I once pointed out an extraordinarily attractive man to Reece.
Not subtly, and possibly not even respectfully.
Just with the sort of immediate instinctive enthusiasm usually associated with golden retrievers spotting a tennis ball.
Reece looked at me with visible irritation and said:
“Not everyone’s gay, Gareth.”
And of course I immediately knew I was in trouble because he had used my actual name.
The casual conversation had transformed into formal behavioural feedback.
The thing is, I understood what he meant immediately.
He meant that “not everybody is automatically evaluating every man in every environment as a potential romantic or sexual candidate.”
Which, annoyingly, turns out to be true.
Unknowingly, he was correcting the very common human habit of assuming our internal operating systems are universal.
Not consciously, of course. Because nobody wakes up thinking:
“surely all eight billion humans experience reality exactly like me.”
And yet we quietly behave as though our own emotional defaults are standard factory settings for the species.
You see this constantly online.
Especially with astrology posts. And “Empaths.”
Entire ecosystems built around the reassuring possibility that your private emotional habits are:
- meaningful,
- coherent,
- and secretly shared by only the correct category of people.
Which is why astrology posts are rarely actually about astrology.
They are mostly about recognition.
You are not cold; you are discerning.
You are not antisocial; you are selectively social.
The reason you are emotionally exhausted by small talk is not that you are rude, it is because you are emotionally deep.
The posts function less like prediction and more like identity reassurance.
Humans seem permanently engaged in trying to convert ordinary emotional experience into coherent personal mythology.
But everybody quietly believes their version is the special version.
Their exhaustion is deeper.
Their love is more intense.
Their introversion is more meaningful, and their emotional complexity is unusually rare.
Your own consciousness always feels uniquely detailed because it is the only one you directly inhabit.
Which means every now and then another person has to gently remind you that not every man in the food court is participating in the same evaluation process you are.
Anyway.
Being gay is a spectrum. A rainbow if you will.