This actaully came up in conversation last night with one of my buddies' new girlfriends. I know that when I was about 14 and going through that "I don't wanna be different" phase that younger teenagers go through, I certainly did want to be straight.

But when I really thought about it once I got a bit older, I realized that I didn't want to be "straight" so much as "Normal". That now sounds really lame, but I was a teenager living in a rural part of Canada; I didn't really have any role models to show me I could be a plain old regular guy, listen to Judas Priest and Black Sabbath and ride a motorcycle and play hockey and drink beer and play pool with my friends and all those other things that "regular" guys do.

I have no fashion sense. I can't cook. I'm a slob, I smoke Cuban cigars and drink Whiskey. I don't do these things to play straight (as gay people often accuse me of doing) but because it's what I do... it's what I'm like.

Being gay really isn't any part of that at all. At one point even in my 20s I wished I was straight so I could just be like my friends, but now I realize that I AM like my friends. And if being gay isn't an issue to them, it isn't one to me, either. So I guess I'll just take the things that make me into me.

And of course, the fringe benefits that straight people get in other countries don't really exist here. We can get married (not that I'd want to), and it's very common for gay couples to raise children (woudln't want that either). So why be straight? I mean, it's tought to find a guy who likes the things that I do, but no harder that it would be to find a woman who liked Motorcycles, Metal, Beer, Harry Potter and Batman comics.