The invitation arrived as a Google Calendar notice via email:
GAYBASH: Sat Nov. 9, 10 pm - 1am. “A party by gay guys, for gay guys” the subheading read. “Bring whoever fits the bill.”
My heart leapt as I read the invitation and forwarded it to three friends. This was the party of my high school fantasies, the kind of thing I prayed would await me in college after four years of celibacy, when the jocks who ruled the party scene refused an invitation to any boy outside their varsity-playing, Creatine-crazed circles. The result: Friday nights at home watching TV with my mother and a whole lot of pent-up sexual curiosity.
This feeling of desperation, I realize, is a common one for many gay guys who come flocking to Brown from not-so-cosmopolitan high schools, desiring shared experiences, romantic connection, and (let’s just say it) sex. And unlike at their high schools, gay guys at Brown may come to occupy the upper echelon of society, forming friend groups with formidable influence and social capital.
My friends and I call such high-status homosexuals “Sirens.” In pop culture, the word denotes a female temptress who leads men on only to squash their hearts in the end. Among my friends, however, the word has come to describe a very particular kind of gay man at Brown. Your average Siren is beautiful, fashionable, and mean. In the summer, he wears baggy jorts and covers his perfectly-proportioned upper body with a scant white wife-beater. In the winter, he wears cargo pants with a knit sweater and a delicate scarf that could have only come from your voguish aunt’s wardrobe. His ears are pierced, his friends are hot, and he makes sure you know he reads in his free time. If you are not on his level, do not try to talk to him—he won’t give you the time of day.
When I arrived at the address listed in the invitation at 11 PM that fateful Saturday night, I was disappointed to find practically no Sirens in attendance. The party was filled almost entirely with nerds making awkward conversation and vague attempts at flirtation with people they knew from class. They swayed their bodies back and forth uncomfortably to house music, but few actually danced. I fluttered about looking for an interaction I could enter without worrying about how quickly it would turn stale.
At 11:30, the Sirens arrived at once. Everyone seemed relieved; Gaybash was not some lame gathering we had been tricked into attending but a real party with Sirens and all. They stood among us, and this was our chance to associate, to integrate ourselves among their ranks. One Siren whom I had met briefly at a campus event approached me. He grabbed my hand and offered a warm, Sireny hug. I blushed and tried to sustain a conversation without losing composure. Exhausted by the effort, I pretended to get distracted by a friend in the crowd. I bounded away, satisfied that I had been the one to kill the interaction. It’s a good feeling when you make a Siren yearn.
It turns out I wasn’t the only one feeling conscious about a perceived divide between the high-status and the humdrum homosexuals. One stranger introduced himself by asking if I was a “scary gay.” It was his intention, he told me, to meet all the scary gays at Brown that night. I laughed and told him that I wasn’t scary—eager to disprove his assumption through warmth and relatability. Secretly, though, I was a bit flattered. I had indeed elevated my self-presentation with the hopes of intimidating the crowd: I had put on my softest, most tight-fitting shirt, my thrifted gold-beaded choker, and my most expensive, gender-neutral scent from Le Labo.
Maybe it was something about the influx of Sirens, or the increasingly claustrophobic conditions of the party, or the sight of my ex-boyfriend yukking it up with some friends in the corner, but I began to feel sick to my stomach. People danced around me in a blur of color and commotion. They sang along to the music, which had transitioned from house to pop classics that I embarrassingly didn’t know the lyrics to. The room stank of sweat and alcohol. It was all too much.
The Siren from before approached me again. Shit. There was no way I was going to be able to sustain my illusion of coolness this second time around. My best hope was to let him do the talking. I asked him questions. He flirted aggressively. Oh god, he was really hitting on me. I should’ve been happy. This guy was hot shit. I dreamed of befriending guys like him all through freshman year. But the whole thing left me feeling nauseated. I could feel the acid piling up in my throat. My heart was throbbing. I was surely going to puke.
“I’m sorry—I think I have to go. I’m not feeling so good,” I panted, making a beeline for the door and bolting out before he could respond.
That sucked. But I was relieved to have some fresh air. It felt good to be out of there and in the familiar world of heterosexuality again—where people dressed badly and did not know all the words to Lana del Rey. Here, I could be plain and uninteresting and it wouldn’t matter. After ten minutes of walking around the neighborhood, I felt better and returned to face the gays.
Not long after stepping back through the door, I was shuttled out again. It wasn’t just me—every last person at the party had to leave. Word was that the police had arrived. People lined up along the narrow staircase and funnelled through the front door. The crowd was irked that the festivities had been cut short. “If this were a frat, there’s no way the police would have shut this down,” someone yelled out. “Yeah—fuck the police,” someone else responded. “Wow, this is sooo homophobic,” another boy chimed in. I couldn’t totally tell whether people were joking or in earnest.
Outside, the officers seemed amused by the sight of us. “Looks like a bunch of RISD kids,” I heard one say, picking up on the alternative, femme aesthetics that everyone was sporting, that perfect nexus between streetwear and sophistication which is sure to boost your rank. A hundred boys gathered outside the house in mixed-up huddles of scary gays and soft gays and nerdy gays and diva gays—all refusing to leave the premises and all united in a sort of performative indignation.
“Disperse, disperse,” the police yelled. The crowd stayed put. Everyone seemed bent on goading the police into violent confrontation, as if Gaybash were the next Stonewall. Two boys ran out into the middle of the road and began to perform ballet, spinning and twirling and leaping provocatively on the asphalt in front of the all-male police squad dressed in navy blue and standing with their feet wide apart. “Go home, disperse!” the police yelled again through a megaphone. When there was no movement, they blared their sirens at a deafening volume (as if there weren’t already enough loud Sirens around), and everyone walked off into the darkness.
In the end, I had more fun debriefing Gaybash with my mother on the phone than I did attending the party itself. As a highschooler, I anticipated feeling liberated at a function like this—free to dress as I please, talk as I please, flirt as I please. In actuality, though, I felt no less uneasy at Gaybash than I did at the parties I attended in high school. But the quality of the anxiety felt fundamentally different. In high school, popularity was unthinkable, and I often felt on the outs. At Gaybash, what I think unnerved me most was the lure of status, the fact that I, too, could slip into the quicksand and become cool and beautiful and scary.
Sole Magazine