I'm the one on the right. Honest.

“That’s you, that is!” said my friend Jon, nodding towards the TV.  We were watching Trick, a 1999 film about two young New York gays who spend the night trying to find somewhere to cop off but end up falling in love instead.  The man Jon was comparing me to was the sensitive hero, a shy, gawky half-misfit who just happens to be wildly fit at the same time.  Obviously, I was flattered.  “Why am I like him?” I wondered aloud.  Could it be my dazzling smile?  My sparkly eyes? My, er, flat stomach?

“No way, tubby.” Jon replied “but you and him both have the same bullshit.  You present yourself as this bookish flower who’s always being jilted, doesn’t fit in on the gay scene and can’t keep a boyfriend.  The actual truth is that you’re always out, you go to the gym and have all sorts of men chasing you!”

Ah – that’s true.  Kind of, anyway.  Many gay men enjoy playing up the image of themselves as misfits or rejects – as if liking indie or Sci-Fi means you come from another planet – and I guess that, when it comes to love, I’m one of them.  Since I started writing this column, I’ve talked far more about messing up, being dumped and turned down than about making active choices myself.  All the things I’ve described happened to me, but the whole truth – that I can reject and accidentally hurt people every bit as much as they do me – is more complicated.

Why, I wonder, have I emphasised one side?  Partly because everybody loves a loser (in Britain at least).  But it’s also that, while excruciating, feeling rejected is a simple emotion. If you feel jilted and unloved, there’s a whole camp tradition of brilliantly defiant losers (Quentin, Judy – you get the idea) to identify with, people whose failures in love never crush their spirit or style.  Playing a part in other people’s failures may be less directly painful, but the emotions are a lot more confusing and hard to unpick.

Still, seeing yourself as a reject is a habit worth shaking – not least because it messes up your relationships.  Several of mine have gone tits up because one of us was determined to cast himself in the role of victim – “look at all the things you’re doing to me!” being a typical refrain.  If you see yourself as someone who is easily wounded and sit there waiting for it to happen, it usually does in time.  I’ve had ex boyfriends present me with almost daily bulletins of hurtful things I’d done that, bitterly resisting any suggestions that if they changed their attitude, things might not seem so bad.  One particularly extreme (and extremely cute) Italian ex of mine even came up with this gem:

“Everything you do hurts me.  You’re nice, it hurts.  You’re mean, it hurts.  You make me coffee, it hurts.”

That attitude was so defeatist, it sent me running immediately (er well, 8 months later actually). As Boy George’s downward tumble shows, going round with “Do you really want to hurt me?” playing in your head doesn’t necessarily make you a nice guy.  Still, in emphasising myself as the outsider I’m not, am I not acting out a diluted, general version of the same manoeuvre?  If so, it looks like I’ve got one more habit to kick.

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