Pillow Talk
“I want to get married and have kids.” That’s what the young guy (mid 20s) told me as we were lying there having a cuddle after all the hot sweaty fun was over. He wasn't proposing to me, let's be clear. And he didn’t mean go in the closet and marry a woman, he meant find a nice guy, settle down and raise a family. And as he went on to explain, preferably not in Auckland, but a smaller town like the one he grew up in, which he said had made for a great childhood. He doesn’t see this, as many queer theorists might, as being trapped by heteronormative and patriarchal models of life; he sees this as being key to having a good life. And when you think about it, love, children, stability – it’s a pretty attractive package. It just struck me how he and others are “doing gay” in such a totally different way from we ever envisaged when I was his age. As a young gay guy in my mid 20s, the idea that I could be an out gay man, and a dad with a husband, could h...