When I was fourteen, I worked backstage on a community ballet production my sisters were dancing in and encountered several gay men. The artists and the volunteers all worked together. Everyone pitched in to help the production succeed. At one point, one of the dancers and I had to gather a curtain and bundle it. He started at one end of the stage and I at the other. Our hands touched when we met in the center, and he gave me a telling look, the kind of look I would have loved to have received from a girl but had not. I pulled away, not outraged but a little uncomfortable. He and the others were fun people to work with, and when the term "gay'" came into common parlance, I thought of that man and his friends and felt gay was precisely the right word.
Today, the primary definition of gay is men "sexually or romantically attracted" to other men. If I were to say to a straight man, "You appear very gay this morning," we all know what he would think I was suggesting, and it would not be that he was "joyful."
In high school, an acquaintance once asked me if I was sexually involved with anyone. I thought that was a funny question. I laughed and told him that I had no girlfriend. I then talked about a girl I liked. Later, I realized he was subtly hitting on me without expressing interest, and my response told him what he needed to know without revealing something that might cause a problem.
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