I have a very complicated relationship with the word “disingenuous.” By ‘complicated’ I mean that it annoys the living hell out of me. Kind of like how I feel about people that hit both the “Up” and “Down” buttons when waiting for an elevator. You are not bisexual, honey; you cannot go both ways. Also, much like Moses 5,000 years ago (give or take, allegedly), you are making the trip take far longer than it should be.

The word “disingenuous” feels like one of those things we’ve simply accepted as reasonable and fine as a society, and no one has ever bothered to stop and go, ‘Hang on. Why?’ Kind of like Italian restaurants that offer fries and wings on their menu, or social events that start (start!) after 8 PM. Or, more semantically related, how ‘everyone’ is one word, but ‘every time’ is two words. (Unless you ask Britney Spears in her 2003 hit, “Everytime” [I recommend finding covers done by Lewis Capaldi or Gavin James]. Perhaps there’s a metaphor we can extract here about how ‘time’ can sufficiently exist as its own thing but ‘the one’ only has value when it’s connected to something else—a soulmate. I doubt that that metaphor would make for any groundbreaking writing, which actually makes it far more likely that I’ll pursue it one day. I’ll leave that be for now, especially given the fact I’m sure there’s a logical etymological explanation for that difference.)

Etymology is the study of the origin of words, which I mostly know because I took a 6-week course about the subject once. The class’s title, which I forgot and just looked it up and was reminded how seriously funny/funnily serious it was, was “Etymology for the Loquacious, the Curious, and the Word-Shy.” If you don’t know what any of those word mean, ‘loquacious’ means talkative, ‘curious’ is someone nosy who we like, and ‘word-shy’ is me in any setting that doesn’t include writing and/or drinking.

The class was on Zoom, and the professor looked exactly­—and I mean Exactly—like a 70 year-old woman named Judith. She had her gray hair up in a perm, red lipstick, and square, thick-framed glasses lensing her eyes. Also, her name was Judith. Perhaps ageist of me, but I thought dear-old Judith that looked like a Judith would struggle some on Zoom. This was early Covid days, when online learning was still somewhat new and we still gave a shit about the pandemic and washed the packages our groceries came in. However, Judith was awesome. Shared her screen, put us in breakout rooms for conversational purposes (which is, frankly, rude, but that’s beside the topic), and provided all necessary material in pristine—and I mean fucking pristine down to the nines—PDF and Google Doc formats. Judith was Capital G Great.

I chose to take the class because I’m, as the kids would say, an absolute whore for puns. I figured I’d just be able to write puns for six weeks straight, and despite the fact the class was a little more “Let’s consider the Germanic origin of…” than I thought, I did walk out with a ton of puns. I will paste a select few which I still think are okay three years later at the bottom. Two brief anecdotes from that class:

1) We did this assignment where we had to pick ten words we like in a story, then write a poem that includes all ten. I wound up writing a poem about a couple named “He” and “Her” (I’m great with names and the heteronormative cisgender binary), where we learn in the final stanza (if you’re a man, the “final stanza” is like the fourth quarter of the game) that He has been physically abusive towards Her. I’m not sure why that’s where my brain went, nor what psychoanalysis we can draw from it. Judith told me the poem took her breath away, and that “there’s something really real here.” I will not be sharing this poem with any of y’all. Mostly because I already gave away the ending so it wouldn’t hit the same way (no pun intended), but also because I can’t reveal that I write poetry. What am I, a Her?

2) Some guy in the class, who I never met before or after, Zoom DM’d me, mid-class, asking if I work out. I felt compelled to reply because—presumably—he was looking at my face as he sent that, and could tell I saw his message by the word-shy, curious, and certainly not loquacious look on my face. I told him I did, in fact, exercise my body, then when he asked for details, I told him I’d email him whatever YouTube workouts I was doing at the time (and still do, actually). I sent him links, knowing I’d be seeing him again next week and not wanting to be rude. He replied to my email with another question, at which point my common curtesy ran out. I’m not sure how he could tell that, fuck yeah I work out, bro, just from looking at my 2X2 inch Zoom box on his screen. Unless, of course, as was his hopeful intention with his DM, he pinned me.

I love the idea of being hit on by men, though I am somewhat uncomfortable by actually being hit on by men. It is imperative for me to say this does not stem from a homophobic stance, but from an “I don’t know how to reject someone” standpoint. I say this despite the fact that any sentence in the vein of “I’m not homophobic, but…” is 99.4% going to be totally homophobic (same goes for other derogatory behaviors like being a ‘racist’ or ‘sexist’ or ‘Manchester United fan’). But genuinely, it’s the rejection thing. If I am ever hit on by a women with whom I have zero sexual / romantic interest in, I presume I would feel similarly. However, unfortunately, this has never happened. Mostly because, to the best of my memory and ability to read social cues, no woman has ever hit on me, but also slightly because the probability that I have zero sexual interest in a woman is lower than the chances I used the word “whom” correctly a couple lines ago.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s flattering to be hit on by anyone—no matter if a man in his 20s or a Judith in her 70s—which is why I love the idea of a man asking me if I work out, but not the actuality of it. (I should note, too, that sometimes people’s curiosity about physical training is genuine and asexual [I’ve had those before so I can tell the difference {which is not to imply that I have any sort of physique or expertise that suggest I’m a person who knows a lot about working out}], but trust me when I say the guy who DM’d me was looking to enhance his cardiovascular stamina in promiscuous ways.) Also, please trust that I’ve given this ample thought and consideration, but, in this moment in time, I feel no sexual attraction towards men (whose last name isn’t Gerrard and first name isn’t Steven). So, on the occasions I have been approached by men (we’ll get to these in a moment), I’ve had to learn how to balance being nice enough while not implying I’d like them to take me home and pin me on their zoom box. I’m assuming women are familiar with this social situation, though the historical, cross-gendered power dynamics add several complex layers to this interaction. I apologize, but will not be elaborating on this further.

I have a friend (male, straight [probably but not definitely]) who once got hit on by a guy at the bar we were at. I didn’t see it happen; all I know is that my buddy grabbed my shoulder, told me, We gotta get the fuck out of here right now, then bolted outside. When I made it outside, he told me we had to leave because a guy just offered to buy him a drink. I was pissed because A) I was having fun, and B) no one offered to buy me a drink. I was hoping to try to limit how homophobic or dumb my friend was in this anecdote, but, unfortunately, I cannot because A) he would’ve never reacted that way had it been a woman, regardless of how or what she looked like, and B) we were literally in a gay bar. If I were in his situation, I would’ve 100% accepted the drink, mostly because I cannot fathom any social situation (not even my hypothetical child’s funeral) in which I would turn down free alcohol. I would probably accept a drink from anyone, though, as I said, I can’t conceive a circumstance in which it is a woman that asks me if I would like one. Nor can I conceive a situation in which a woman DM’s me on Zoom asking which YouTube workout influencers I subscribe to (Tiff X Dan, Pamela Reif, Athlean-X). But before I go fallopian tubes deep into the totally original topic of gendered stereotypes and dynamics in dating and who should approach who, this:

These are—by all accounts and metrics—the gayest days of my life. This statement is somehow both a flawed, stereotyping logic, while at the same time statistically accurate. There is no factual reason why someone is more likely to be gay; it’s all stigmas and stereotypes and cultural ascriptions, many of which I could lay out here but you really don’t need me to do that for you. Anyone at any time in any context could be attracted to whoever. It’s cool. At the same time, societal surroundings, upbringings, and conditionings all impact the extent to which we feel comfortable or allowed to explore whatever we’re feeling. I don’t really care what people think my sexual orientation is (though if you want to psychoanalyze me, the fact I identify myself as a cisgender, straight man in—almost—everything I write may imply I actually care a great deal about this. I would counter by saying I feel pressed to identify myself that way because it is imperative for the POV I bring into whatever I ramble about in my essays, which, by virtue, influences how you read them [thank you for doing that, btw]. Also, I’d say that, actually, going out of one’s way to identify as something that’s been historically assumed as obvious is actually a low-key progressive move. Normalizing conversations that aren’t necessary for you but which allow space for others, who do need them, helps the progression of society. Then again, this last argument is too self-aggrandizing for me to ever actually make it, so maybe I’d leave it out. Either way, I’m more than happy to have this debate during a podcast episode where we smoke cigars and talk about wagyu beef and the best prop-bets this weekend and whatever it is straight men do. I have no idea what that would be).

So, yeah, I don’t really care what people think is my sexual orientation, and there are a lot of stereotypes around all of this stuff that are—most likely—detrimental overall, but at the same time, I’ve been hit on by men more times in the last twelve months than I have in the 332 months that preceded them (fuck I’ve been alive for a while). Brief anecdotes that took place in the last year:

• I was at a bar once, and a very handsome man seated perpendicular to me struck up a conversation with me and before I left he gave me his business card and told me to text him if I ever want to get a drink. I never texted him, but still have the card. You never know.
• I was at a (different) bar once, and a sexy guy with buzzed, bleached blond hair told me I’m cute and kept trying to talk to me, which I entertained, because he was nice (and, objectively, sexy). He also touched my arm somewhere between 8 and 100 times, which I entertained, because he was nice (and, objectively, sexy). Importantly, I didn’t mind allowing this to continue to happen since my arms were objectively bigger than his so I didn’t feel threatened. When he could tell I wasn’t fully into it, he asked me if I’m gay, I smiled and said no, then he asked me what am I doing at a gay bar. Is it a gay bar? I asked, perplexed, and he gave me a look that could be a gif that means “r u serious rn.” I go to that bar to have wings and beers and watch football, so I’m quite certain it isn’t a gay bar. In all fairness to that guy, though, our interaction was about an hour after the bar had hosted a “Ru Paul Drag Race” viewing party, so maybe it was a gay bar for the night and it was a fair presumption for him to make. Also, his presumption about me being gay was fair, as I was wearing a cardigan.
• I was at (the same) bar once, wearing a striped, knitted sweater I own that has a fancy-looking collar thing. It’s like if a bougie cardigan evolved into a bougier sweater. It’s not ‘expensive fancy,’ it’s ‘elaborate fancy.’ Anyway. I was talking to the man and woman next to me, and said something along the lines of “I was on a date with a girl…” at which point the woman gave me a look that could be a gif that means “r u serious rn,” as, perplexed, she asked, “Girl?”
• I was reading at my coffee shop, and a man (ruggedly hot in a white T-shirt with unbuttoned short-sleeved flannel top) who sat across from me sparked a conversation about the book I was reading (bell hooks’s all about love). We had a lovely chat for a few minutes. He then apologized for distracting me, and I said it’s no worries at all, and “we all need a good distraction sometimes,” and, I kid you not, for the first and only time in my life, and I’m dead serious, he absolutely fucked me with his eyes. It wouldn’t have been outrageous for me to let out a little moan after he did that. When he left, he dropped a note in front of me (which I still have) that read “Text me if you ever want another distraction…” with his phone number. I texted him later that day, and he said “I was hoping you’d text…” (I think he really likes ellipsis). I explained that I probably can’t offer him what he’s looking for, and we cordially parted ways. Honestly, that note thing was so smooth, I should’ve just let him fuck me.

All these anecdotes must mean that, on some level, these days, the world around me thinks I’m more likely to be gay (or at least bi or sapiosexual or whatever else) and open for business. I’m not sure if this development is a byproduct of the world around me or of who I actually am. I believe that who we are as human beings lies somewhere between who we think we are and who the world thinks we are, ergo, while I haven’t really changed my orientation, these are the gayest days of my life (not including the four years of college where I sometimes did things my friends didn’t approve of). The only other singular moment of my life during which I may have been gayer was back in high school, when I told my friends I love Glee’s version of “Somewhere Only We Know,” to which my friend said, and I remember this verbatim: “Just so everyone knows how gay this song is, it’s a song where one gay man tells another gay man how much he loves him.” I’m not sure he needed to repeat the word “gay” as many times as he did, since it is implied that a man who professes his love to another man is gay (or at least bi or sapiosexual or whatever else), but I guess my friend really wanted to hammer the point home. So, bearing that singular anecdote in mind, I’m now the gayest I’ve ever been (I still love that cover, btw), and I’m curious to explore the question of why.

We could make a pie chart with some reasons—probably not a cream pie, but a fruity one. Facets of my life that can be contributing factors and awarded slices of the pie, in no particular order and off the top of my head, are: my handwriting, the tone of my voice, my affinity for no-show socks, my affinity for cardigans, my affinity for Taylor Swift’s Cardigan, the type of alcohol I consume, the way my fingernails look, my (in)ability to look women in the eyes when I speak to them, the fact I (allegedly) write, the fact I listen to Glee covers, the fact I once (more than once, actually) got an erection watching a Steven Gerrard goal compilation, the neighborhood I live in, the number of men whose butt I’ve touched over the course of us being teammates and friends (somewhere between 75 and 125), the number of men whose lips have touched mine (somewhere between 8 and 16), the number of men whose genitalia arouses mine (somewhere between 0 and 0), the coffee shop and bar I’m a regular at, the fact that the most erotic reoccurring moment of my life is when my Dominican barber (Ricky, whose English is almost as broken as my Spanish, rendering each of my haircuts an absolute crapshoot where Ricky pretty much just does whatever he wants with me) gives me his hot towel treatment that includes lathering my face with some minty concoction that makes me feel ~seen~ and ~touched~ and ~special~ after which Ricardo leans his face delicately forward, places one of his palms on my freshly prickled cheek, uses the other to press down on my lips, and we let the tune of Reggaeton permeate in the mere inches between us as I close my eyes and let him use a blade to frame my mustache with the precision of a brain surgeon, a single tear religiously streaming down my left eye as he plucks the mustache hairs directly below my nostrils, Ricardo, unphased, unmoved, unabashed, wiping the tear away with his thumb, whispering Perdóname, mi amor into my ear, his warm breath in my canal making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, his lips tracing themselves down the shaft of my ear, his teeth gently grazing my skin as his lips converge over my earlobe, the sound of a suckle as he draws his mouth away, my skin moist from the dampness of his lips, I open my eyes to see his dark brown pupils an inch from mine, the pair of us, unblinking, letting the moment exist in the space between us, I try to speak but find that words have escaped me, a drop of Ricky’s saliva, still warm, trickles off my ear and onto my shoulder, dampening my shirt, seeping through to my skin, the warmth of it awakening parts of me I didn’t know were sleeping, the silence finally broken by Rick, with the Dominican tinge in his accent, Quieres that I do you from the back?, and, still unable to conjure a vocal response, I shut my eyes, and he spins the chair, me in it, making me go the other way, as he gets back to work; to doing whatever he wants with me.    

At some point in the previous paragraph, I stopped being truthful. It’s up to both of us, you and me, together, I guess, to decide when I started being, um, what’s the word for it, oh, yeah: disingenuous.

What a stupid word. Let’s dissect it quickly. ‘Dis’ is a prefix that means ‘not.’ As in, ‘dissatisfied’ (which I hope isn’t a word you want to use about this essay) means not satisfied, ‘disinterested’ (which I hope isn’t a word you want to use about this essay) means not interested, and ‘diss track’ means not music (kidding; Eminem is, genuinely, the greatest lyricist of my lifetime). ‘In,’ as a prefix, also means not. As in, ‘inadequate’ (which I hope isn’t a word you want to use about this essay) means not adequate, ‘inexplicable’ (which I hope isn’t a word you want to use about this essay) means not explicable, and ‘inappropriate’ means it’s probably funny and is a word I wouldn’t mind if you used about this essay. It should be noted, though, that ‘in’ as a prefix sometimes means something else. Like, the word ‘invaluable’ essentially just means valuable (not technically, if you look at the actual definitions of the word, but they’re close enough) rendering the prefix ‘in’—much like this entire paragraph—kind of useless. I know I didn’t really need to mansplain these prefixes for you (is man a prefix now? Does it mean ‘accurately’ or something?). However, A: In case you didn’t know, I’m a cisgender straight man, B: I really, really like the diss track joke so mainly did this entire thing for that.

So, essentially, there’s a world in which ‘dis-in-genuous’ means not-not-genuine. A double negative. So, a positive. So, genuine. Which is the opposite of what the word actually means. And I find that to be so incredibly dumb. And annoying. ‘Genuine’ and ‘disingenuous’ are pretty much antonyms (in case you don’t know, ‘antonym’ is the antonym of ‘synonym,’ and if you don’t remember what ‘synonym’ is, ‘synonym’ is the synonym for ‘yeah same thing dude’). So, when someone says we’re being disingenuous, there’s a way for us to interpret that as us being both genuine and not genuine at the same time. Those are opposites. You can’t be genuine and fake at the same time. That’s impossible. Or is it?

*Insert dramatic music note like the Law and Order DUN DUN*

There’s a fundamental issue with my argument in the previous paragraph. I know. You don’t have to yell at me, Judith. What explains all of this, is that the ‘in’ in the word ‘disingenuous’ is one of those useless ones, like ‘invaluable,’ that doesn’t do anything. ‘Ingenuous’ is its own word, which means innocent, so only the ‘dis’ applies the negative prefix. My taking the liberty of saying ‘genuous’ is essentially a word that means ‘genuine’ on its own is me exercising a privilege reserved to, you guessed it, cisgendered straight men (which I am, in case you didn’t know). But before I go fallopian tubes deep into the totally original topic of male privilege, let’s round towards the home stretch with this:

There’s this thing that happens, sometimes, when people talk to you. I guess it’s a thing that happens to me; I’d assume it happens to other people, too, but I don’t know. I haven’t done the research. Also, I’ve never been anyone other than myself. There’s this thing that happens, where people say something to me, then time stops. It doesn’t have to be a sentence that stops time; it could be anything. A question, a statement, a set-up for a joke (which they don’t yet know is a set-up for a joke). Time stops, and instead of just letting myself respond, my brain decides what to reply for us (us = me and my 152 personalities). Instead of letting myself say whatever I want to say, I stop and think about what I want to say. If you’ve ever spoken to me, you may be able to recall a moment like this. If we’ve never spoken in real life (consider yourself unlucky), perhaps you can envision what a moment like this would look like. Just know, if I ever stop to think about what I want to say, I’m about to be, um, what’s the word for it, oh, yeah: disingenuous.

I’m just really good at it. I’d never publicly admit to being good at anything, except for this. I’m so good. I’m like the LeBron James or Taylor Swift or Eyal Cohen of manipulating conversations (I really wanted to see our three names together in a sentence and this is probably the only way it’ll ever happen). I know not only how to say the thing you want to hear or the thing you don’t know you want to hear, but the thing my brain, not me, would be comfortable saying.

I think I’ve always been good at it, but it really came to light when I was a camp counselor. I once told my camp friends (if you’re reading, I love y’all, genuinely) that going on dates, for me, is kind of like dealing with new campers. The women in our friend group did not appreciate my statement. I sort of still stand by it, though (reason #357 why I’m single). It’s the concept of active listening, is what I mean. I get that the situations are wildly different, but in both instances—both when you meet someone for a first date and when you meet a new camper who’s overwhelmed and nervous—you need to actually give a shit about what they’re saying. You need to ask questions, and pick up on what they give you, and expand on it, and want to know more, and be interested in the words that come out of their mouths, and make them feel comfortable.

There’s a fundamental issue with my argument in the previous paragraph. I know. You don’t have to yell at me, Judith. The issue is that in relationships (romantic, friendships), you need to talk about yourself, too. Your active listening, so long as it’s paired with active deflecting, will eventually be exposed as you manipulating the conversation. In addition to giving a shit about what they have to say, you have to trust that they give a shit about what you have to say. You have to remember that they can only know what you communicate to them, and if that thing you’re communicating isn’t who you genuinely are, the distance between who you are and who they think you are will inevitably prevent you from feeling the love and joy that intimacy brings. I should probably, right about now, stop making this argument in the second person.

Narratively speaking, the most perfect way for this essay to end is to have me come out as gay. Every logical sign, over the course of this ramble, points in that direction. Unfortunately, I’m both bad at logical narratives (for the time being, at least) and am still only attracted to women (and Steven Gerrard [for the time being, at least]). So, all I have is this:

I asked, earlier (thanks for sticking this thing out with me, btw), whether it’s possible to be both genuine and fake at the same time, but I think that’s the wrong question to ask. The answer can be simultaneously yes and no. Yes, because they may feel like you’re being genuine; no, because you know you’re being fake. As I said, who we are as human beings lies somewhere between who we think we are and who the world thinks we are. It’d be reductive and inherently wrong to say that, hypothetically, if you fake being nice to someone just because you have to, but that person still feels the merit and value of your kindness, then that’s fake. Sure, there’s the option of them finding out you’re being fake and that devaluing all that’s been done, but so long as they don’t find out, it may mean something to them. And that’s real. However, I feel like we’re digressing and getting into semantics and existential existence in the world, and you’d be much better off sitting down for dinner with Judith and René Descartes and asking them for their answer. Point is, that’s the wrong question to ask.

The question is how far is the distance between who I am and who the world thinks I am. How far is that trip. How many floors does the elevator need to take me to get from one to another, what buttons am I pressing, and am I doing anything to make the trip take longer than it should. And in order to answer that question, I don’t need to figure out whether I’m loquacious, curious, or word-shy; the way I communicate doesn’t matter. In order to answer that question, I need to understand that there’s another option alongside being fake and being genuine, and that option is: being ignorant. Maybe I just don’t know who I am yet, which is why whatever I’m communicating has left the both of us—me and you, whoever you are, rugged hot man at a coffee shop—perplexed. Maybe if I spend enough time thinking about this question of who I really am, and how I can communicate that without overthinking it, I’ll be gayer.

Whatever that word means.