably saying to yourself is something about you yourself not being gay, that you don't know any gay people or that if you do, they seem like normal human beings to you. But just in case the last election didn't drive the point home, gays are treated as less than human every day.

Despite what laws may suggest or what prevailing attitudes might be, gay people are human. We are an integral part of the human family. A loss of any part of that family is a loss for all of us. For many people, the civil rights movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s was about cracking open bigoted laws. That frames the movement in the sense of African-Americans gaining civil equality, which also unfortunately suggests that equality was a gift from the ruling whites. We're all aware of the more obvious legal equalities gained, but it was really about every person in this country regaining a valuable piece of themselves. Any time you are fettered from making a direct, open, honest, loving connection with another human being, a piece of your humanity has been stolen.

That's what the situation is with gay people in this country right now. Without civil equality there can be no personal equality. That's point number one to know about the gay members of this little family. There's no getting around it: The laws in this country and in most of the world put us on a different and lower level than heterosexuals. Think about that for a moment. You don't belong. There's a strict dress code and you don't follow it; everyone looks at you as if you're wearing your Halloween costume all year long — only it's not a costume. Gay people know that they are not welcome in school, not welcome in places of worship, not welcome in the city, state or country where they live; and from an early age, they know they are frequently not welcome in their families of birth. Once you know that you're not accepted, injustice becomes usual, expected, even boring when you become numb to it. Oh, and how does it feel to be defined by your sexuality, reduced to it, referred to by it?

Human sexuality is a topic about which gay people have done quite a bit of thinking. Straight people don't live every moment of every day being referred to as "straights." If they find themselves thinking about human sexuality at all, they may get no further than reassuring themselves they're normal. What we know about human sexuality is that there is no such thing as normal. A huge range of sexual response is available to all humans. Normal is usually that which is generally accepted by society. There is, as yet, no grand, unified theory explaining human sexuality. It is unlikely that sexuality develops in vastly different ways from one group to another. We probably all develop in more or less the same ways, sexually. If straights are going to have lucid conversations with gays about sexuality, they might have to do some deeper thinking about it beyond the concept of "normal."

I'm fairly certain that if I went around reducing you to a stereotype, you would be uncomfortable. You might even try to assert your individuality in some showy way to prove a point. So when you look at gay people, try to see the individual human being. I may not like musical theater; I might not have a particular flair with decorating; I might not express myself artistically; I may use pronouns the way the grammar gods intended. Please, don't reduce us to the typical stereotypes; we perform well in a full range of activities.

That's where we are with gays. It's time for everyone to realize we've lost a part of ourselves, and to regain it. Easy, isn't it? But what do you do about it? The answer may sound deceptively easy: Get close. Here's a piece about being gay that most straight people don't know: From an early age most gay people feel indefinably different. (This usually predates any sexual feelings, but is almost always inextricably attached to them.) This feeling of difference, along with not feeling accepted, means that most gay people have a front which they present to the world so they can pass as normal. People, in the last few centuries, at least, have not treated us kindly, so being able to pass has been our best defense against persecution. You can know a gay person for many years before you ever see behind this facade. But the facade is supported by those around us because they rarely ask us about ourselves. It's easy to hide when no one wants to see you.

You can be the first on your block to break the habit of silence and start a new tradition. Start asking the gay people you know about their lives. But you have to be sincere and you have to listen to the answers. If you're going to be close to people and have them in your life, you have to get nosy; you have to learn as much about them as possible and never let them disappear. It's rare that someone close to me asks about my love life. Heck, it was rare for people to ask about my partner when I had one.

Getting close and being nosy might not be as easy as it sounds, at first. We live in a culture that is trying hard to be polite. Polite just means we all get to hide from each other. We're not supposed to talk about politics, religion or sex. We sugarcoat our daily lives to make them seem palatable to one another. So we end up talking about what was on television last night, who won the latest sporting event or what the celebrities of the moment are doing. Please, if you care about me, ask me about my life: Am I seeing anyone? If I am, how did we meet? How long have we known each other? What do we like to do together? If I'm not seeing anyone, would I like to be? What kind of man might I be interested in? And I'll return the interest gladly. The more human we are with each other, the better off we'll be.

You may get some pretty strange reactions from gay people when you start asking them about their lives. Remember that they've been hurt in this way too many times to count. I guarantee you will get the facade looking at you the first few times you ask. They won't believe you care — why should you? And here's the next piece to this muddle: When a group is oppressed, they internalize this oppression and it operates from within at maximum strength. We don't believe you could possibly care about our lives because, on some very basic level, we don't care about ourselves. We have been told so many times that we're less than human that a piece of us believes it, even if our highly intelligent brains have figured out otherwise.

There is at least one other confusion gay men experience that is important to know: We don't usually see ourselves as real men — completely and acceptably male. We live in a society that defines men primarily as "not women." When you are a man who appears to have characteristics defined as feminine, you are seen as less than manly. There is tension in the gay community itself about some people trying to pass as straight and others being denigrated because they appear too feminine. I am continually surprised at just how male I seem to be. You might want to encourage us to recognize that we are fully male. Be delighted about it — I swear I'll laugh right along with you.

I notice at least one thing about being gay that I take great pride in: Gay men get to be close with other men. Men in this society have been robbed of all the comfort of being close with other human beings. A straight man is expected to find one woman and get all of his needs for closeness met by her. Not a healthy situation for either person. When I notice two straight men who obviously love each other reuniting in an airport and greeting each other with a handshake, I die a little inside. By the age of two, most boys are already getting far less physical affection than girls. How sad. Being human is being physical and being close.

Hopefully, you realize that I offer all this as a way of saying that we need you; and in case you didn't know it, you need us. You might need some of this information to get closer to us. Most gay people have been very smart about organizing families of acceptance around themselves. Everyone needs unconditional love. So as you make an effort to get close to the gay people in your life, offer up pieces of yourself that they might not otherwise see. It works both ways.

After living for 20 years in various deserts, Khris Fruits decided he needed the cool, wet green of Seattle. He is currently pursuing interests in rug weaving, knitting and the occasional piece of writing.

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