Dude! I Kissed a Boy and I Liked It

The whole thing started out as a high school parking lot dare in the 11th grade, directed at me and one of my close guy friends. “You boys are practically gay together,” our friends joked, “So why don’t you have the nerve to kiss?” Oddly enough, or perhaps appropriately, one of those daring us was his girlfriend. I never could decide if she was testing us or if she just wanted to see us squirm.

Either way, we accepted the dare and I, Joe Lynch, gave him a three second smooch… nothing wet, but not a familial peck either—definitely some lip-on-lip action. The kiss elicited a lot of laughter from our friends and plenty of good-natured, embarrassed blushing from him. It was super-awkward for me, too: I had to pretend I hadn’t enjoyed it.

But I had—I was even disappointed it was so short. And what would it have been like with tongue, I wondered.

What?!

At that point Guilty Joe kicked in and started demanding answers from Curious Joe.

What are you talking about—why did you like it? You don’t even like boys, right?
Well, Guilty Joe, I guess I thought it was it fun.
But why?

Good question. I wasn’t attracted to him. But then again, I would NEVER have kissed the majority of my dude friends, even for money... much less on a dare. So what was it about HIM that made me go along with it? I mean, I liked girls—my prior four and a half kisses were with girls. I crushed on girls. I thought of girls when I dreamed. And why did our friends dare us in the first place?

Certainly, elements of that friendship had reason to strike our friends as, you know, gay. We sang songs together… and by that I mean, we harmonized together on songs. A favorite pastime was to take long drives by the river. We often went out for expensive desserts at chic coffee shops. When you grow up in the Midwest, those disparate activities are often put into one category: GAY.

I had nothing against gays, but no reason to think of myself as one. But there I was, the taste of his chapped lips on my mouth and wondering if we would ever kiss again. No, I told myself: he has a girlfriend. What? Wake up, Curious Joe! You should be thinking, no, we would never kiss again, because he’s a boy.

What really threw me off was comparing myself to how the “out” people at school acted. Most of them wore their preference on their sleeve: The gay men were effeminate and they talked about it a lot. At the same time, many of them had never kissed a boy, which they also talked about—they were waiting for the right guy. Well, here I was, a straight Catholic boy, and I already went further. And what did that mean? Was I just experimenting? Or was it possible I was bisexual but I just didn’t have the “gay attitude” in me? And what did the “gay attitude” even mean?

The next time I spoke a word of it to anyone was with my first serious girlfriend. She was a person I could trust to explore myself with—free of judgment, laughter or discomfort.

Even so, I still haven’t figured out my inclinations, and it often baffles friends and signif others when you don’t fit into a category. Ultimately, though, it’s worth confusing others to be yourself—even if you don’t know what that means yet.

What does kissing someone of the same sex mean to you? Would you ever? And what does it mean to be gay or straight if you sometimes take a detour to the other side?