Ask Uncle Scooter: “Is My Friend Gay?”

By Old Scooter Lowry, Everybody’s Uncle

My buddy Mike played football and baseball like me all through junior high. Over the summer though he lost about twenty pounds, and this fall he didn’t play football. He also says he’s going to join dance in the spring and try out for the cheerleading team next year. WTF, dude? Is Mike like gay, or what?

Thanks, Chuck

Chuck,

I don’t know. Being a regular middle-aged man who isn’t a Republican congressman from Florida, I’ve never had the occasion or desire to ask your teenaged friend if he prefers sausage over fish. The only person who can answer your question about Mike is Mike, so I’d suggest asking him.

Mike has taken to activities which most of testosterone-drenched society would associate with homosexual tendencies, but when you look at the actual activities themselves, you’ll recognize how dink-headed such thinking can be. (1) Male cheerleaders and dancers execute maneuvers which require impressive strength and stamina – most notably those actions involving picking up, holding, throwing and catching their physically fit and often gorgeous female counterparts in areas of their nubile bodies that most guys would offer their paychecks to touch. (2) Football players are a bunch of men who huddle together, put their hands on each other’s butts and under each other’s nutsacks, wrestle and grab each other until they’re all one big heaving sweaty mass of muscle, then shower together. I don’t know, Chuck, the second one sounds a lot poofier to me – are you sure YOU aren’t the pole vaulter?

Now I’m not trying to say football players are gay, I’m just illustrating that one’s choice in sports and hobbies is no indicator of their sexual orientation. You’re just as likely to be hit on by your shortstop as you are by a male cheerleader, Chuck. Fact of the matter is if you’re the fit and strapping man’s man you paint yourself up to be and Mike hasn’t tried to make a move on you yet, he’s probably straight… otherwise, you should feel insulted.