Joyce’s Reviews > Boyfriends of Dorothy > Status Update

they liked our gay boyfriends, ... because they liked what our gay boyfriends brought out in us: self-confidence, outrageousness, unrestrained laughter.

And in New York, miracle of miracles, you could find a straight man who was a little big gay, which my gay boyfriends and I referred to with the acronym ALBG.

By rejecting gay men, mocking them, they were rejecting and mocking me.

Wayne Koestenbaum: "the third rail" - a resting place where it was possible to be straight and unstraight at the same time

"Friends of Dorothy," ... code for gay. (It had to do with "The Wizard of Oz" and Judy Garland worship.)

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In time, the "gay boyfriend" would become a recognized trope in pop culture thanks to shows like "Sex and the City" and "Will & Grace."

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My gay boyfriends were like girlfriends, only guys ... But with sex out of the equation, they could see us and celebrate us for who we were.

They had to celebrate femininity, to worship it - to not just want girls.

I had squandered it by trying to change it.

"It doesn't become you at all. Here, for goodness' sake, let me fix it up." The tone is confiding, conspiratorial, and, though I didn't know it at the time, queeny.

I didn't know anyone gay, it seemed. Unless you counted Bugs Bunny. Bugs was my first gay boyfriend. I just wouldn't know it for a while.

Despite Grand Rapids' social conservatism, or perhaps in response to it, the city has cultivated a thriving underground queer community.